2. Materials and Methods
As indicated above, we followed an Educational Design Research (EDR) methodology [
22], illustrated in
Figure 1.
We will describe the phases here in a linear fashion, although they were interweaved throughout the project. The activities described here took place between September 2020 and September 2022. Qualitative data were collected in the form of field notes during focus group sessions, interviews and digital and face-to-face conversations. We did not collect any audio-visual recordings in these meetings as this would have impeded the organic and natural context of the conversations. Participants in all activities were informed of the strategic as well as the exploratory nature of the study, as well as its duration over several months.
In the Analysis and Exploration phase, the main aim was to gain a deeper understanding of the specific context of KU Leuven, the policy-level aspirations regarding online mobility of its strategic actors and the practical consequences of mainstream implementation, in order to identify needs for intervention. Qualitative data were collected in three ways: Firstly, the perceptions, vision, priorities and attitudes of several actors in the university were collected through a dialogic approach, in which we engaged with a total of 54 people in 11 faculties and departments within the university and with 20 people of external institutional partner networks. Concretely, the following activities were conducted:
Dialogue with faculties (vice-deans of education and internationalisation, faculty educational support staff and liaisons internationalisation);
Dialogue with the Educational Development Unit;
Dialogue with Teaching and Learning Processes;
Dialogue with vice-rectors and the International Office;
Dialogue and check with external strategic partners (Una Europa Mobility cluster, LERU Virtual Exchange group).
Secondly, we inventorised relevant existing support instruments and materials in use and in development at the university through scouring the KU Leuven Learning Lab website and through targeted conversions with educational support staff. For example, the internal courses and modules on didactic formats and blended course design offered by the KU Leuven Learning Lab were identified of relevance for online mobility. The inventory was deemed necessary to understand how online mobility differs from other blended/online learning and which aspects of support were still lacking. Moreover, through this exercise, we gained an insight into what types of needs existed across the university that could benefit from extra support instruments made in the context of online mobility (e.g., on intercultural learning or managing intercultural groups). Thirdly, in order to identify further relevant existing support instruments, we also conducted a scoped literature study on virtual mobility, starting from the outputs of previous projects (e.g., VM-BASE, EU-VIP, IEREST, etc.) and with backward snowballing and citation tracking. We kept track of relevant publications on mainstreaming online mobility at European universities through our existing partner network. We have not reported extensively on the results of the literature study here, as this would have led us too far from the main objective of this article (i.e., the focus on the organisational design of support for mainstreaming online mobility).
The lead researchers analysed and triangulated the collected qualitative data in this phase to come to a common understanding of the problem setting, identify pressing needs for the large-scale implementation of online mobility and define interventions that would support the implementation in the following phase.
In the Design and Construction phase, four interventions were created to facilitate a mutual understanding between diverse actors at the university and to bring forward the conversation on online mobility at the university:
KU Leuven terminology for online mobility activities: four types of online mobility formats were defined to create a shared vocabulary;
Outline of the possible training flow within the university: the educational support flows at the university were mapped to define an appropriate approach for support for online mobility (with content and form of first-line support and second line support);
A workshop series and staged approach were designed and trialled to support international teacher teams around a Blended Intensive Programme (BIP);
Existing teaching and learning processes were mapped and extended to include support of online mobility.
In the Evaluation and Reflection phase, several activities were conducted to align the interpretations, interventions and outcomes to the actual needs. Qualitative data were collected at all these activities in the form of meeting notes:
Focus group (in December 2021) with OpenU project partners Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM; n = 5) and Freie Universität Berlin (FUB; n = 6) to discuss and check the extent to which the KU Leuven strategy and approach was generic;
Roll-out of two cases, BIP Teacher Education in a European Perspective and BIP Human Rights: these teacher teams were aware that they were pilots for the implementation of the educational support strategy. Reflective talks with the academic leads (n = 2) were planned after every workshop, to obtain feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the workshops and eventual additional support needs;
Continuous reflective talks with the leadership of the Educational Development Unit;
Continuous reflective talks with university policy makers on education and internationalisation.
3. Results
In this Results section, we will first elaborate on the results of each phase to attempt to answer the research questions posed.
The results of the Analysis and Exploration were the following. Overall, the dialogic approach and literature exploration elucidated the complexity of mainstreaming an educational innovation such as online mobility. It was clear that mainstreaming online mobility would require specific support for teachers on very diverse topics such as digital pedagogies, teaching in an international context, as well as organisational issues such as existing international exchange agreements and student registration processes. Moreover, it also became apparent that several support departments in the university would be affected by this educational innovation, most notably, the educational development unit, the international office and student administration. Moreover, it brought up the issue of the most efficient and effective new organisational processes that would be needed to facilitate this educational innovation. Concretely, we identified several needs from teachers. The first identified need was the need for a common terminology and language around online mobility across all KU Leuven actors. Early on in this endeavour, we discovered that there was confusion with the use of different terms regarding online mobility (e.g., telecollaboration, Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), virtual mobility, etc.). Teachers mentioned often how they became confused by the different terminologies used, and how this confusion acted as an obstacle for the uptake of online mobility. A second identified need was the need for a clear strategic direction. This resulted in the creation of a shared vision that was noted down into a formal policy note, perpetuated in the strategic policy plan and supported by all faculties. A third identified need was the need for better insight into the range of internationalisation possibilities for one course, and how aspects of internationalisation could be made tangible for the students. A fourth identified need was that teachers were unfamiliar with the instructional design options for online mobility, such as blended learning, teaching in an international context and assessment online. This has resulted in the creation of guidelines in the design of online mobility (e.g., include intercultural focus through instructional design choices). A final outcome was the identification of expertise in online mobility across the university.
Overall, the Analysis and Exploration activities showed that support for online mobility at KU Leuven needs to fit into the existing organisational processes used by KU Leuven Learning Lab [
26]. This means that the main target group for newly created support interventions are the faculty educational developers. They will, in their turn, be supporting the teaching staff. In addition, the internationalisation staff also play a unique role in this support. Materials that are created have to support both roles.
The Design and Construction phase brought to the fore several results. As mentioned earlier, a shared terminology at KU Leuven was developed on the forms of online mobility and published in the educational glossary of KU Leuven [
27]. In order to avoid a delay in the project due to a possible semantic discussion, KU Leuven decided in December 2020 to use the term “online mobility” to refer to “all formats of cross-border online formal education, based on the exchange between two or more institutions for higher education”. KU Leuven recognised in this rather pragmatic approach the common definitions of virtual exchange and collaborative online international learning [
28,
29]. The design conjecture behind this intervention was that common terminology would clear up confusion for teachers and create clear precedent models of online mobility, which will ultimately facilitate teachers in creating new online mobility courses [
30].
We narrowed down the diversity of concepts to indicate the different online mobility formats that were closest to the university’s teaching needs.
Online mobility for study is defined as cross-border online formal education based on the exchange between two or more institutions for higher education. We distinguished four different formats:
KU Leuven students can take online courses at another university and students at partner universities can do the same at KU Leuven. They count for at least three ECTS and include a formal assessment. The administrative processes are the same as for physical exchange students;
- b.
Blended mobility
Blended mobility is a combination of physical and online mobility. In this case, the period of physical mobility is usually short(er). The role of the online mobility activities is to prepare, follow-up and/or reinforce the physical mobility experience;
- c.
Joint International Formats
These are learning activities or courses developed in collaboration with teaching staff/didactic teams at a partner institution. The aim of these activities is to stimulate interaction and collaboration between students with a different national and/or cultural background;
- d.
Virtual or blended international internships
Work placements or internships involve three different stakeholders: the student, the higher education institution and the receiving company or organisation. During a work placement these three stakeholders ideally interact with each other on a regular basis. When the interaction between student and company is mainly ICT-supported, we talk about a virtual work placement or internship. When part of the interaction between the two stakeholders takes place face-to-face, we talk about a blended work placement or internship.
Different formats can also be combined.
A second design outcome was the outline of the possible training flow within the university. Following the organisation of the KU Leuven Learning Lab, first-line support for teachers has been situated within the faculties with the educational support staff and internationalisation staff at the faculty taking up a role for the immediate support. This involved the creation of new working methods and collaborations within the faculties. As second-line support, central support units design and develop new material and formats on instructional design specifically for online mobility. Educational and internationalisation support staff will work in duo in addressing questions about online mobility within the faculties. Support materials that will be created will also be integrated within the existing educational support strategies/model, and the ongoing efforts regarding internationalisation of curricula at the university.
As stated in 2006 by Mishra and Koehler, teachers often face difficulties when implementing educational technology. They do not only need content (what) and pedagogical knowledge (how) to design their learning activities and courses, but also technological knowledge (using what tools) for successful edtech integration. Since it is not always possible to find these types of knowledge within one person, the KU Leuven Learning Lab already uses a
design team approach for educational support [
21]. In every design team all three types of knowledge are represented [
31]. Designing international online learning activities also appeals to international and intercultural literacy, thus shifting from the TPACK model towards the TPACK-I model (
Figure 2).
To support online international learning activities, a design team will be composed in such a way that international knowledge is sufficiently present as well.
The guide for the blended course design we currently use at KU Leuven is based on the ABC Learning Design method [
32,
33]. During the experiment we also looked into the ACAD framework [
34], which offers a practical approach to analysing complex learning situations, such as virtual or blended mobility activities/courses. The design conjecture behind this intervention is to provide micro-level support to teachers by the colleagues best placed to support them (namely educational support staff and international liaisons in faculties) with appropriate pedagogical, technical and organisational support [
30].
A third concrete intervention was the design of a workshop series and staged approach to support international teacher teams around a Blended Intensive Programme. The aim of this workshop series (and the design conjecture behind it) was to develop standardised methods for facilitating the design of BIPs that encompass the pedagogical, technological, content and internationalisation aspects in a cohesive and complete way. We started from existing support materials such as the OpenVM Design Guide [
35] and Learner Skills in Mobility [
8].
A fourth and final concrete intervention was the creation of appropriate teaching and learning administrative processes to support online mobility activities. KU Leuven has in this way chosen consistent ways to use learning contracts such as in Erasmus mobility and the monitoring of incoming and outgoing students in different forms of online mobility. The design conjecture behind this intervention was to align online mobility with other forms of mobility in the institution, with the aim to increase familiarity for teachers who can see this innovative form of mobility in the same way as other mobilities.
In the ongoing Evaluation and Reflection phase, the created interventions were implemented and tested in real situations through the facilitation of three Blended Intensive Programmes at three different faculties at KU Leuven that were supported or organised. The design of these programmes was initiated in the period of November 2021–June 2022, and this is a sign of the positive uptake of this form of educational innovation by faculties at the institution. The Faculty of Engineering Technology organised in spring 2022 a BIP on Sustainable Energy in an Internet-of-Things World. The BIP included lectures on state-of-the-art technologies, sharing of methodologies and best practices, discussions between professors, researchers and students and team-based project work. The virtual part was based on self-study prior to the physical week and finalizing the prototype of their output and a group report afterwards.
Two other BIPs at the Faculty of Law and Criminology and the Faculty of Economics and Business are being designed for launch in February and March 2023, respectively. These BIPs are being supported in a workshop series with the use of existing materials. The facilitation is held in a reflective and dialogic manner to identify structural needs and sequences in the design.
Ongoing reflective dialogue has also ensued with the educational support staff at the Educational Development Unit/KU Leuven Learning Lab to discuss how the complex support for online/blended mobility activities can be organised and how to integrate the developed support materials and instruments within the KU Leuven Learning Lab portal.
With this background, we can now attempt to answer the research questions.
In answer to the first research question: “What are the support needs of teachers and educational support staff in the creation and implementation of online mobility activities?”, we can state that results of the pilots showed that support for online mobility is quite similar to other support needs for educational innovation such as for online learning, group work and blended learning, but that there is an added complexity of working in an international context. This added complexity is apparent in several practical issues such as the positioning of the BIP in the curriculum, the workload/ECTS credits associated with a BIP and the use of common online platforms within an international teacher and student team.
Teachers need a structured process in the design of online mobility, so that they can foresee the complexity and address it early on in discussions with partners. We have explored several educational design models and are in the process of developing a design support instrument that can deal with this complexity.
In answer to the second research question: “What can a blueprint of an ideal support programme and instrument look like, within the context of KU Leuven?”, the exploration of the KU Leuven organisational structure gave us insights into (i) where support needs to be positioned, (ii) who offers front-line support and (iii) what the long-term, mid-term and short-term needs are regarding support. This exploration has allowed us to develop a plan for a phased support approach where teaching teams can use and adapt templates of instructional design for virtual mobility and reach out to central support teams for more bespoke support when needed. It has become clear that specific support and good practice will need to be developed on topics of intercultural learning and online assessment among others.
Regarding the research objectives posed, this study has shown that mainstreaming online mobility at a higher education institution requires the involvement of several departments at the university concerned with pedagogical support, internationalisation and student administration. Micro-level support for teachers is also needed to guide them in the design of these innovative educational forms. Simple interventions such as shared terminology and guided support from multiple perspectives have already been very effective in facilitating the uptake of online mobility as an educational innovation.
4. Discussion
Like other institutions, KU Leuven has recognised that virtual and blended mobility can provide authentic international learning experiences and has thereby reinforced its commitment to develop and register online and hybrid formats of international mobility, building on the experiences gained during the pandemic. Below, we discuss the findings on the organisational, pedagogical and policy aspects.
Regarding organisation, adequate monitoring of online mobility will be necessary to follow-up and evaluate the strategic goals of KU Leuven. Student registration is also vital in order to acknowledge the learning objectives the student has acquired. However, despite effective and efficient process flows for online mobility put in place in dialogue with the Teaching and Learning Processes unit that have maximised the registration/reporting of incoming and outgoing online student mobility, not all types of online mobility are currently fully registered. For example, participation in online courses or Blended Intensive Programmes are registered in the administrative systems and are mentioned on the diploma supplement. Other types of online mobility, such as joint innovative formats where online learning activities, developed or organised in collaboration with partner institutions, are integrated into existing courses, have not yet been fully grasped by the administrative systems. This raises questions on when a course can be defined as being an “international course”. Is, for example, a course that includes a few online guest lectures from international experts an international mobility experience? Should this be registered as online mobility? How do you make these kinds of activities visible in your educational offer and course catalogue and ultimately in the student’s individual educational programme? How can you integrate this in the processes and make an accurate registration of this type of internationalisation possible? Monitoring online mobility through registration in individual student portfolios is an important step in creating interest with the students and faculty for investing time and effort in these kinds of innovative formats.
Adequate monitoring of acquired competences is equally important. Online mobility activities offer unique international learning environments where several skills or competences can be developed. In the OpenVM project, seven learner competence areas that can be (but need not always be) addressed through online mobility were identified. These include intercultural skills, interactive and collaborative learning, autonomy-driven learning, networked learning, media and digital literacy, active self-regulated learning and open-mindedness [
8]. Depending on the design of the activity, students will have more or fewer opportunities to develop specific skills. These skills are recognised widely as competences that will help students becoming professionals to better navigate their career in the modern workplace. Students that have engaged in online mobility activities and have acquired such competences must therefore be rewarded for this. During the Design and Construction phase, it was clear that it was important to address these transversal competences explicitly as intended learning outcomes. A clear vision on the learning goals as well as teacher support for designing appropriate learning environments, including the assessment of this kind of experiential learning, will be crucial. More clarity in relation to which competences are developed through online mobility creates more opportunities to create interest with teachers to invest time in developing these new formats in effective ways.
Important to mention here is the fact that in the whole trajectory we have not yet spoken to students. This is an area where further dialogue is recommended.
From a pedagogical perspective, the KU Leuven definition of online mobility is broader than only virtual exchange and collaborative online international learning. Although in the literature [
28,
29] much emphasis has been placed on the importance of collaborative international learning, KU Leuven includes online exchange courses in their definition even if these courses do not address intercultural or international competence development. In our opinion these courses can have an added value for students and/or teachers. These online exchange courses enable students to customise their individual study programme by following (niche) courses at partner universities that are not offered at the home university, or at times when no courses are offered at the home university. It enables lecturers to attract additional students for niche subjects, or to attract a diverse(er) group of students.
Regarding policy, in this study we tried to balance between implementing top-down decisions and fostering bottom-up initiatives. At the policy level, the strategy can be laid out but, in the end, it will be up to the faculties to take the initiative to set up online mobility activities. In this study we brought together the domains of education and internationalisation and aligned all processes with the Teaching and Learning Processes unit. This was highly appreciated by all the people involved at KU Leuven.
Within the framework of the OpenU project, intensive support could be offered to faculties on the central level but in the longer term, this support will be translated in processes that are embedded and consolidated into the regular support structures. Responsibility for providing support to teachers and teacher teams will then also be put more with the faculties. To reach this in a sustainable way, it became clear during the dialogues with different departments at KU Leuven that the support offer for online mobility needed to be embedded in the already existing structures and directly linked to the strategic plan. Administrative and organisational support will follow as much as possible the already existing flows from the Teaching and Learning Processes unit and will be adapted where necessary. By explicitly and continuously referring to the strategic goals, commitment to the different units can be guaranteed and collaboration can be enforced. The networked approach also ensures a shared responsibility to work together towards the realisation of these goals.