This year, virtual mobility will be the focus of presentations and discussions, complemented by topics like knowledge acquisition and construction in eLearning, life-long learning, and description and assessment of learning outcomes. The keynote one and two double sessions will be organised by the VIRQUAL project team.

The Conference will be opened by Alfredo Soeiro, Sevgi Özkan, Branca Miranda, and Barbara Class with an introduction to VIRQUAL: "Virtual Mobility and How to Enhance It with VIRQUAL" - seen from the perspectives of students, individual course designers, and institutions.

The VIRQUAL workshop will provide the best opportunity for the target groups mentioned above to test the product of the project (e.g. the learning outcomes repository, comparison of EU countries concerning their recognition practices) and to experience their potentials for improving daily work in the mobility business.

The Conference's closing event will be the VIRQUAL roundtable. This debate will address the various viewpoints of experts from relevant fields - among them a representative of European students - and find an answer to the question "Improving Virtual Mobility - (How) Can We Benefit from VIRQUAL?"

General Theme of the Conference


Increasing internationalization in higher education, notably the introduction of the Bachelor-Master structure proposed by the Bologna rules, is removing borders for learners. Moreover, education is no longer confined to borders of age: Students become lifelong learners, and lifelong learners (might) become students.

But heterogeneity of prior knowledge, skills, and competences of enrolled students has increased due to changes in secondary education. Furthermore, lifelong learning implies a higher diversity in learners' age range, which also adds to diversity in their educational and professional background and experience. Given this increased heterogeneity of student and lifelong-learner enrolments, it is reasonable to expect that transitional problems become larger.

The fourth S ICT conference will focus on how ICT and eLearning can help learners and institutions to use and optimize virtual mobility for replacing or supplementing physical student mobility. It is an opportunity to present your recent research findings and good practices, and to discuss with other scholars.