European Distance Education in Law Network CONSORTIUM: The EDELNet project is the first building block of the Strategie Partnership between the FernUniversität in Hagen, the Universidad Nacional de Educaci6n a Distancia and the Open Universiteit Nederland. This Partnership has been created to further cultural exchange and best practices in legal education and research. The partners cooperate in the development of high quality education in law through internationalization for all three Bologna cycles, bachelor, master and doctorate, under the umbrella of a coherent common conceptual and operative framework. OBJECTIVES: 1.widening the access to higher education by facilitating, broadening and updating the traditional routes into university education. An innovative and flexible combination of blended learning tools and student-oriented pedagogic methods will enhance access to high quality education and boost student mobility; 2.improving the quality and relevance of European higher education in the field of law in order to provide law students with a good opportunity of integration in the Iabor market. We want to offer more students the opportunities that good pedagogic practices, flexible, blended methods of teaching, and virtual mobility can provide in an open international academic environment; 3.internationalization of legal education focusing an effective forms of cooperation and mobility across Europe, including cross-border quality assurance activities and the common European recognition of academic qualifications. TARGET GROUPS: 1.students and professionals of law an every Ievei {bachelor, master, and doctorate), especially disadvantaged groups {e.g. students with disabilities, students in difficult social and economic situations, older aged students, part-time students with jobs and families, etc.); 2.staff of participating institutions. RESULTS: DURING THE PROJECT: 1.common tripartite PhD supervision system; 2.virtual mobility learning activities that will be supported by some intellectual outputs; 3.an increase in the number of students joining our program through the dissemination activities and the interaction with key stakeholders; 4.Masters ISP curriculum; 5.better didactic .and communication skills of staff; 6.attracting new partner institutions; 7.attracting non-educational institutions. ON COMPLETION: 1.Over 100 participants in bachelor program; 2.Araund 50 participants in the LL.M. program 3.Araund 30 participants in doctorate program; 4.All participants will be granted appropriately certified credits; 5.Open master Ievei courseware an EU and international legal order; 6.Open doctorate Ievei courseware comprising key topics for international legal research training; 7.Program available to other fields of schalarship inside and outside the partner institutions; 8.Doctorate program will receive students from associated universities; 9.Toolbox for internationalization of Distant Learning students; 10. international blended learning with a focus an the needs of disadvantaged and non-traditional student groups; 11. lmplementation of a wide range of virtual mobility learning activities an bachelor, master and doctorate Ievei, supported by produced Vortal, courseware, etc. IMPACTS ENVISAGED an participants, participating organizations, target groups and other relevant stakeholders: 1.Disadvantaged groups of students will have a broader opportunity to participate in a high quality international legal education programs that will enhance their chances of lifelong learning through flexible, distant teaching and blended learning approaches; 2.increasing the ratio of students successfully completing their studies; 3.improving the employability of all our students in the EU-wide Iabor market thanks to their better training in European and internationallegal issues and processes, and their participation in international professional and research networks; 4.fastering the development of intercultural communication in the EU thanks to the promotion of a finer understanding of the diverse legal cultures and their underlying social and political contexts and debates; 5.changing and optimizing organizational cultures; 6.This impact is also expected on the Ievei of the academic staff, including positive impacts on teaching and research methods and the further development of scientific exchange and sustainable cooperation; 7.leading by example - we hope to convince other higher education institutions of the advantages that blended learning in legal education can offer for the whole higher education community, especially as a tool for generating EU-wide synergies; 8.the broader scientific community will benefit from a sound, open access scientific (teaching and research) production that further ~xplores the importance and interaction between culture and law. This is expected to enhance the debate on the centrality and utility of inter-cultural and interdisciplinary legal education; 9.Employers, lawyers' clients, and other legal and economic actors EU-wide will benefit from better trained, critically minded law practitioners and academics associated universities and other potential public and private institutions from all over Europe and beyond to participate in our program and benefit from the EDELNet project results. In line with these anticipations, we expect students and staff to: have a high quality international experience that will enrich their learning and professional paths; overcome language inhibitions by taking English as a common language; and cultivate their intercultural competences while operating in a cross-cultural environment. The project will also grant students easy access to an international network of professionals of the law, both academic and practitioners. All this will decisively improve our students’ chances to get access to the international and European labour market and will bring forward our plans to merger different European teaching cultures, traditions and didactic formats to improve teaching practice in the entire European community of law teaching. Through affordable, relevant, high quality and internationalized higher distant learning education in the field of law, we expect to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive growth in the European Union.
The FernUniversität in Hagen, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNl) are three leading European distance learning universities firmly devoted to further the principle of equal opportunity by safeguarding equal access to top quality higher education to everyone, using a methodology based on the principles of modern distance learning focused on the needs of the student. In 2014, after eight years of successful cooperation in the organization of international common teaching activities on the bachelor level, these universities established a Strategic Partnership to further cultural exchange and best practices in the internationalisation of high quality education in law for all three Bologna cycles. Developed within this framework, the EDELNet (European Distance Education in Law Network) project is the first building block in the implementation of an ambitious scientific and pedagogic concept of Blended Active Learning and student oriented teaching facilitating a personal learning path with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and intercultural communication skills as a basis for a better understanding of each other’s legal cultures and practices throughout Europe and beyond.The goals of this project address the current need in the European society for widening the access to top quality higher education through international academic cooperation, as identified in the 2011 EU Modenisation Agenda (COM (2011) 567 final). For this purpose, EDELNet is geared toward the modernization of teaching methods in law with an innovative combination of student-centered blended learning tools and activities. This innovative combination also draws on intercultural communication and interdisciplinary processes for the production, learning and application of relevant inter-subjective knowledge in addition to the traditional contents of legal education. This will be implemented through an international and cross-cultural cooperation that is devised to broaden access to and participation in international and European education, especially for disadvantaged groups such as students with disabilities, economic, social or geographical obstacles, health problems or cultural differences.In order to achieve these goals the EDELNet project aims to develop and implement virtual and face-to-face teaching and training activities and courseware in key methodological and substantive areas of the law, including language competences, intercultural communication skills and interdisciplinary methods of knowledge production applied to legal practice and scholarship.The EDELNet project is based on the full commitment and support of the key academic and administrative units of the three partner universities, especially those working in the fields of quality management, IT and media, dissemination and knowledge transfer, and the central management units (Deans’ and Rectors’ offices).On completion of the project more than 200 persons have participated in our learning activities. 153 students participated in our LLB, LLM and PhD intensive study programs and more than 180 in the different virtual mobility courses hosted in the EDELNet Vortal. Also more than 50 teachers and managerial staff have partaken in our staff trainings. Moreover, the produced courseware, the results of the learning activities, and the institutional know-how acquired is available as open source on the EDELNet Vertical Portal. The availability as open source of these project results is coupled with active dissemination activities, like the organisation and participation in international and national workshops, newsletters and the active engagement in cooperative dialogues with a wide range of relevant stakeholders. In the timespan of the project (2015-2018) our students and staff had a high quality international experience that has enriched their learning and professional paths; overcame language inhibitions by taking English as a common language; and cultivated their intercultural competences while operating in a cross-cultural environment. The project did also grant students easy access to an international network of professionals of the law, including both academic and practitioners. All this has decisively improved our students’ chances to get access to the international and European labour market and has brought forward our plans to merger different European teaching cultures, traditions and didactic formats to improve teaching practice in the entire European community of law teaching. In the long run, we expect students from associated universities and other potential public and private institutions from all over Europe and beyond to participate in our program and benefit from the EDELNet project results. Through affordable, relevant, high quality and internationalized higher blended-learning education in the field of law, we expect our project to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive growth in the European Union.