Although physical student mobility is still somewhat marginal in Europe, it is clear that mobility is becoming increasingly important for educational policy makers. This is born out by the European Commission goal of having 3,000,000 European students take part in the Erasmus Programme by 2011 as stated in the Commission's Integrated Action Programme in Lifelong Learning. At the same time universities and colleges are placing more and more emphasis on the importance of internationalisation. But what about the remaining 80% of students: those students who do not have an opportunity to participate in Erasmus for social, financial or other reasons? Here too there has been tremendous interest in the idea of Virtual Erasmus or Virtual Mobility schemes, interpreted to mean educational opportunities that are no longer location dependent and allow for collaboration amongst students and teachers in different regions and countries.

A new European project called Being Mobile began on 12 December to promote the concept of Virtual Mobility. Being Mobile is an Accompanying Measure supported under the Socrates Programme and aims to raise awareness about how European cooperation in education can be heightened through Virtual Mobility. Being Mobile is a targeted dissemination activity in the form of a workshop, a conference, a publication and a website. Being Mobile is coordinated by EuroPACE ivzw, the partners are ATiT (BE), SPACE (BE), ICWE gmbh (DE) and TietgenSkolen (DK).

The first Being Mobile activity is the creation of a handbook called “European Cooperation in Education through Virtual Mobility”. This will include best-practise examples of virtual mobility initiatives in higher education that will focus on either virtual student or staff exchanges, preparatory and follow-up activities of Erasmus students, joint course development and delivery or virtual internships. The handbook will address some of the specific challenges of Virtual Mobility, such as accreditation and credit transfer, staff training, student preparation, pedagogical and organisational support.

This publication will be distributed at the workshop and conference day jointly organised by the Being Mobile team and the SPACE network on 31 March in Vilnius (LT). This event will include presentation sessions, panel discussions and networking opportunities on the links between Business Education, Industry and Virtual Mobility. As well as demonstrating best practises from Higher Education, the concept of “Internationalisation at home” will be discussed and will include an emphasis on student preparation, curriculum design and virtual internships. For a detailed programme see, http://users.skynet.be/space.

All case studies presented at this workshop and published in the handbook will be elaborated further on a dedicated Being Mobile website which will act as an online Centre of Excellence in Virtual Mobility. This website will also refer to existing manuals, news articles and tools that have been made available through previous European Commission projects in the field.

At the end of November, a final 1 day conference will be organised for 150 participants on the theme “European Cooperation in Education through Virtual Mobility”. This will be a pre-conference event to the annual Online Educa Berlin conference. This conference will be made up of several event formats, plenary and parallel sessions, networking and discussion fora.

If you are interested in presenting your experience at one of the two events or to include an article in our publication, please contact info@europace.be.

For more information, please contact the coordinator at:
Helena Bijnens
EuroPACE ivzw
Kapeldreef 62
3001 Heverlee
Belgium
tel: +32 16 32 75 73
fax: +32 16 32 79 95
email: helena.bijnens@europace.be
website: www.europace.org

Additional links
ATiT bvba – http://www.atit.be
SPACE network (BE) - http://www.space-eu.info
ICWE gmbh (DE) – http://www.icwe.net
TietgenSkolen (DK) – http://www.tietgen.dk