During the mobility

Here you find information on the steps that are important during your mobility, regardless if it is a physical mobility, a virtual mobility or a hybrid mobility. The kind of mobility you declare in the workflow of your participant's account before you upload the arrival certificate there.

Furthermore please do not forget that you are an ambassador of Goethe University, so please advertise a study abroad period at Goethe to your fellow students there and encourage them to come to Frankfurt. The exchange mobility numbers need to be balanced in order to keep the partnerships alive and to be able to send students to the partner universities.

Please get your start date confirmed (signed AND stamped) at the international office of your host institution or with the departmental coordinator there within the first week of your stay and upload the scan into your participant's account. 

The Confirmation of Period of Study is provided in your participant's account once the Grant Agreement has been checked as correct there. At the end of your study period please do not forget to get the end date confirmed in this confirmation document as well. Without this proof of your actual mobility dates we would have to request you to pay back the ERASMUS grant. 

Please upload the signed Arrival Certificate together with the proof of travel (bus or train or ferry or plane tickets, filling station receipts) in the workflow of your participant's account. The proof of travel is necessary with regard to possible Green Travel funding. Please refer to the information specifically for your ERASMUS year for the current information on Green Travel funding.

If you attended a preparatory language course in the host country, the start date of this course can be registered in your participant's account instead of the start date of your studies.

You are obliged to regularily visit the courses agreed upon in the first Learning Agreement. If changes have to be made at the start of your ERASMUS study period, you have to complete a new Learning Agreement /Changes to Learning Agreement within four weeks of the start of the lecture period. 

The Changes to Learning Agreement has to be completed in the OLA - process, but this is possible only if your first Learning Agreement had been successfully completed in OLA. If this was not the case, please download the template Changes to Original Learning Agreement provided in the workflow of your participant's account, discuss and agree upon the added and cancelled courses. For counsel with regard to the possible recognition of ERASMUS credits please contact your departmental coordinator and if necessary also your examination office. Collect all signatures (your signature, the signature of your departmental coordinator at Goethe-University and the responsible person at the host institution) and upload the completed document. The same is necessary in case of an extension of the ERASMUS period for a module or semester. Please make sure to upload the document into your participant's account shortly after its completion. The GO of GU will then check if it is formally correct and in case it is not, you will receive an email and have to make the necessary correction before uploading it again.

Unauthorized changes in your study program may most certainly preclude recognition of credits and may even lead to a complete backpayment of the ERASMUS grant. Be advised to choose courses with a workload of 30 ECTS credits per semester and to attend regularly and continuously. According to the EU Commission these 30 ECTS mark the standard semester workload of a home student. As an ERASMUS participant of GU you do not need to take and successfully complete 30 ECTS, but we strongly suggest you do since ERASMUS is an academic exchange program after all. 


In the courses chosen for studies all mandatory performances have to be undertaken, be it the signing of attendance lists, home work, reading assignments, class room presentations, tests and if the teacher requires you to sit for the end term examinations, you have to do that, too. You do not necessarily have to pass these exams successfully if you do not seek recognition of credits at GU. In case you fail examinations you parttake in, this does not lead to a backpayment of the ERASMUS grant. If you seek recognition of credits for a course, naturally you have to successfully complete the course.
YOU HAVE TO BE AND STAY ENROLLED AT GOETHE UNIVERSITY DURING YOUR ERASMUS MOBILITY. Otherwise you will lose your ERASMUS status and funding. If your mobility period exceeds one semester, please make sure to complete your re-enrolment at Goethe-University by paying the semester fees in due time.
Information on re-enrollment deadlines
 here

Language courses at the host university/in the host country (for language of teaching or language of host country only

Some host universities offer preparatory or semester long language courses - some free of cost, some with fees. If you have completed such a course successfully, please upload the course certificate into the workflow of your participant's account. If course fees applied, please include the payment slip in that pdf-file. This is possible only after the start of your mobility.
For the reimbursement of language course fees only limited funds are available in ERASMUS. We reimburse the actual course fee for maximum 2 language courses up to a maximum amount of 100€ in total. Please refer to the information specifically for your ERASMUS year for the subject of reimbursement of fees.

If your host institution allocates ECTS credits to the language courses, these can be included in the 30 ECTS credits per semester.

In current times it is hard to foresee the situation in a country, region or city at the time of your mobility. You as an ERASMUS participant visit your host country at your own risk. If the country is in an unstable socio-political state, we recommend you register yourself in the crisis precaution list of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany (ELEFAND). This applies also to the current pandemic situation. 

If you need to terminate your ERASMUS mobility due to unforeseeable events in the host country, an individually documented proof of a travel warning (Reisewarnung des Auswärtigen Amtes) of the Federal Foreign Office (screenshot with date) is enough for us to accept this ERASMUS mobility, even if its duration is less than 60 days/2 months.

If you want to extend your period of stay, you have to apply for that extension in your participant's account in the part During the mobility. This is possible only once you have uploaded your arrival certificate.

You have to apply for an extension of the ERASMUS period at least 30 days before the originally planned end-date, either if your start date was earlier or you will conclude your study period later than originally planned.

This you do in your participant's account and applies to minimal extensions from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to extensions by a module or full semester. Minimal extensions from a couple of days to a couple of weeks have to be registered by us, are important to receive full funding, but cannot not be funded if your ERASMUS period exceeds 120 days per semester/240 days per academic year.

A minimal extension does not require permission by the departmental coordinator or the host institution. Please pay attention when marking the correct field in your participant's account.

For extensions for a module or semester, trimester or placement/internship at the host institution please mark this accordingly in the participant's account first. Then talk to the responsible person at the host university and your departmental coordinator at GU, because these two have to give written permission by email to outgoing@uni-frankfurt.de that the extension is granted within the ERASMUS program. Only after receiving these emails your application for extension can be processed in the participant's account. You will then be provided with a Changes to Original Learning Agreement form for the extension period in your participant's account.

Additionally in all cases of extension an updated Grant Agreement will be provided. Please complete and upload these into your account in due time.

Please notice: An extension period has to immediately follow the current mobility period. Extensions past the summer semester cannot be permitted, because the fiscal administration of ERASMUS at Goethe University is done by academic years. For officially confirmed additional examination periods or studies an extension can be granted until the end of the official ERASMUS period, September 30. Maximum duration is 12 months per regular study cycle though; for students in the traditional study programs Diplom, Magister and Staatsexamen (state examination) up to 24 months.

An extension by a second semester after the summer semester into the winter semester of the following academic year is possible only by submission of a new application for the new ERASMUS study period with your departmental coordinator, who has to decide if another placement in the program is possible. Please contact him/her as early as possible.

If enough funds are available for all extensions for a module/semester that reach the GO in due time, cannot be determined at this point. This is a case-by-case decision in the order we receive the applications for extension, that depends on the number of cancellations, terminations and shortenings of ERASMUS mobilities. If the funds available are not sufficient, you may still extend your ERASMUS study period under the tuition waiver, but the extension will be valued as zero grant days which means no financial support. In prior years though all extensions could be funded up to the possible maximum.

If you have to cancel your ERASMUS participation please notify your departmental coordinator AND Mr. Purkert at the Global Office at outgoing@uni-frankfurt.de immediately. The same goes for terminations and shortenings of the mobility, that is if you reduce the actual duration below the planned duration, also in case you reduce a mobility planned for two semesters down to one semester only. Mr. Purkert will contact you concerning the backpayment of the grant. If the duration of your ERASMUS mobility drops below 2 monts (60 days), you have to pay back the grant in full, since this is the minimum duration in the ERASMUS program. If the duration is 60 days or more, you will have to pay back a partial sum of the grant. Sometimes it is sufficient if the outstanding outpayment is reduced accordingly.

In case you encounter problems during the ERASMUS stay, that make it impossible for you to continue your studies in an orderly way, please contact your departmental coordinator and Mr. Purkert at the GO at outgoing@uni-frankfurt.de. This may be an accident, health and mental problems, financial problems. Then it has to be decided whether the continuation of the mobility is possible and reasonable under the circumstances.

At the end of your study period please do not forget to get the end date confirmed in the Confirmation of Period of Study - signed AND stamped at the international office of your host institution or with the departmental coordinator. Without this proof of your actual mobility dates we would have to require you pay back the ERASMUS grant. The Confirmation of Period of Study had been provided in your participant's account at the start of your mobility. In case you lost the document you can download it again in the same step as before.

Please upload the signed Confirmation of Period of Study together with the proof of travel (bus or train or ferry or plane tickets, filling station receipts) in the workflow of your participant's account. The proof of travel is necessary with regard to possible Green Travel funding. Please refer to the information specifically for your ERASMUS year for the current information on Green Travel funding.

Also please inquire about the modalities concerning your official Transcript of Records from the host institution. Usually this is provided as an email attachment or is is being sent by mail to you, your departmental coordinator at GU or us at the Global Office. In case we receive it, we will notify you by email so you can pick it up or we can forward it to you. Please upload a scan of your transcript into your participant's account. You will also need this document for the recognition of your ERASMUS credits at GU.

In case your personal details or bank details change , please update this data yourself in your participant's account in a step at the top of the workflow where you had filled in the data originally.

Kontakt

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Global Office
Eschersheimer Landstraße 155
c/o House of Labor
3rd floor
60323 Frankfurt am Main