“Off to new shores” with Digital Erasmus+Aalen University receives funding for the development of digital education on an international level
Project partners Nicolas Dolle (Aalen University), Prof. Dr. Igor Kabashkin (Transporta un sakaru institūts) and Prof. Chrysostomos Stylios (Panepistimio Ioanninon) celebrate the birthday of Prof. Dr. Boriss Miŝņevs (Transporta un sakaru institūts) in the virtual project meeting (l.t.r) Screenshot: © Aalen University | Nicolas Dolle
The business informatics experts at Aalen University have achieved a major success for internationalization. The "eMEDIATOR" project is funded by the European Union (EU) with Erasmus+ funds and aims to contribute to more standardization of processes and teaching content in digital education at universities. In the international project, the five partner universities from Latvia, Spain, Greece, Poland and Aalen University want to standardize existing solutions for higher education in an online cooperation portal over the next few years.
Last year, the new Erasmus+ 2021-2027 funding program was launched by the EU. The focus of the new funding program this time is to promote international partnerships and strategic cooperation projects of organizations, institutions and initiatives to work together, as well as to promote innovation and to share best practices. Erasmus+ 2021-2027 will also promote the resilience of education and training systems in times of pandemic, as well as digital education and related offerings.
Aalen University and the four cooperating universities, Universidad de Murcia from Murcia, Spain, Transporta un sakaru institūts (TSI) in Riga, Latvia, Uniwersytet Łódzki in Łódź, Poland and Panepistimio Ioanninon in Ioanninon, Greece, have recently received an Erasmus+ funding commitment of almost half a million euros for their eMEDIATOR project. It is the first strategic Erasmus+ partnership project that Aalen University's Business Informatics department will accompany.
eMEDIATOR is the name of the project and the new vision for the platform. It stands for the development of an integrated, digital ecosystem for higher education - similar to the Amazon Marketplace. The project aims to create an international online collaboration platform for stakeholders from the higher education environment, including students in particular, lecturers and business stakeholders from the partner universities, that properly addresses the needs, creates mutual benefits for participants in the ecosystem service and provides added value through consolidation. Since then, the universities have been working remotely at full speed on a concept to facilitate international education via an online platform that combines existing systems such as the well-known learning management system Moodle and digitizing new aspects such as the development of curricula via a standard process. eMEDIATOR aims to enable all user groups of the partner universities to participate in education in a consolidated way and to develop it digitally and internationally. "We are defying Corona and creating something digital for education through international collaboration," says Prof. Dr. Manfred Rössle of Business Informatics.
Work is currently underway on the architecture, structure and functionalities of the platform. According to Nicolas Dolle, a doctoral student and member of the university staff, the international collaboration should not be without fun. The universities from Aalen, Ioannina and Riga celebrated the birthday of their project leader Prof. Dr. Boriss Misnevs from Riga in a virtual project meeting. The finalization of the work is planned for the end of 2023.