Evaluation of the Swiss Virtual Campus - Schweizerische ...

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SVC Final Evaluation. Background Report Lepori and Probst 6 Conclusions Before coming to some concluding points, it is important to state that one should understand some limitations of this report dictated by its original mandate. Namely, the report limits itself to present the views and appreciations of the SVC coordination unit, of the directorates of the higher education institutions and of the SVC projects, while we disregarded those of other stakeholders like students (which have been included in the expert evaluation). Some biases might emerge for this reason. At the same time, the objective of this work has been more to understand the overall impact of the SVC programme on the development of elearning in Swiss higher education, than to measure the efficiency of spending in an economic sense or to compare the SVC with similar programmes abroad. If we come back to the main questions of this evaluation – elearning strategies and CCSP, sustainability of SVC projects, coordination and mandates – we get the following overview. 1) Firstly, during the SVC programme, most Swiss HEIs developed an elearning strategy and established a support centre which will be further continued after the end of programme. Most respondents in rectorates and CCSPs are confident in the future and stated that responsibility for elearning can now be fully taken by the institutions themselves; they also agreed that in many cases political pressure, financial support and coaching from the SVC gave a strong impetus to this process. At the same time, a number of problematic cases emerged where the CCSP is still in development or the situation is largely unclear. In our opinion, support and promotion of CCSP has been the most successful part of the whole programme and a solid heritage for the future development of elearning; also, most institutions answered positively to this impetus and found well-adapted solutions for their context. The SVC cannot be blamed for the few cases where, because of lack of institutional support or of difficult internal or personnel constellations, a CCSP has not yet been established. It remains an open issue to which extent some kind of monitoring and follow-up of CCSP should be organised, for example in the framework of the CRUS, to avoid some institutions losing momentum. 2) Secondly, projects themselves see their future perspectives as rather positive and affirm that the developed products are and will be used in education in most cases, even if lack of funding might impair future developments. CCSP and monitoring visits give a more differentiated view, where the projects which are based on standard technical solutions will be maintained, while more innovative and niche projects will have more difficulties. Overall, both sides see the collaboration between projects and CCSP as very positive and well-functioning. It is also stated that projects will also be used in the future by partners and not only by the leading house and, overall, the collaboration between different institutions has been judged as positive (even if resource- and time-consuming). Our opinion is that it would be incorrect to affirm that most of the SVC projects will just die after the end of federal funding, but that their outcome might be quite different from that foreseen at the beginning, especially for the 1 st and 2 nd series projects which were clearly aimed at developing fully on-line courses. It is likely that, with the exception of few projects, in most cases their impact will be more in the renewal of educational practices than in the development of widely used products and, in this respect, the decision to reduce funding levels quite considerably in the 3 rd and 4 th series has been seen as correct. 3) Finally, the steering and management of the programme has been generally appreciated, while the mandates clearly had a lower impact, largely because of the additional functions assumed by the CCSPs. Especially, the choice to establish a national LMS based on a commercial system revealed itself a posteriori as not adequate because of the stronger role assumed by the LMS adopted by a CCSP, of the development of open source software and technical problems with the adopted system. Our opinion is that these choices have to be considered in the context of the time when they were taken, but that it is correct to question if the rather large amount spent for mandates (4 mio. CHF) could not have been spent better. In the whole context of the programme, however, this seems to us to be a rather minor point. 55
SVC Final Evaluation. Background Report Lepori and Probst Overall, the opinions collected give a rather positive assessment of the programme across its whole life. Thus, the SVC, thanks already to its size, gave a strong impulse to elearning and was decisive in introducing it in the Swiss higher education institutions. Also, there is a strong feeling in the community that, from an initial concept oriented towards the development of products and technology, the programme developed a healthy trajectory and the evolution decided for the consolidation phase – support to the CCSP, reduction of the size of the projects, their integration with CCSP – were quite important in this respect. We completely share this view. It is now clear that the initial concept in the impulse phase did not correspond to the applications of educational technologies best adapted to Swiss HEI and that it was too strongly influenced by experience in distance (on-line) education. One should recognize that evolving from this starting point to an approach more suitable to the Swiss context was essential in reaching the overall policy goal of the programme, namely diffusing elearning in Swiss HEI. It should be considered as a success of the programme that this evolution was managed without major disruptions. Finally, the trajectory of the SVC programme from the development of stand-alone products towards a stronger integration in existing educational activities (and answering to the needs raised by reforms like Bologna) explains why its conclusion seems to raise rather few problems and, in many cases, it is seen as natural outcome of this process. Most HEI prepared themselves for this transition and progressively integrated CCSP funding in their regular budget. They introduced seed money for internal projects, although a few difficult cases still remain. Also, the request for national services seems to be rather limited, with the exception of keeping network activities like a CCSP assembly and some regular national events and communication channels, while the request for technical support seems to be less. Thus, in our opinion, the decision not to continue with the programme is largely justified, even if there remains a major issue on how to coach and assist the HEIs which are still developing their CCSP and/or are unclear concerning their elearning strategy. 56
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Schweizerische Universitätskonfere
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experts ont retrouvé les personnes
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die Experten dann mit den Betroffen
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Rapport des évaluateurs du Campus
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sur lʼaide aux universités (LAU)
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l'enseignement en face à face, bie
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2. Les CCSP ont été clairement co
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plupart des universités disposent
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Le Ministère autrichien a en outre
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généralement considérée comme t
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• Nach welchen Kriterien beurteil
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Die Expertengruppe stellte zudem fe
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Stossrichtung wird deutlich, dass d
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verständlich, dass die Hochschulen
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wurde eine Vertretung der Hochschul
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• E-Learning muss auch ohne Budge
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Introduction The Swiss Virtual Camp
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account the goal stated in the mult
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how sustainable the initiative woul
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that SNF and CTI might be encourage
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Hochschule Bayern” in Bavaria off
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• elearning initiatives elsewhere
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Swiss Virtual Campus Consolidation
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