STUDENT MOBILITY IN A DIGITAL WORLD

European Higher Education is changing. New technologies are offering new opportunities for learning, teaching and research, and these opportunities are being grasped by staff and students in the oldest as well as the newest universities. The political and spatial context in which universities operate is changing too. The European Higher Education Area, the Bologna Process, pressure to commit effort to the Europe 2010 agenda, and a global education ‘marketplace’ all require universities to be more outward looking, more involved in partnerships and collaborations, more responsive to stakeholder needs. One challenge to be addressed is the steady rise in mobility of students. This comes in more than one form. Students are now moving physically more than ever to take courses in universities in other countries, supported in part by schemes such as Erasmus, which has ambitious targets for expansion. Students are also studying in a more place-independent mode, using the web, email, internet phones etc to get access to learning materials, staff and peers, and doing this from a widening range of locations. This mobile study is still mostly blended with traditional classes on campuses, but the beginnings can be seen of ‘virtual mobility’ in which students take courses and immerse themselves digitally in another university environment, and this is expected to increase towards a more substantial Virtual Erasmus Programme. Questions therefore arise about the degree to which European students are using digital technologies to support physical mobility and to what extent universities are prepared for this shift in student behaviour and its presaging of large-scale virtual mobility. In a partnership of nine traditional universities and one university network, we carried out an investigation of current practice in European universities, to find some answers to these questions. We addressed the period before, during and after the visits. interviews and surveys of students who were, or had recently been, undertaking study visits to other universities as part of their degree programmes; a survey of European universities about their provision of digital services for their own students whilst away and for incoming students; pilots and tests of options for universities as to how best to address some of the issues that arose from the information gathering exercises; case studies in our own universities of changing student needs and how we are addressing these