Learning Agreement for Traineeships: A Coordinator's Guide

• Identification of the three parties and their legal representatives.
• Detailed traineeship programme: tasks, knowledge/skills/competences to acquire.
• Monitoring plan: supervisor name, frequency of meetings, evaluation criteria.
• Recognition outcome: ECTS, certificate, transcript-of-records mention.
• Working language and OLS confirmation.

• Student drafts the LA-T in the OLA platform.
• Sending HEI's responsible person signs digitally.
• Host organisation receives an email link to review and sign — no Erasmus account required.
• All three signatures must be dated before the mobility start date listed in the agreement.

• Generic task descriptions like 'office support' — National Agencies flag these in audits.
• Mismatched dates between LA-T, grant agreement and Beneficiary Module entry.
• Host signature collected after departure — invalidates the activity.
• Missing OLS initial assessment proof attached to the participant file.

• Keep the signed LA-T plus 'During' and 'After' sections for at least 5 years after final payment.
• Store digitally with a clear naming convention: LA-T_{participant}_{semester}.pdf.
• Cross-reference each LA-T with its mobility ID in the Beneficiary Module.

Most LA-T rejections trace back to one block: 'Tasks of the Trainee'. The fix is structural — write tasks as observable verbs tied to deliverables, not as job-description prose. The pattern below has reduced our average LA-T turnaround from 11 days to 4.

• Open with one sentence framing the host's mission and where the intern fits.
• List 5–8 tasks. Each task = verb + concrete object + deliverable cadence.
• Map each task to one or two ESCO competence codes (auditors love this).
• Avoid vague tasks: 'support the team', 'general office work', 'help with social media'.
• Specify the supervision frequency and method (weekly 1:1, daily standup, async review).
• Reference the assessment artefact: portfolio, written report, supervisor evaluation.

The recognition section of the LA-T is what differentiates a credit-bearing traineeship from a CV-only experience. Write it with your registrar in the room — not after the fact.

• ECTS amount and which course code(s) the credits replace at the home HEI.
• Transcript-of-records line wording (this becomes literal text on the student's transcript).
• Whether the traineeship counts toward a thesis, capstone or specialisation track.
• Whether grading is pass/fail or numerical, and which scale converts to which.
• What evidence the student must submit at the end (final report, supervisor evaluation, portfolio).

Recognition agreed at LA-T stage costs minutes. Recognition retro-fitted six months later costs senate decisions, faculty board emails and one frustrated graduate. Lock it before the LA-T is signed, every time.

Many SME hosts encounter their first Learning Agreement when you arrive. The few minutes you spend pre-onboarding the host's signatory pay back across the entire mobility.

• Send a one-page 'what is an LA-T and why does it matter' brief in advance.
• Provide a sample completed LA-T (anonymised) so the host has a concrete reference.
• Walk the supervisor through the OLA-T signing flow — most fail the first time at the SSO step.
• Confirm the legal-representative signatory in writing before the call (it is rarely the supervisor).
• Schedule the signing call at the host's working hours, not yours — local rhythm matters.

Coordinators who treat the host as a co-author of the LA-T (rather than a signature box at the end) consistently report shorter cycles, fewer revisions and stronger placements.