Approval of external courses for your PhD plan

If you complete a course that is not offered by the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences you must apply for approval. This also applies for courses completed at SCIENCE and other faculties at UCPH.

You can apply for approval of an external course after completion.

Please note that the Graduate School does not grant pre-approval of external courses.

Certain rules apply to external courses:

  • The course must have scientific relevance to your PhD project
  • The course must be at PhD level. Courses at Master’s level can be approved if they have a scientific relevance to your PhD project
  • Your principal supervisor must approve your participation in the course
  • The course must be of at least 0.5 ECTS/minimum 5 hours of teaching in order to be reviewed.
  • You can apply for approval of courses completed up to 5 years before your enrolment date
  • You can get up to 15 ECTS transferred for courses completed before enrolment
  • The course program and course description must be issued by the course provider. If the documents are online, you can send a link with your application

All applications for approval of external courses will be assessed individually and the approval is granted on a case-by-case basis.

You can apply for approval by following the link below.

APPLY - Approval of external courses for your PhD plan

Examples of external courses and activities and how the Graduate School assess them
Course Category
Criteria

Courses offered by the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences
  • Will be added to your course plan automatically

PhD courses from other Danish universities (Open market)
  • Are always approved

PhD courses from European universities, other foreign universities and Danish hospitals
  • Are usually approved

Courses completed before enrolment. 

Does not apply to applicants for section 15.2.
  • Must be completed no more than 5 years before enrolment
  • A maximum of 15 ECTS can be transferred for courses completed before enrolment
  • General rules regarding approval of external courses apply

Courses taken as part of basic clinical training or specialist training
  • Approval is based on an individual assessment of the relevance to the PhD project

Courses at Master’s level
  • Can be approved if the course has scientific relevance to the PhD project
  • Cannot be approved if the course is part of an already obtained academic degree

Online courses (Live teaching)
  • The amount of course hours or a time estimate must be clearly stated
  • Approval is always based on an individual assessment
Courses from Coursera, edX and similar online platforms (Self-Paced)

  • You can have a maximum of 5 ECTS approved in total for courses offered by online platforms like Coursera, edX, MOOC and the like
  • The amount of course hours or a time estimate must be clearly stated
  • Must be of at least 12 hours
  • You must attach a link to the course website in addition to the standard application material.
  • When calculating ECTS, the Graduate School will divide the stated number of working hours to complete the course, stated by the course provider, with 25 to obtain the number of ECTS.
  • Approval is always based on an individual assessment

Workshops and courses/workshops in connection with conferences, congresses etc.
  • Must contain lectures and/or exercises in order to be approved

Journal clubs
  • Must have learning targets
  • The time consumption and the criteria for passing the activity must be clearly stated.
  • The student must receive a diploma or a confirmation from the tutor/course manager

Other study elements
  • Must have learning targets
  • The time consumption and the criteria for passing the activity must be clearly stated.
  • The student must receive a diploma or a confirmation from the tutor/course manager stating that the learning targets have been fulfilled
  • Cannot be a part of the research that the PhD student carries out as a part of the PhD project
  • Must be at PhD level

Participation in conferences, congresses and similar activities
  • Cannot be approved

Courses completed as part of another academic degree (e.g. Master’s programme, Bachelor’s programme)
  • Cannot be approved