Erasmus Multilateral Project “UbiCamp: Integrated Solution to Virtual Mobility Barriers” kick off meeting was organized on 25th and 26h February 2012 by Oviedo University in Oviedo, Spain. The meeting provided a great opportunity for all partners to introduce themselves and their organizations, to meet each other and to come in contact. The representatives are highly skilled professionals, academics and expert trainers in IT, e-learning, engineering, economics and management. Yaşar University was represented by Dr. Lecturer Gökay ÖZERİM from Yaşar University European Union Centre.

UbiCamp Project: UbiCamp is funded under Life Long Learning programme, the project aims to make virtual mobility a mainstream opportunity for all parties involved (teachers, students and institutions). UBIcamp will propose a comprehensive solution that addresses all the barriers and difficulties of virtual mobility nowadays. Thus the main aim of the UBIcamp consortium, consisted of University of Oviedo (Spain), University of Southampton (UK), Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Yasar Universitesi (Turkey), Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain) and Kaunas University of technology (Lithuania), is to provide with this comprehensive approach that can respond to all dimensions of virtual mobility.

What is virtual mobility? EC suggests a broad definition of VM “Virtual mobility for study offers students, as part of their curriculum, access to courses and study schemes from another HEI in a foreign country in order to learn, communicate and participate in collaborative work in an international environment with teachers and fellow students abroad via the new information technologies. VM can be combined with physical mobility period of an appropriate duration”. There is no doubt about the benefits that virtual mobility could bring to Higher Education Institutions. Virtual mobility enables European wide exchanges for all those not able to benefit from existing physical international exchange programmes, due to social, economical, organizational or other reasons and can therefore offer the advantages and benefits of real mobility to a wider community. Schedule flexibility is another advantage that virtual mobility offers to their users.

Also virtual mobility allows, through e-learning environments, working with a greater number of teachers and students and producing a more personalized learning with a higher training variety. However there are a number of challenges faced by HEIs that need to be addressed in order to enhance recognition and further development of virtual Erasmus exchanges among HEIs, i.e. organisational issues (credit recognition, institutional agreements, etc); technological (definition of common standards so that the open resources are re-usable, accessible, etc.); pedagogic / didactical challenge (adapt the study subject didactically for e-learning multi-institutional and multi-cultural solutions), cultural exchange (minimum cultural and linguistic contents about the place visited virtually); training/awareness raising. This means that virtual mobility is not only about academic exchange or an international e-learning experience; virtual mobility has different dimensions that need to be taken into account in order to develop a comprehensive strategy to overcome the current barriers for virtual mobility. More information on the project is available at http://www.ubicamp.eu