Abstract:

The project aims to contribute to innovation and internationalisation of European HEIs by exploiting the full potential of ICT and Virtual Mobility and broadening the access to international learning experience to all European students. Its objectives are to:

- Develop a Quality Assurance approach for VM
- Develop institutional awareness of VM potential
- Develop students’ awareness on opportunities and concerns offered by ICT to develop intercultural study
- Develop mutual support service for HEIs willing to pilot VM programmes
- Test a set of mutual support services for HEIs
- Integrate VM in institutional academic contexts
- Enlarge the initial partnership to involve a significant number of HEIs and relevant HE associations/networks

The project organises and supports the convergence of the existing body of knowledge and expertise on VM towards a common initiative to help HEIs to identify and utilise the full potential of VM: the VM co-laboratory intends to support inter-cultural development of European curriculum components and to generalise the practice of cooperation, based on mutual trust and specialisation, aimed at excellence in European HE and, at the same time, broader equity and accessibility of study programmes worldwide.

The VMCOLAB project is primarily directed to HEI staff in charge of curriculum development, international relations and use of ICT to support teaching and learning; however the main final beneficiaries of the project are students, particularly those who could not access international study experiences.
In the life-span of the project the target groups will be involved as direct contributors to the project development: in each HEI partner a project implementation team will be constituted, that will take part in the quality development/assurance design process, in the choice and development of joint study programmes, in the evaluation of outcomes and in the design of valorisation and exploitation strategies.

Keywords:

Virtual mobility, collaboration, ICT, higher education, internationalisation.