Promoting your study and work offers.

Worldwide. Free of charge.

WISHES NEWSLETTER /1
March 2010

Editorial
Dear colleagues and friends of the WISHES project,

warm welcome to the first edition of the WISHES newsletter.

WISHES stands for Web-based Information Service for
Higher Education Students. As an online platform the
WISHES mobility portal offers European higher education
institutions (HEIs) an effective recruitment and networking
tool to promote their offers free of charge to high potential
students all over the world.

For roughly one year we have now been pursuing our

Erasmus Mundus Action 4 project WISHES. Hence, it
is time to inform you about our past activities and future
plans.

The main purpose of this newsletter is therefore to enable you to take the most benefit of our
Erasmus Mundus project – and to initiate more interaction between all friends of the WISHES
project.

Enjoy the reading!

Michael Steinmann

Background of the WISHES Project

WISHES stands for Web-based Information Service for Higher Education Students. As a European
Project, WISHES is co-financed within the Action 4 of the Erasmus Mundus Programme.
Supported by over 70 higher education institutions, European associations and networks,
WISHES sets up a user-driven, high quality and multi-professional web-platform. This WISHES
mobility portal promotes European study and work offers tailored to the expressed needs of 4.000
students. In conclusion, our mobility portal does not only result in the best fit between the involved
target groups. It also enables European higher education institutions and employment bodies to
effectively attract international students and recent graduates – worldwide and free of charge.

If you are interested in benefitting from our intelligent recruitment and networking tool WISHES,
please find further information online or get in touch with us directly.

With the support of the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Union the WISHES-Project is carried out by:
 Promoting your study and work offers.
Worldwide. Free of charge.

WISHES SURVEYS SUCCESSFULLY CONCLUDED

Thanks to the vast support of plenty of our WISHES supporters and multipliers we successfully
concluded our first WISHES surveys in 2009. Within these three surveys about 600 higher
education institutions, 400 enterprises and 4.000 students stated their wishes concerning content
and functions of our future mobility portal. Many thanks to all of you who actively participated in
and/or helped to spread these surveys!

The results retrieved do clearly indicate that higher education institutions, international students
and enterprises are highly interested in using our future WISHES mobility portal. Additionally, all
feedback received has multisided implication for everyone who works in the broad field of higher
education mobility – and thus will provide solid grounds for our mobility portal. Based on these
detailed survey results, our WISHES mobility portal enables you to present your work and study
offers meeting the condensed needs of international students. Thus, WISHES supports you to
effectively recruit international students and recent graduates – worldwide and free of charge.

WISHES presented within ERACON 2009 and EAIE 2009

In 2009, WISHES actively participated in two major European conferences on higher education
mobility: The ERACON Conference 2009 (29th of April – 3rd of May 2009, Nicosia, Cyprus) and
the EAIE Conference 2009 (16th – 19th of September, Madrid, Spain). Within these conferences
we consequently continued to “build the net of WISHES” by presenting our project within various
sessions and uncountable personal encounters. Additionally, we also used this chance to catch
up with plenty of our supporters, and successfully established further contacts towards various
National Agencies and other international multipliers; ensuring a broad WISHES network to spread
the word about our project.

Launch of WISHES mobility portal for HEIs in May 2010

Currently we are working hard to finalize the implementation of our WISHES mobility portal. In
middle of May 2010 we will launch our mobility portal closely relating to the European Cultural
Capital Programme during the WISHES Networking Days (NWD 2010) in Essen, Germany. Within
the NWD 2010 we will not only present our WISHES mobility portal for the first time to the public.
Additionally, we will also offer in-depth training sessions to enable you to make the most benefit
of our intelligent recruitment and networking tool. Following the launch of our WISHES mobility
portal for higher education institutions, all supporting institutions will be able to upload, prepare
and optimize the presentations of their study offers for the launch of WISHES towards the students
in September 2010. In case you are interested in effectively promoting your offers on WISHES, all
you need to do is to get in touch with us by means of our online contact form.

WISHES Networking Days 2010 (NWD 2010)

The WISHES Networking Days 2010, organized between the 15th and 16th of May 2010 in Haus
der Technik, Essen, Germany will host the official launch of our WISHES mobility portal. At the
same time this cutting edge networking event provides European higher education institutions with

With the support of the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Union the WISHES-Project is carried out by:
 Promoting your study and work offers.
Worldwide. Free of charge.

plenty of possibilities to sustainably realize their networking potentials: The NWD 2010 intelligently
combine the advantages of online and offline communication. Prior to the conference and based
on ICT the NWD 2010 recommend and match high potential cooperating partners virtually
before bringing them together onsite. By offering a well-balanced and promising mix of diverse
pre-conference, on-site and post-conference activities, NWD 2010 effectively connects European-
minded and internationally active higher education institutions, European networks, current, former
and future European Projects as well as committed individuals at all points of their careers. Thus,
NWD 2010 sustainably facilitates and strengthens the initiation of new cooperation and projects
within the major funding schemes of the European Commission such as Lifelong Learning, Tempus,
Erasmus Mundus, and all related mobility programmes. (http://www.eu-wishes.eu/nwd2010)

WISHES Networking Challenge 2010

WISHES is a relatively young yet utmost ambitious project eager to become a long lasting and thus
sustainable success for all of us. Therefore, in beginning of March we announced our first WISHES
Networking Challenge. This challenge is an utmost attractive opportunity for all of you to effectively
use your first mover advantage in WISHES to document your international cooperation and thus
to position yourself in our network as an internationally well connected and thus attractive HEI.
The main goal of our challenge is to enhance our WISHES network by approaching our partners
and offering them to join WISHES. The five institutions which will win the WISHES Networking
Challenge by attracting the most new WISHES supporting institutions until end of April will gain
further exclusive benefits extended promotion within and beyond our network. Moreover, the
winner of our challenge will receive the WISHES Networking Award during the ERACON 2010.
Furthermore, a growing network naturally increases the visibility of all of us and thus results in
additional benefits for everyone involved. Hence, every phone call made and every e-mail sent
contributes to your own success. (see: http://www.eu-wishes.eu/challenge)

More wishes from WISHES: Potential

follow-up project WISHES II
Due to the very positive feedback we received concerning our ambition to set up a multi professional
high quality information service for HE students within WISHES I, first ideas for a WISHES II
project focusing on a web-based information service for HE institutions are currently discussed.
As a cooperation portal for HEIs, such a WISHES II project would aim at facilitating the initiation
of new European cooperation by IT – and to enable also young higher education institutions to
actively benefit from the advantages offered by the European higher education area.
First ideas about this to be developed follow-up project foresee three main areas of this future
portal:

Information portal on European HEIs and their cooperation wishes

IT based matching application to match higher education institutions’ offerings and desires
Interactive presentations of best practices and FAQs to support knowledge transfer

Are you interested in joining the discussion of this future project? We are looking forward to hearing
from you!

With the support of the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Union the WISHES-Project is carried out by:
 Promoting your study and work offers.
Worldwide. Free of charge.

Next Dates
WISHES is an ambitious and utmost beneficial project always looking for ways to stimulate
exchange, to increase the quality of our cooperation and to enhance our network.

In the next months you can meet us personally within the following conferences:

15th and 16th of May 2010: WISHES Networking Days 2010, Essen, Germany
1st – 4th of July 2010: ERACON Conference 2010, Vienna, Austria
30th May – 4th of June: NAFSA Conference, Kansas City, USA
15th – 18th of September: EAIE Conference, Nantes, France

In case you are interested in a personal meeting within one of these conferences, please do not
hesitate to get in touch with us.

Contact
Do you have further questions or did we attract your interest to join the WISHES Network?
Please do not hesitate to contact us:

WISHES Project Coordination

Prof. Dr. Leena Suhl
Dipl. Medienwiss. Michael Steinmann

University of Paderborn
Warburger Str. 100
33098 Paderborn
Germany

phone: +49 (0) 5251 60 5236

fax: +49 (0) 5251 60 3542
mobile: +49 (0) 171 8579768

skype: eu-wishes
email: steinmann@eu-wishes.eu
web: www.eu-wishes.eu

With the support of the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the European Union the WISHES-Project is carried out by: