1. If you have agreed with your supervising professor to include this course to your doctoral degree, add it to your credit plan in Sisu (usually under General Research Studies). You don’t need to register for the course in Sisu, and you can complete the course even if it would not be included in your degree.
2. Request for the enrollment key and further instructions from [email protected].  
3. Login to the course platform at https://findocnet.fi/ with your Aalto ID (choose Haka and then Aalto University) and use the enrollment key to access the materials.
4. After completing the course, inform course teacher Minna by emailing [email protected]
5. You will receive the credits after four weeks of having informed Minna.

List of all independent Findocnet-courses offered to doctoral students at Aalto University:

• Open Science for Doctoral Students, LC-L1011 (1 ECTS)
• Business Skills for Doctoral Students, LC-L1012 (1 ECTS)
• Career Course for Doctoral Students, LC-L1013 (1 ECTS)
• Interactive Leadership Skills for Doctoral Students, LC-L1014 (1 ECTS)
• Project Management for Doctoral Students, LC-L1015 (1 ECTS)
• Writing Research Grant Applications for Doctoral Students, LC-L1016 (1 ECTS)
• Theory of Science, LC-L1020 (1 ECTS)

First step is always to discuss with your supervising professor and get their approval.

Before taking studies in other universities, include them in your Sisu credit plan as study drafts, in order to later include them in your doctoral degree.

If you have already completed courses suitable for your doctoral degree (in Finland or abroad), you need to include these courses in your Sisu credit plan, agree on the plan with your supervising professor and then apply for credit transfer. See below for more instructions.

Any prior studies completed at Aalto are already automatically displayed in Sisu and can be included in your Sisu credit plan without applying for a credit transfer.

Sisu instructions: Substitution and inclusion of studies on Sisu

After completing courses suitable for your doctoral degree elsewhere (in Finland or abroad), you need to apply for inclusion of theses studies in your degree in Sisu.

1. Update your Sisu credit plan if necessary. In order to transfer the credits to Aalto, the courses transferred need to be included as study drafts in the degree studies in your Sisu credit plan, max 40/60 cr (not in the extracurricular studies).
2. Apply for inclusion in Sisu
3. Attach to the application a screenshot of your Sisu credit plan (including the whole plan for the required 40/60 ECTS) so that the content of the study drafts and possible individual study attainments are clearly visible on the screenshot.
4. Attach to the application a transcript of records and a description of the completed course.

Sisu instructions: Substitution and inclusion of studies on SisuThe transcript of records must be either digitally signed or marked with a stamp of the issuing university or school. If you have completed studies in another Finnish university or university of applied sciences, you can also use the My Studyinfo service (https://opintopolku.fi/oma-opintopolku/) to share information of your completed studies with the administrative staff at Aalto University. Go to My Studyinfo, create a sharing link, save the link in a file and add the file to your credit transfer application. If you have completed studies through the flexible right to study (JOO) scheme in an university that uses the Puro service for transferring credits, you can use Puro to apply for credit transfer (https://puro.joopas.fi). Note: you still have to submit a separate credit transfer application on Sisu. In your application, state that you have used the Puro service to request credit transfer. Also note that a screenshot from the My Studyinfo or Puro service is not an acceptable transcript of records.

The course description of the completed course must be from the time they were completed (e.g. from a study guide published at the time). For example, to claim credits for a course taken in 2020, you need to provide the course description as it was in 2020. It is not enough to include a link to the whole study guide of that year: you must include a description of the course contents in your PDF-format application. Do not include the whole study guide, only the pages containing the information relevant to your application.

If the course credits received do not follow the Europen credit transfer system (ECTS), please include the university's explanation of the course scope in comparison to ECTS credits.

1. Check your doctoral programme's curriculum to know if and how many custom course credits can be included in your degree.
2. Discuss with your supervising professor what kind of individual studies you would need.
3. Include the planned individual studies in your credit plan in Sisu as study drafts. Note: In case of individual studies, the Institution where you plan to gain the knowledge to be filled out in Sisu in the study draft is always Aalto University.

Sisu instructions: Credit plan (Sisu) for doctoral students: Study draftsThe supervising professor decides the amount of credits to be given for each individual study attainment (check your curriculum for possible restrictions). 1 ECTS is equivalent to roughly 27 hours of work. Please note that any work cannot be compensated multiple times: if e.g. a conference paper will be included in the thesis, it is not possible to get credits from it.

Note that you should NOT combine study attainments; each attainment should be registered individually. For example, if you have written three articles, and your supervising professor will give one ECTS for each, you should apply for a custom course credit for each of them separately. Half credits cannot be registered, only whole numbers of credits. Only if the attainment is worth 0,5 ECTS, it is acceptable to combine attainments, so that the ECTS amount is a whole number.

If you have individual studies that have been completed and registered before Sisu was in use, you can add them to your cerdit plan just like any regular courses you have completed, by using the Add to the plan -function on the right side of your study plan.

For those individual studies that you have completed, but which have not been registered (i.e. you have not received credits for them in Sisu/Oodi), you need to

1. Fill out the Custom course credit form and get your supervising professor's confirmation and evaluation.
2. Apply for a custom course credit in Sisu, either through an existing study draft or directly, if you haven't previously made a study draft of this individual study (see link to technical Sisu instructions below).
3. Attach the Custom course credit form to the application in Sisu.

Doctoral student forms (aalto.fi)

Sisu instructions: Substitution and inclusion of studies on Sisu (custom course credit)

First, check your doctoral programme's curriculum to know if and how many custom course credits can be included in your degree.

Here are examples of the type of individual studies and how to fill out their information in Sisu and on the custom course credit form.

Please note: The student needs to also give the date of the study attainment*, the language, the proposed number of credits and the study module in which the study attainment is included.

The supervising professor decides on the credits given and the grading.

* Date of the study attainment can be for example:

• last day of the summer/winter school
• date of submission of an essay/report
• date when all duties regarding the MSc thesis/special assignment have been completed