The Erasmus+ KA3 project "Online Pedagogical Resources for European Universities” (OpenU) addresses the EU Commission priority to foster excellence, innovation and inclusion in higher education by creating a European digital hub, called BLOOM, that provides the digital infrastructure for higher education policy experimentation.
Launched in February 2019, the OpenU project brings together representatives of ten European higher education institutions, six ministries of higher education and research, (France, Germany, Belgium, Latvia, Portugal, Spain), and four European networks around the topic of digitalisation in higher education.
The project’s objective is to contribute to the emergence of innovative policies, encourage mutual learning and strengthen long-term strategic and structural cooperation between European higher education institutions.
OpenU attaches great importance and value to the objective of fostering international cooperation and exchange between HEIs in Europe. It supports the development of European university alliances and the transferability of innovative practices.
Through OpenU, academic staff will be able to leverage on digital infrastructure for curricular cooperation initiatives and for setting up joint learning activities in which their students can be directly involved. Results of the project will enable exchange of experiences and good practices in digital education and analysis of their impact. They will be used to develop and support close-knit cooperation amongst Higher Education Institutions and impact also on institutional and EU policy.
OpenU involves both HEIs and national high-level policy-making authorities in its work to implement the hub along with the evaluation of several rounds of pedagogical experimentation with the hub. This experimentation is based on projects carried out by the administrative and teaching staff of European universities in innovative practices such as online collaboration, joint degrees, new mobility formats, virtual learning and digitalized environment.
The agile approach that is mobilised in the framework of the project will allow evolving needs, definitions and feedback from practitioners, researchers and policymakers to be integrated throughout the project lifetime.