Abstract:

Undoubtedly the Erasmus+ project has brought great benefits to all those who have participated. Mobility projects are undoubtedly a very valuable tool in 21st century university training. For students, the possibility to move within the territory, contact another university and participate in another way of doing things without stopping advancing their studies, is an alternative that is worth much more than it really costs. For universities, the possibility of receiving students with other approaches and other perspectives, as well as the possibility of contacting other professors working in the same line but with other approaches, opens up new perspectives that will undoubtedly change the way of working of many university professors.

In this area, distance universities have been on the sidelines, so far. As a distance university students usually work or combine their studies with other activities, so the idea of moving to another university is not easy to apply. On the contrary, students from other face-to-face universities do not fully understand how universities work remotely, and do not see clearly what added value they can gain with such an interchange.

But certainly an interchange of students between face-to-face university and distance university has a big contribution. Students at the distance university can come into contact with another university, for a limited period of time, without creating major conflicts in their studies. They can study in another language and elsewhere without losing the year, or they can even combine face-to-face study with the interchange with the distance study of their home university. Students at the face-to-face university can also take advantage of many advantages. They can use that year of interchange to move flexibly without having to attend class every day, which opens up many possibilities in mobility. They can combine the study with other activities, as students at the distance university do remotely, either by working or training themselves in other disciplines in which if they are in a face-to-face university they would not be able to enter.

The interchange between two distance universities also opens up many possibilities. Students continue to study remotely but with a new approach and probably also in a new language. They do not lose the flexibility of the remote approach that allows them to do other things, and do not lose the rhythm of their studies. Even if they put it this way, they can move to the central facilities of the new distance university and assimilate other different approaches, for the same studies, which will surely open up new perspectives on the student.

This article presents the possibilities that open up with Erasmus+ interchange programs in which participates a distance university, while collecting the results of the interchanges of ten years of activity at the Spanish University of Distance Education (UNED), particularly at the School of Engineers of this university. The number of students participating in these projects is still small, but growth is high and we hope that, in a few years, the alternative of doing an Erasmus+ with a distance university will be common.

Keywords:

Erasmus+, International cooperation, Program experiences, International projects, University networks.