Abstract:

The virtual education dimension plays an important role in the European Higher Education Area. The European Union is working in to promote virtual campuses in order to increase virtual mobility and to integrate the opportunities offered by virtual campuses in the lifelong learning strategy of the higher education institutions.

In this context, virtual campuses provide the opportunity of efficiently implement Information and Communication Technologies and cooperative university networks.

In this paper we present an e-learning experience of the G-9 Shared Virtual Campus developed in 1999 by nine Spanish public Universities. In fact we present our three year e-learning experiences in this virtual campus with the subject “Economic forecasting”. This subject is included in the itinerary e-business and currently involves more than 500 students coming from nine different universities.

With the aim of providing a comprehensive view we combine teachers and learners perspectives.
Thus, we describe the communication tools, such us forums and chats, the evaluation system and the teaching-learning resources, mainly emphasizing the role of the free software Gretl (GNU Regression Econometrics Time Library).

Keywords:

European Higher Education Area, Virtual campuses, Grtel.