MASSIVE

Project: Modelling Advice and Support Services to Integrate the Virtual Component in higher Education. (MASSIVE)

Duration: 24 months (jan. 2005 ? dec. 2006)

Coordinator: Universidad de Granada (ES)

Partners: FIM New Learning (DE), Tavistock Institute (UK), EuroPACE IVZW(BE), Scienter Espa? (ES), Scienter (IT), Universidad de Barcelona (ES), BUTE ? Budapest University of Technology and Economics (HU), University of Edinburgh (UK), ESIB (BE), Sociedad Digital de Autores y Editores ? Grupo SGAE (ES), University of Bergen (NO).

Role EuroPACE: EuroPACE is (together with Scienter) work package leader for WP3, Collection of case studies to prepare a comparative report on strategies and services to support virtualisation of traditional universities.

Summary: The aim of the MASSIVE project is to design a model of necessary support services for European traditional universities to successfully implement the virtual component of teaching.Since the Lisbon strategy pointed at e-Learning as a key element for higher education, universities have taken many steps to put this idea forward. These steps have consisted not only in single university initiatives aiming at the creation of virtual environments, but their involvement in cooperation projects and activities promoted by the main networks and Associations towards virtualisation. Projects such as Eunite, cEVU, VirtUE, Hectic, Spot-Plus, Benvic or Nineveh have proposed approaches and strategies to integrate virtual campuses in higher education.However, the adoption of e-Learning strategies by ?traditional? universities does not only need to integrate pedagogic or technologic approaches onto their strategies but to provide a set of support services that will facilitate their integration into the university provision.
Different innovative solutions have been found in this direction but there is still a long way to go to disseminate and connect them so as to gather all those who have worked on the same line to further define a model of support services to the virtualisation of traditional universities.For this purpose, the MASSIVE project comes out with a network orientation approach in an open space that will be assured not only by the consolidated relationship that exists among the participants but for their respective roles in the main EU HE networks and their involvement in many EU funded projects aiming at the introduction of e-learning approaches onto traditional universities.This will allow to also involve different stakeholders not directly participating in the project, by means of a Strategic Advisory Committee.

Project Results: (1) Real working virtual mobility actions within the real environment of mainstream education of the partners; (2) Concrete and validated procedures as well as recommendations at institutional, network (local as well as transnational and European level, published in a manual about a global framework for networked e-learning, as a further development of the existing Manual for a Collaborative European Virtual University (finished cEVU project); (3) Tools and techniques that support the virtual mobility actions, including training materials; (4) Effective dissemination to stimulate uptake of the outcomes inside and outside the (extended) partnership

URL: http://cevug.ugr.es/massive

Supported by: EC-DG Education and Culture: eLearning