Seminar “European Co-Laboratory for the Integration of Virtual Mobility in Higher Education...

vmcolab.euProjecto financiado com o apoio da Comissão Europeia. A informação contida nesta publicação (comunicação) vincula exclusivamente o autor, não sendo a Comissão responsável pela utilização que dela possa ser feita. vmcolab.eu

VMCOLABPresentation of the Institutional Awareness kit

Seminar “European Co-Laboratory for the Integration of Virtual Mobility in Higher Education Innovation and Modernization Strategies”

Padova, 27 March 2014

Alfredo SoeiroSamuel Martins

vmcolab.euProjecto financiado com o apoio da Comissão Europeia. A informação contida nesta publicação (comunicação) vincula exclusivamente o autor, não sendo a Comissão responsável pela utilização que dela possa ser feita.

Integration Kit for Virtual Mobility: a guide for Institutional awareness

Is an output of the VMCOLAB project (Virtual Mobility Collaboratory);

Document as part of a strategy developed to increase the institutional awareness for Virtual Mobility;

Tool used during the lifetime of the project to promote awareness of Virtual Mobility inside the partner institutions and others;

Tool disseminated at national and international level;

Expectation that this VMCOLAB integration kit be used by other Higher Education Institutions to promote Virtual Mobility among their communities of students and academics;


Integration Kit for Virtual Mobility: a guide for Institutional awareness

Compilation of good practises, projects and tools related with Virtual Mobility;

Helpful for institutions that want to embrace Virtual Mobility;

Document organized around seven topics, identified as being crucial areas for the modernization of Higher Education.


Integration Kit structure:

7 Crucial Areas for the modernization of Higher Education:

• Full exploitatiom of ICT potential for Education (1 Case Study)

• Internationalization of curricula and study programmes (3 Case Study)

• Research collaboration (1 Case Study)

• Excellence building through networking (1 Case Study)

• Complementing Erasmus and other mobility programme with pre and post mobility activities (2 Case Study)

• Assessment of Learning Outcomes and International examination (1 Case Study)

• Academic and Professional accreditation and recognition (2 Case Study)



• Full exploitatiom of ICT potential for Education

ICT creates new opportunities for teaching and learning;

Expected that a good use of ICT will provide solutions to current challenges of international Education;

Internet has great impact on the availability, reusability, accessibility and cost of learning resources

Communication and networking possibilities of the web take Education to a global level

Virtual Mobility takes advantages of all the potential of the use of technology in Education to provide international learning experiences to teacher and students, without the need for physical mobility.



• Internationalization of curricula and study programmes.

Approached from the perspective of including international/global values into the learning experience;

Underpinned by several European policies in fields like employment, mobility, lifelong learning;

Curriculum design: internationalization puts an extra pressure on issues like flexibility, assessment, language and cultural barriers, recognition and accreditation;

All important issues when dealing with non-traditional mobile lifelong learners.



• Research collaboration

International mobility of researchers is an important policy matter in Europe;

Increasing the mobility of researchers it will be possible to reduce current differences among European countries;

VM may be an important way to achieve better collaboration among researchers from different regions;

Internet and other communication technologies creates opportunities to establish virtual networks of collaboration between researchers not only in one field of research but also to facilitate the creation of interdisciplinary collaboration.



• Excellence building through networking

In Higher Education it is important that institutions learn how to collaborate and establish partnerships with other organizations;

Networking creates opportunities for institutional learning and improvement in areas like education, research, innovation and administration;

Possible to share resources and practises and to increase international projection and recognition;

VM initiatives may constitute opportunities to increase networking between institutions: institutions can share learning experiences, research and resources that create synergies that benefit all the partners

VM experiences may facilitate comparison with peers that lead to the improvement and quality of HEI.



• Complementing Erasmus and other mobility programme with pre and post mobility activities

VM as a substitute or as a complement to physical mobility programmes like Erasmus;

Students may engage in virtual learning or cultural experiences that will facilitate the integration during the physical mobility programme;

Important to follow-up on physical mobility activities that reinforce the link with between both HEI;

Used in multilateral curriculum development projects to enrich the international component of the experience;

Increases the opportunity for more students to engage in international learning experiences;

Nature of VM: type of learning experiences can diverse: students may be able to select shorter experiences, more specific to complement their studies;

Open Education: should be possible for the students to have a more personalized path based on their preferences.



• Assessment of Learning Outcomes and International examination

Assessment embeds cultural values that should be considered in mobility situations (e.g: when students are being assessed in a foreign language they will have an extra obstacle to overcome);

VM can approach this issue in a different way: students that engage in a VM experience may still be at their host institutions which may facilitate overcoming some culturals barriers;

Learning Outcomes (LO) are of great importance in mobility situations since they are the description of the learning experiences of the students: LO’s will facilitate the international experience.

The combination of well defined assessment tasks and clear LO’s statements are of great importance for the success of VM.



• Academic and Professional accreditation and recognition

Students and teachers that participate in VM activities should receive certification and recognition, professional or academic: critical component for the success of VM programmes;

Most institutions are using ECTS credits: there are still issues concerning recognition;

VM: there are other factors that bring additional barriers (e.g: contact hours in e-learning courses are not the same as face-to-face courses)

VM activities open up the possibilities of learning experiences the the students may want to engage;

The offer of online learning experiences is increasing dramatically and students will want to see their efforts recognized.

vmcolab.euProjecto financiado com o apoio da Comissão Europeia. A informação contida nesta publicação (comunicação) vincula exclusivamente o autor, não sendo a Comissão responsável pela utilização que dela possa ser feita. vmcolab.eu

VMCOLAB

WP3 – Institutional Awareness

Seminar “European Co-Laboratory for the Integration of Virtual Mobility in Higher Education Innovation and Modernization Strategies”

Padova, 27 March 2014

Alfredo SoeiroSamuel Martins

Seminar “European Co-Laboratory for the Integration of Virtual Mobility in Higher Education...

Education

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