Extending and Supporting Physical Student Mobility Through Virtual Mobility: the VM-BASE Experience

In 2007 the 20 th anniversary of the ERASMUS programme is celebrated. ERASMUS has been and remains a key factor in the internationalisation of the European higher education systems. Despite the evident success of mobility actions, research findings have shown there remain a number of opportunities for improvement. Moreover, one of the biggest challenges left is that many students simply cannot enjoy the benefits of the programme because of financial reasons. Virtual mobility can offer a valuable alternative here, as it makes possible that students take part in courses at other universities without having to leave their home university. Virtual mobility can furthermore be used to prepare and follow-up physical mobility to enrich the latter and make it even more effective and fruitful. Procedures of ‘blended mobility’, in which aspects of physical and virtual mobility are combined in order to maximize the advantages of both approaches to student and teacher mobility across Europe should be further examined, developed and implemented. In this paper we will gather results of projects that studied key issues of implementing virtual mobility. We will also look more in detail at the VM-BASE project (Virtual Mobility Before and After Student Exchanges). VM-BASE focuses on virtual preparatory and return initiatives for physical Erasmus exchanges, supporting teachers in coaching at a distance (e-coaching) for both preparatory and return initiatives in blended format and considering the local, regional, national and European considerations of such ‘blended mobility’ actions. The project officially started 1 October 2006 and will run for two years.