Virtual University for Europe

The Virtual University for Europe (VirtUE) project was funded from 1996 until 1998 by the European Commission under the TEN-ISDN Programme.

Summary

The VirtUE project was proposed as a feasibility study for the development and implementation of a networked (or distributed, Euro-ISDN based) virtual university for Europe in cooperation between classical unviersities, open universities, technology providers and telecom partners. The project addressed on-campus students at all levels and off-campus students at postgraduate level.

Two distinguished parts could be identified in this distributed virtual university: the joint academic network and the services network. The joint academic network (taken up by the three networks in the project, EuroPACE 2000, Coimbra Group and Consorzio NETTUNO) had three functions:

• Universities would provide learning and teaching materials, courses, and programmes to the virtual knowledge pool;
• Through thematic of regional clusters, universities would jointly design curricula and jointly develop courses and programmes;
• Universities would take up available materials to respond to the learning/training needs of students, graduates, companies and society at large.

The services network (a function of EuroPACE) would create all necessary services (infrastructure, technical platform, etc.) and offer them to the users. Within the distributed virtual university, three conceptual models of network-based educational services (making use of ISDN) were introduced:

• Virtual class and campus.
• Network for flexible open and distance learning.
• Network for on-demand learning.

Partners

• EuroPACE
• Coimbra Group
• Consorzio NETTUNO
• FernUniversität Hagen
• Alcatel Bell
• Helsinki Telephone Company
• International Education Centre IBM
• Telecom Italia.