SVC- Lessons learned - impulse programme

The positive effects and successes of the SVC programme can currently be summarized as follows:

• As an impulse programme aimed at boosting the widespread use of ICT in higher education at large, the SVC programme can undoubtedly be considered a success. It has been able both to trigger new initiatives by the higher education institutions and to reinforce existing ones. The fact that almost 200 project proposals were submitted by institutions from all three sectors of Swiss higher education is a clear indication of this success.

• The SVC programme has been successful in creating a favourable environment for experimenting with e-learning in higher education, notably trough the development of a diverse set of methodologies and tools. It has made a significant contribution to the strengthening of the empirical basis of the use of ICT in teaching and learning in higher education.

• The SVC programme has contributed to the creation of a consensual approach, allowing for a more realistic - some would say pragmatic - assessment of the variety of the uses and the potential impacts of e-learning in higher education. In the course of the programme, both the perception and the assessment of the potential uses of e-learning have been clarified by the different stakeholders. As a result, it is possible to argue that e-learning is no longer seen merely as having “value for its own sake” but rather as a means to improve and modernise teaching and learning in higher education.

• The SVC programme has provided an environment whereby new competences can be developed among university staff. These competencies should be further improved with the creation of the new ICT-competence centres at the higher education institutions during the consolidation phase of the programme.

• The cooperation networks of different institutional partners – an obligation of the SVC programme - have reinforced the cooperation between people and between institutions of higher education. It is to be expected that institutional partners who have experienced their collaboration during the impulse programme as a success will more readily cooperate in future cooperation programmes also.

• Finally, the main “output” of the SVC programme are the 26 SVC projects currently successfully completed, many of which are already implemented and used by teachers and/or students of the project leaders and often also by their project partners.

Swiss Virtual Campus : final evaluation report Summary The undeniable positive effects of the SVC impulse programme are counterbalanced by some weaknesses of the programme as a whole, the most important of which are the following:

• Considering the official goals and objectives of the SVC programme as they were set in the Federal Message of 1998 and in the two calls for proposals, the degree to which the SVC programme has met its objectives is clearly limited. In particular, the objectives to “set up a virtual campus” or to “develop a substantial offer in distance-learning” have not been met. These objectives have not found strong support amongst the majority of the stakeholders, and this may explain why so few of the SVC projects were aimed at developing distance-learning programmes. As a result, the SVC programme has not been as successful as expected promoting real virtual mobility among the student population.

• As far as the overall efficiency of the programme is concerned, two points need to be made:

- First, the number of projects (about 50%) that have been completed at this point cannot be considered as fully satisfactory. In many cases, it appears that it has not been possible either to organize the work of the projects in an efficient manner and/or to make efficient use of the financial and personal resources.

- Second, considering that SFr 37 millions of federal funds were invested in the SVC impulse programme, the actual “outputs” of the programme (in terms of e-learning products) may seem to be somewhat disappointing. However, there is no ready-to-use benchmark that would help to assess the actual cost of the development and implementation of e-learning programmes in higher education, thus making it difficult to speak precisely in terms of lack of efficiency. In addition, it seems highly probable that some of the framework conditions of the programme (notably the principle of matching funds and the requirement for inter-institutional cooperation), as well as the lack of solid e-learning experience amongst project partners have raised the costs of the different projects. Both these weaknesses of the SVC impulse programme have been addressed by the SUC and the SVC Steering Committee. With a view to a higher cost-effectiveness the maximum amount of possible project funding has been considerably reduced in the SVC consolidation programme. Furthermore the decision to promote the development of ICT-competence centres in the institutions of higher education is likely to lead to new and more effective forms of project realisation, coordination and management during the SVC consolidation programme. Considering these concrete results of the SVC impulse programme it is rather difficult to come to an unambiguous evaluation result: On the one hand the programme has yielded a considerable amount of completed and at least partially implemented elearning components in a wide range of fields of study. On the other hand many projects have suffered important delays, have difficulties meeting their objectives or yield results that are not very convincing. Only when all SVC projects have been completed and made use of will it be possible to come to a conclusion regarding the worth, e.g. the usefulness of the SVC products for their users - teachers and students alike - and for higher education in general.