Lemmens The Virtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education Bernd Wächter (ed.) Aca papers on International Cooperation in Education The V irtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education

part in the programme. And why bother to go abroad when you can access
foreign programmes at your convenience through your own laptop?
The core of historical mobility was of course the “travel” and the “encounter”
between scholars and students of different cultures, and the “cultural ex-
perience” gained through visiting other regions and learning institutions. In
other words: a total learning experience. Both old time “barefoot mobility” and
modern “flight destination mobility” provide students with a total learning
experience, which includes both formal and non-formal elements, language,
culture, gastronomy, and whatever else. This cannot be substituted by virtual
mobility, but virtual mobility can provide a different total learning experience
of just as high an educational and social value, due to the collaborative work-
ing procedures involved, which result in different skills (ICT, languages and
inter-cultural skills), and which create and sustain relations (both between
people and between institutions).
Final remarks
Universities are important parts of the social and cultural fabric of our
society, fora for study, reflection, discourse, and the creation, dissemination
and validation of knowledge. These tasks remain important, and universities
will fulfil them as part of their historical mission. But there might be different
types of universities in the future, and universities will not be the sole players
either. New actors will appear who will exploit the global presence of the
Internet. Therefore, traditional universities need to consolidate and refocus
their educational practice. They need a common window on the evolving 
e-learning, to stimulate the exchange of competency, resources, models and
experiences and benefit from phenomena such as virtual mobility. We have
the toolsets, but we need the mindsets (of concepts, models, attention and
support mechanisms, including political and institutional backing) in order to
be able to make maximum use of the potential of virtual mobility for interna-
tional cooperation in higher education. (Even today’s WWW started off as a
simple and basic concept at a drawing table of CERN.)
And we have to reach a shared understanding of the basic principles and
mechanisms of virtual mobility. We have to support it and make it sustain-
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able. Not as an individual, but as an institutional and formalised adventure.
Personally, I would like to see the 100,000 Erasmus students as ambassa-
dors of virtual education and e-learning, through shorter and more intensive
stays abroad. Visits that could facilitate an introduction into subject areas and
course content, associated working methods and tools and establish the
necessary social relations and cultural references needed for continuous
collaboration over the net between peers, teachers and tutors. Universities
would need to collaborate on curriculum design, courseware development
and exchange of course modules. Modules that would be assessed, adopted
and accredited by the individual sending institutions. This would require new
(or additional) funding schemes targeting not only students, but catering also
for more extensive collaboration between institutions and faculties. These
could be based on the twinning of institutions or on broader cooperation
agreements between institutions in different countries: agreements on joint
description of learning objectives and course content, online provision and
working methods, as well as models of assessment, recognition and accre-
ditation of modules between institutions, amongst others. Universities could
in this way share specialisation and scarce competency and improve the
general quality of their education. They could become attractive players on
the 6
th
continent, the virtual one.
I would advise that ACA member organisations create together working
groups to address the above issues, as future developments in the areas of
cross-boarder education will be based on virtual mobility and virtual educa-
tional provision, and therefore affect the core business of ACA members, as
well as their clients. ACA could have an important impact on future develop-
ments in this area. Let us hope that this conference will be the point of
departure for an interesting working process within ACA and beyond. With
reference to the parallel story and my private future preview, I would like to
see...
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Imagine Global U2
Global U2 is a distributed and networked group of collaborating universi-
ties across the globe. Their mission is to provide the best and most cost-
effective learning experience for any target group anywhere at any time...

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Professor Robin Middlehurst
Centre for Policy and Change in Higher Education
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK