movingtarget

We live in a world of constant change. Rapid digitalisation in all areas of life gives rise to an urgent need to critically assess its impact on (higher) education and internationalisation. We need to re-think common approaches and find new answers: How can digitalisation help ensure academic excellence, boost diversity and foster inclusion? What is the digital way forward to strengthen the European Higher Education Area? How can the gap be closed between policymaking and institutional practice?

This Pageflow aims to extend the discussion that was started at the conference. Learn more about #movingtarget2020  – and let us learn about your moving targets for 2021.  

The two-day event was an official conference in the context of the German Presidency of the EU Council. The motto for the six-month period of the Presidency from 1 July to 31 December 2020 was “Together for Europe’s recovery”. 

In the fields of education, research and innovation, special emphasis was placed on digital education as part of a cultural change to create the conditions for strengthening digital skills in Europe. The political agreement on the EU's Erasmus+ programme and the Council's conclusions about digital education provided an important foundation for this.

The German Presidency made it clear how essential it is for us Europeans to take joint steps to overcome and recover from this crisis. Excellence in education, research and innovation plays a key role in this context, both in mounting a rapid response to the pandemic and in coming out of the crisis as a resilient, sovereign and sustainable community.

Find out more at eu2020.de. 

The main aim of this workshop was to present the steps and phases of the digitalisation process of the Erasmus+ programme, as it took place and evolved at a comprehensive higher education institution like Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and the key role that International Relations Offices (IRO) possess in this procedure.

More particularly, the workshop started with a challenge-based approach at the institutional level regarding student and staff mobilities and illustrated lessons learned throughout the process of incorporating and prioritising digitalisation solutions available in the European context. Taking the IRO viewpoint on adopting EWP standards, the workshop outlined the decisive position IROs hold as the connecting link between HEIs' leadership and ICT teams when it comes to the successful implementation of the Erasmus Student Card Initiative. Major lessons learned are:  

• IROs should closely monitor all digitalisation developments at European level through participation in various events and workshops
• IROs should make university leadership aware of the challenges ahead and initiate the formation of a digital strategy with clear milestones
• A dedicated IT development team, which will carry out a needs analysis and adjust their work plan accordingly, can be a key success factor
• Collaboration between IRO, IT team and QA unit is essential for the success of a university’s digital transformation
• Participation in a digitalisation project will provide the necessary experience and know-how and can be the first step to the escalation of digitalisation efforts

The Digital Campus project sets up a networked infrastructure that links existing digital services for the qualification of prospective international students. The input presented the prototype developed by DAAD together with RWTH Aachen, TU Berlin, TH Lübeck, the Society for Academic Study Preparation and Test Development (g.a.s.t.), Kiron and Goethe-Institut.

As a distributed learning environment, the Digital Campus accompanies learners through all phases of their “student journey”:  

1. Study information and individual advice on their academic path
2. Study preparation (linguistic, cultural, subject-specific) with customised learning offers
3. Application and admission procedures
4. Study or research period,
5. Transition into the labour market
6. Alumni status, including continuing education  

Core feature of the Digital Campus are:

• Flexible Access: Prospective international students can use the services asynchronously and no matter where they are located.
• Personalisation and Individualisation: Learners are accompanied through the process of their individual student journey: Their skills and competencies (e.g., language proficiency) are tested as well as their suitability for the study path they have chosen. They are offered advice and customised preparation courses.
• User Self-Sovereignty: Personal data, including credentials, are stored in a secure data wallet in the Digital Campus. Learners’ get to decide with whom they wish to share data and when. They may also delete their data anytime.
• Learning Analytics: The content and course of study preparation as well as the teaching and learning processes are evaluated using comprehensive data analysis (Learning Analytics). This helps provide prognoses about the course and success of studies and allows offering support at an early stage if necessary. Thus, international prospective students can take well-informed decisions. Admission decisions can be based on comparable results.
• Scalability:  The IT architecture of the Digital Campus is designed in such a way that additional digital services can be integrated into the system.

Taking Off-University’s practice as an example, we suggested the digital space as a platform that can not only support politically persecuted scholars through teaching, but also fosters collaborative forms of research on fields of knowledge fraught with risk, such as gender and migration studies, critical peace studies or human rights law.

During the session, we discussed digital security and the research dimension of online learning. Online education is vulnerable to new forms of censorship and surveillance.

As a take-away, we assert that the software used needs to ensure both data security and - in the case of scholars and knowledge at risk - the anonymity of students. The digital space may then offer new scope for freedoms and encounters that are usually rendered impossible by borders and travel restrictions.











 

Key requirements for success and for resolving the challenges in creating institutional partnerships in Higher Education are:

• Open communication
• Training
• Determination and refusal to listen when others say “it can’t be done”
• People
• Trust
• Deliverability
• Flexibility
• Identification of possible synergies
• Asymmetric involvement
• Rejection of the idea of having to achieve perfection
• Learning from non or partial success
• Continual Improvement
• Soft skills and a thick skin
• The will to make it all happen

The Hague Network Virtual Exchange served as a case study:
https://thehaguenetwork.blog/virtual-exchange/

The team introduced an international and interdisciplinary blended teaching, learning and research project that deals with the topic of Urban Commons: the U!REKA Lab.

The technical and methodological range of possibilities offered by digitalisation in teaching and learning are the key in this project to developing new, forward-looking teaching and learning formats that not only involve teachers and learners but also create interactive, multidimensional, research-based and collaborative platforms.

Moreover, the presentation revealed how the character of this U!REKA lab affects the way international collaboration is organised in the participating institutions: they are designed and implemented co-creatively by researchers, teachers, students, external partners and university staff and thus become a collaborative task.











 

Virtual exchange – defined as any kind of bilateral or multilateral virtual collaboration between international partner institutions, here especially student exchange – can be seen as a third pillar of exchange programmes and will become fundamentally relevant in the future.

1. Virtual exchange programmes strengthen a university's 'internationalization at home'
2. Virtual exchange can contribute to sustainability.
3. Virtual exchange programmes can help maintain balance.
4. Virtual mobility involves less efforts in terms of organisation, preparation and financial commitments.
5. Digital formats make mobility possible for students who have so far not been able to perform a physical mobilit for socio-economic, personal or health reasons.

However, there are challenges for virtual exchange: it will be necessary to create the legal conditions for an 'off-campus' status; time differences will have to be taken into consideration; a 'critical mass' of virtual courses will need to be offered; technical infrastructure and training programmes will have to be created; virtual concepts will have to show the added value of a specific institution and its unique selling point; digital justice and equality will have to be strengthened.

It became evident during the workshop discussion that virtual mobility is seen as offering huge potential when it comes to  developing international exchange programmes. However, the consensus was that virtual formats, rather than replacing physical mobility, will be a complementary element in a hybrid structure. Moreover, the heterogenisation of exchange formats will be expected in the future. Participants agreed that the three pillars of international mobility will therefore be mixed in hybrid formats. Modular structures will emerge and various combinations of the different forms of mobility will be offered.