Report. Global Classroom project Study visit to Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania March (7)

Transcription

1 Report Global Classroom project Study visit to Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania March (7)

2 Figure 1 VMU main entrance Vytautas Magnus University ( is a public university founded in 1922 and situated in the historical city of Kaunas. At present, there are around 7700 students. VMU is the only liberal arts university in Lithuania and this allows students a wide choice of subjects and the opportunity to learn around 30 languages. The main reason for our visit was because VMU has been a pioneer in virtual mobility (VM) over the last 10 years and has been a leading institution in several innovative European projects in the field. Our aim was to learn from their experience in VM, meet the staff involved in the projects and investigate if these lessons could be applied to Lnu. These notes are a summary of our impressions from the two-day visit, March 2017, that was excellently arranged by our host, Airina Volungevičienė, and her colleagues and fully met our expectations. Figure 2 Peter, Corina, Patrik, Airina, Andrejs Lnu delegation Corina Löwe, Senior lecturer in German Alastair Creelman, E-learning specialist Peter Diedrichs, Head of learning environments Andrejs Ozolins, Associate professor, psychology Patrik Henriksson, Student union representative

3 Meeting with VMU Vice-rector for Studies, Kęstutis Šidlauskas and Director of Innovative Studies Institute Airina Volungevičienė We learned some of the dramatic history of the university. Founded in 1922 it flourished in the independent republic of Lithuania until the war changed everything. After the war the university was closed by the Soviet government and the academic life of Kaunas was centred on other institutions, in particular the technical university. When Lithuania regained independence VMU was rebuilt from nothing, mostly thanks to funding from exiled Lithuanians, particularly in the USA. So, although the university can claim Figure 3 Corina, Alastair, Kestutis, Patrik, Peter almost 100 years history it has only been in its present form for about 27 years. Funding is a major problem since the country s economy is weak just now and student numbers are declining due to emigration. The state only funds part of the students fees and the rest is paid by fees, though there are many scholarships and subsidies available. One interesting feature of VMU was that the experience of building a university from scratch has made them more innovative and willing to take risks. The management have been very supportive of new projects and innovative practice. Financial uncertainty sometimes encourages innovative solutions. Virtual mobility in the OUVM project (Opening Universities for Virtual Mobility ) Chief Specialist at Innovative Studies Institute: Estela Daukšienė VM allows you to cooperate with several universities at once by sharing courses, virtual seminar series, virtual placement as well as virtual support activities for physical mobility. VM involves much more focus on intercultural exchange. Estela has worked in all the VM projects and has written her doctoral thesis around the experience gained. She described the project in detail and we Figure 3 Old town hall discussed experience, benefits, problems and outstanding issues. OUVM focused on master s students so the volume wasn t so high. The project involved 5 universities: Universidade Aberta (Portugal), University of Oviedo (Spain), University of Pavia (Italy), University of Leuven (Belgium) and VMU from Lithuania and they devised a small selection online courses of 3-6 ECTS that were offered to students from all participating partners. The courses were offered and run by the hosting university and the visiting students were enrolled and admitted into the host s learning management system and accepted as regular students for that particular course. After examination, the visiting students received credits from their home institution and the certification clearly showed that the course involved VM. OUVM developed training materials for teachers wishing to adapt courses for VM, see with training on curriculum design, open educational resources and Creative Commons. Teachers from all participating universities

4 whose courses would be part of the portfolio also had face-to-face training. All the training material is available for use by any other universities under a CC license. The focus is on intercultural collaboration, content creation and the use of ICT. During the project, bilateral agreements were made with each participating institution. The mutual recognition process was vital. They found this easier than multilateral ones because in such cases all parties must agree. In order to develop the courses teachers from different institutions needed to collaborate and this meant that there was also teacher VM. Common templates were developed to ensure uniformity in course design and feel. Administrative staff also had to be informed and trained on new routines, eg helping the VM students from other countries with administration, enrolment etc. Earlier VM projects TeaCamp VMU s first VM project. Rather complicated but they gained useful experience. Link to courses in Moodle Mevel ( was aimed at VET in the field of metal. The content was good but the company staff did not want to speak in international groups and did not like the idea of sharing. The concept of VM was too far from their experience and had not been fully accepted by the participating organisations. UbiCamp, focused on bachelor courses. This was easier to handle with more courses available. One limitation was the difficulty of matching different institutions academic year schedules. VMCoLab ( ) involved 10 partners from 7 countries and produced amongst other things excellent guides on VM for students, teachers and institutions. Conclusions on VM VM must come from a need in the participating institutions and be organized in a trusted network. Synchronous online meetings are almost essential for community formation. Must be well preplanned and coordinated, teacher training and support are essential as well as providing extensive support to students. Clear course guidelines and detailed descriptions of activities. Many students are unused to completely online courses and get easily confused, leading sometimes to drop-outs. Mutual recognition of all online courses was essential motivation for students. Courses to be taught online must conform to VMU s quality criteria for online courses and are reviewed and certified by internal experts. At least 90 criteria must be met before the course can be launched. This applies for all online courses, not just VM. Teachers need to adopt a positive and inclusive atmosphere with plenty encouragement for participants. Many students are worried their English is not good enough or the other students will be too advanced or the course might not be suitable. Intercultural awareness must be embedded into the course activities. Recognition of teacher VM is essential. Teachers need incentives to participate and develop VM. Teachers were worried about their level of English but appreciated the challenge of teaching international groups. Visiting students need extra guidance to understand the new learning environment. Important to make sure they feel welcome.

5 VM is not mainstream yet, still only in project form. Needs to be continued as part of the regular curriculum to gain interest and credibility. Student feedback on VM Students valued gaining wider intercultural experience, new challenges and opportunities, new approaches to learning, collaboration, improving ICT skills and English and the fact that they got real credits. They also saw the value of working in an international environment for their future careers. The main challenges for students were getting used to host university s methods, use of language, tools, lack of previous experience of online learning, problems with group work (passive/active students). Figure 5 Kaunas old town view International Cooperation Department ICD representative, Konstantinus Kurzevas Comprises three units: staff and student mobility, study organization and recruitment and international marketing. VMU have around 200 bilateral agreements, 6 of which are in Sweden. 180 incoming Erasmus students (mostly from Italy, Spain, France) around the same number of outgoing students (mostly to Italy, Germany, Czech Republic). Traineeship is an increasingly attractive form of mobility. Around 90 teachers are go on staff mobility, around 60 on staff training visits. Also, Erasmus teaching visits often featuring experts from foreign companies, generally for a week at a time. ICD had a vital role in the VM projects. They had to create routines for admitting visiting VM students, a similar process to physical mobility. In OUVM students got recognition in their course certificates that they participated in VM (seen as an extra merit). Teachers also got certificates to recognize their efforts. In OUVM 26 VMU students applied and 20 got credits.

6 Teacher experience in OUVM Teachers from the Department of Education: Prof. Margarita Teresevičienė, Dr. Aušra Rutkienė, Dr. Elena Trepulė Challenges different experience in producing online courses, different quality requirements, different levels of contact hours, different understanding of collaboration, different schedules (terms, scheduling etc). 19 teachers participated from 4 countries. Technical and administrative support is essential, especially for producing OER. They saw many benefits, especially the professional development aspect, using new tools and methods. Figure 6 Meeting with VM teachers They learned many lessons that can be applied to regular courses. Thanks to the VM experience they are now more focused on course design and have become much clearer in writing course descriptions, learning outcomes etc. All 3 teachers are now very positive. Digital examinations at Foreign Language Institute at VMU Vilma Bijeikienė VMU offers 30 languages and students are encouraged to be multilingual. English is compulsory and there are lots of different specialist English courses available. The main languages taught are Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, German, Latin for lawyers and Norwegian (growing interest in Nordic languages in general) but even smaller languages such Old Hebrew, Figure 7 Old town square Old Norse, Estonian and Modern Hebrew are offered. For some of the smaller languages the teacher is based abroad at another university and all teaching is done online. Students from different faculties are grouped according to proficiency. Courses are also offered to the public for a fee ( 180). Courses are blended with face-to-face meetings and other work on Moodle, sometimes also using Adobe Connect. Tandem learning is used extensively speaking with native speakers this is also based on Moodle. They also arrange social activities like language clubs and cultural events.

7 Innovative Studies Institute Danutė Pranckutė, Vida Žvinienė, Saulius Kuzminskas, Marius Šadauskas This is the unit that administers, develops and provides support in the main learning tools of VMU: Moodle, Adobe Connect, online support for teachers and students and a survey tool LimeSurvey courses, 748 teachers, 7090 students. 85% of all VMU courses are in Moodle. Figure 8 Innovative Studies Institute are active researchers. The institute is also involved in numerous national and international projects and some staff ReOPEN project /reopen.eu/ This is an Erasmus+ project looking at developing smaller course modules as nonformal open learning (small scale MOOCs in a way) offering different types of credentials such as badges but also offering conversion to credits. Badges can also be awarded to show partial completion of a course. ReOPEN implements the recommendations of the EC JRC report Validation of non-formal MOOC-based learning Figure 9 Kaunas castle (2016). VMU is building a platform for a non-formal open learning curriculum with a standard model of 1 ECTS, 10 contact hours and 26 hours in total. Libraries and adult education centres will also be involved as support. The courses cover a wide range of subjects and are seen as an introduction to different fields. There is also open training material on how to design learning curriculum, application of badges and recognition of non-formal open learning results. See open courses at VMU OpenU courses The courses are offered for a fee but it is not clear yet exactly how much the market price will be in Lithuania. This can be seen as a way of expanding the university s outreach and possible as an added source of income in the future.