OpenU: Launch of a European-wide hub for online learning, blended and virtual mobility within Higer Education

Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne received a delegation letter from the French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation asking it to coordinate the application process for the development of the OpenU proposal, a policy experimentation project.

As coordinator of the OpenU project, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne will work jointly with 20 partner institutions spread across 11 European countries. This group is made up of higher education and research establishments, ministries and government agencies from across Europe, as well as networks and associations. The total project budget is approximately 2.7 million euros and will run for 36 months (until 31st December 2021). 

The OpenU project will contribute to the development of new forms of international and bilateral cooperation and the dissemination of best practices. OpenU partners have decided to pursue the creation of a European hub for blended and online learning, academic cooperation and virtual/blended mobility. Their work together will build on the strengths of existing solutions with a view to paving the way for the establishment of the eU.university. OpenU will be a comprehensive digital and integrated infrastructure that will link existing educational resources and tools designed to achieve maximum systemic impact. The project will do this by:

• Establishing a single point of access for online learning in Europe, putting online courses and resources at the fingertips of students;
• Providing pedagogies, models and guidelines as well as hosting and disseminating continuous professional staff development to the academic community;
• Supporting the establishment of European Universities by creating a shared digital infrastructure;
• Ensuring the sustainable integration of flagship projects such as the Erasmus+ App, the European Student Card (ESC), Erasmus without Paper (EWP), the Maturity model for online and blended education, and European Short Learning Programmes (e-SLP), etc.

The online hub will serve as a one stop-shop for higher education professionals, students and society at large. It will integrate existing portals, tools and resources that have been developed by various stakeholders and are designed to respond to the many use cases and learning settings. The hub will seek to investigate how a common and shared space of cooperation can trigger virtual/blended learning and mobility opportunities whilst building upon existing solutions and tools.

Full list of OpenU partners:

Higher education and research institutions:

• Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
• Aalto-korkeakoulusäätiö sr (Finland)
• Université de Rennes 1 (France)
• Freie Universität Berlin (Germany)
• Universität Potsdam (Germany)
• Alma mater studiorum - Università di Bologna (Italy)
• Università degli Studi di Trento (Italy)
• Uniwersytet Jagielloński (Poland)
• Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain)

 Ministries and national agencies:

• Flemish Ministry of Education and Training (Belgium)
• Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation (France)
• Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Germany)
• Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst e.V (Germany)
• Latvijas Republikas Izglītības un zinātnes ministrija (Latvia)
• Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (Portugal)
• Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spain)

 Networks and associations:

• Erasmus Student Network AISBL (Belgium)
• European University Foundation - Campus Europae (Luxembourg)
• Vereniging van European Distance Teaching Universities (European Association of Distance Teaching Universities, Netherlands)