Conference 2007
The 20th Anniversary Conference of EADTU, organised under the Portuguese EU Presidency 2007, is focussing on the internationalisation of university courses on-line and related services.
Internationalisation is in the core of the Bologna process. In the recent EUA Convention in Lisbon (29-31 March 2007), it was considered as a main priority for the development of European universities to be strengthened in the period towards 2010 and beyond. Also lifelong learning and widening participation were set forward as core objectives for this period.
The potential of ICT adds new opportunities for internationalisation as well as for access. By the integration of on-line courses, universities can increase their outreach and enrich their curricula with new content and pedagogical approaches. Curricula will become more interactive, more flexible and more accessible, also for international students. On-line courses imply educational services such as tutoring, assessment, staff-student interaction and group work.
On-line courses and curricula are operated increasingly. In the conference, trends and best practice will be exchanged, in particular with a view on pedagogical, technological and organisational issues as well as on institutional strategies. Attention will be paid to off campus target groups, which are not reached by the mainstream of European university education. By new forms of interaction and flexibility, on-line education seems to create new opportunities for off campus target groups, which is not the case without an appropriate institutional policy towards them.
In the near future, virtual Erasmus will be as normal as the physical Erasmus scheme today. However, it will not replace physical mobility, but it will be a normal tool for internationalisation, involving courses at other universities, international learning communities, virtual seminars and joint project work and even virtual internships. Libraries and other knowledge sources will be naturally integrated in this process.
European portals will make European on-line courses and curricula more accessible. They will indicate the profile of the courses in order to match them with students’ careers and curricula of peer institutions.
Free and open educational resources (OER) are a promising movement, which started at M.I.T. (1999), “free and open for educators, students, and self-learners around the world”. With the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, OER are on the eve of their breakthrough in Europe with a second generation of open courseware. The Open University UK and the Dutch Open Universiteit launched already their initiatives, OpenLearn and OpenER. EADTU and ten member institutions prepare Multilingual Open Resources for Independent Learning (MORIL).
Quality assurance and quality benchmarking are needed to monitor these developments. With the support of the European Commission (Education and Culture). Recently, EADTU and 11 partners contributed to this by the creation of the E-xcellence instrument which further will be implemented in Europe by universities and quality or accreditation agencies. Specific applications and a second version will be prepared, based on recent experience and evidence.
New university business models are developed to anticipate on these trends and to take the opportunities that are being created.
The Conference will focus on these main subjects. It addresses universities’ missions on international cooperation, student support in obtaining international educational experiences on-line and staff support in realising this.