Nowadays socio-economic, political, cultural processes have become more complex, globalized and virtualized. The industry 4.0 determines the current development worldwide. Global virtual collaboration has advanced to a new challenge for the society. For years, the European Commission has been investing a lot for student mobility, mainly through the Erasmus+ Programme. In order to reach as many people as possible, the European Ministers of Education emphasized now on the need to involve a larger number of students and to develop virtual mobility. MOVIDIS project aims to give the opportunity to bachelor student in Economics, to receive an international experience from home institution through the concept of Virtual Mobility (VM) - internationalization at home. It can contribute to strengthening international, digital, and virtual collaborative skills of transnational students, to preparing students to the attainment of global career-readiness competencies, and finally, to implementing new vision of internationalization of participating HEIs. In order to realize these objectives, a set of activities will be carried out, finally leading to the creation of institutional frameworks for implementing student virtual mobility, the design of technical and pedagogical infrastructure, and the organization, testing and evaluation of pilot MOVIDIS sessions. Innovative learning scenarios for fully virtual courses and blended ones will be designed, implemented and evaluated at participating HEIs, which will focus on promoting transversal skills of learners such as intercultural competency, digital competency, language skills, collaborative learning skills. Not only the course content will be subject of learning but teaching approaches themselves will increase students’ learning experiences, lead to better learning outcomes, and boosting professional development. This pedagogical approach is new for participating partner countries, which other HEIs can benefit from. The MOVIDIS project involves a consortium of four countries (France, Italy, Spain and Germany). All partners have been chosen because of their implication in e-learning development in Higher education, the high quality of their curricula in Economics, their international strategy in line with the concept of internationalization at home, their enthusiasm to give any student the opportunity to receive an international study experience.Experts from different backgrounds and contexts will be able to contribute with distinguished contents, producing high quality outputs. The project will be in line with the internationalisation strategy of all the partners. It will develop teachers skills, students skills, and will be used as a basis to enhance this type of mobilities and cooperation to other fields of study and with others HEIs. A detailed planning of the activities, accurate management and quality assurance procedures and an high commitment of all the partners are the basis for the successful implementation of the project.
MOVIDIS is a project that aims to design and implement an innovative concept of virtual student mobility. The unique feature of MOVIDIS is its virtual transnational approach: students have the possibility to follow courses simultaneously in different partner universities located in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. In this way, students can benefit from working with people from different cultures and have an international experience from their home institution - internationalization at home. MOVIDIS worked for to contribute to strengthening international, digital, and virtual collaborative skills of transnational students, to preparing students to the attainment of global career-readiness competencies, and finally, to achieving a new vision of internationalization of participating HEIs. To achieve this, it was necessary to develop a whole environment around virtual mobility. The four pillars that constitute the Movidis experience are: 1) A virtual campus with - Online catalog courses, multi-site virtual classrooms - Online teaching coaching session provided by teachers - Regular online meeting and webinar 2) Tutoring for virtual students - Weekly coaching session - Individual and group meeting 3) Transversal skills recognition - Open Badge for students - Open Badge for tutors 4) Acquisition of language skills - Foreign language learning - Online teaching coaching session To achieve this global objective, following specific aims were targeted: 1) Creating institutional frameworks for implementing student virtual mobility: virtual mobility needed to be legalized at the institutional level and to be treated as a part of the holistic university strategy. 2) Designing technical and pedagogical infrastructure for MOVIDIS: Due to the nature of the virtual mobility, its success also depended on the technical and didactical support to both teachers and students involved. 3) Organization, testing and evaluation of pilot MOVIDIS sessions: Administrative, technical, and pedagogical infrastructure for the MOVIDIS student should be tested and evaluated at the participating HEIs. 4) Train local students to be tutors to follow foreign students in social, pedagogical, adminstrive and technical aspects. 5) Design digital open badges and understand its added value. Reflect on acquired skills and experiences. Movidis is not only a set of objectives. It is above all a concept.
Despite the success of Erasmus + program, we commonly noticed that a large number of students from European Higher Education Institutions (HEI) were not benefiting from Erasmus + mobilities programs or from any other. According to several researches on student mobility there were several reasons for that: physical disabilities, financial issues, lack of foreign language skills, misunderstanding of foreign culture, fear, etc. The use of Digital technologies was already a reality in Higher Education (HE), but several reports suggested it was not always used effectively in teaching. In a world where digital technologies had gone from strength to strength, there was a need for HEIs to better integrate the use of technology to make a positive impact on teaching and learning. This could only happen if HEI teacher’s skills were improved to enhance pedagogies. Other evidences suggested that this could not happen in isolation, either within a university or an individual country, and needed to be developed through transnational cooperation between HEIs to ensure best practice and innovation is shared. These two facts were particularly important with the ongoing development of the concept of internationalization at home and virtual mobility. We have to remember that when the MOVIDIS project was conceived, COVID did not even exist. The world events that came during the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020 potentially reinforced the idea that virtual mobilities should be promoted in a European context. Movidis is also a pilot project that was originally intended for 3rd year undergraduate students who are facing difficult situations such as social problems, economic issues, disability or health problems.These students were targeted to participate and get an International study experience during their student life. During the MOVIDIS project, and due to the sanitary situation, the target group was opened to all students who wished to participate in an international mobility and were unable to do so due to the COVID restrictions to travel.