The Virtual Mobility 101 video from our frontpage is available on YouTube:

Next Virtual Mobility 101 course starts in February 2010. More information will follow.

President Mauno Koivisto said: "Elämään kuuluu tunti työtä, tunti lepoa ja tunti torvisoittoa." Life is one hour of work, one hour of rest and one hour of trumpet playing. How do you translate this in to the world of Virtual Mobility?

Yesterday, the ICDE-Conference started in Maastricht (The Netherlands). Fully, it is called the 23rd ICDE World Conference on Open Learning and Distance Education. Many dignitaries were present. Perhaps the most prominent academic was Manuel Castells who gave a talk on 'The university: from theology to technology'.

The project Ready for Virtual Mobility? (MoreVM) introduces the term virtual mobility coordinator (VM coordinator) and defines the virtual mobility coordinator profile. The VM Coordinator profile describes the required qualities and competences of the staff involved in VM for providing efficient support to VM students during the pre-virtual mobility phase, including information, guidance and counseling as well as during VM to enhance their performance. The aim of the research, directed by NEWTON College in co-operation with project partners, on the VM Coordinator profile was to define the VM coordinator profile and to design the VM supervision scheme. NEWTON College collected the data on higher institutions that have already been involved in physical mobility in order to conduct this research on potential Virtual Mobility Coordinators.

What is the situation in your country ?
Is your institution involved in virtual mobility ?
Have you got an experience with a virtual mobility coordinator ?
Do you feel there is a need for a virtual mobility coordinator ?

Thank you for sharing your opinion with us.

Project Coordinator Mateja Geder wrote in September that virtual mobility is not yet well know in the higher education arena and those potentially interested might not know the skills and competencies required to participate in it. The MoreVM project has initiated a real effort to disseminate the information about virtual mobility and the roles of VM coordinators.

The MoreVM project successfully arranged the Preparatory Course for VM Coordinators for the first time in September 2008. The course was very popular and finally 14 participants completed the course. The course was arranged totally via the internet using the Moodle (CMS) learning environment. The participants’ work in Moodle was supported by tutoring. During those three course weeks the participants got a lot of information about virtual mobility and online learning.

This was the question we asked ourselves for quite some time before we decided to prepare this project. We are aware at the same time that virtual mobility is not yet well know in the higher education arena and those potentially interested might not know the skills and competencies required to participate in it.

This week, 40 students from 4 countries finished their participation in the International Marketing Course. For me, as organizer of the event, this meant prompting all students to fill in the Evaluation Form, and anxiously looking at their opinions to see how to further improve this course.