Evaluation of the Swiss Virtual Campus - Schweizerische ...

SVC Final Evaluation. Background Report Lepori and Probst
Executive summary
This report provides the background material for the final evaluation of the Swiss Virtual
Campus (SVC) programme and, more precisely, of the consolidation phase. It collects evidence
from SVC documents and reports, an on-line questionnaire to SVC projects and interviews with
leaders of Swiss Higher Education Institutions and directors of Centres of Competence, Service
and Production (CCSP) concerning the following three issues:
• the functioning and activities of the CCSPs and the contribution of the SVC programme to
their establishment;
• the implementation and integration in educational curricula of SVC projects and their
perspectives after the end of federal funding;
• the functioning of the SVC coordination and the contribution of the SVC mandates to the
development of elearning in Swiss HEI.
The report serves as a basis for the evaluation of the programme done by three international
experts in spring 2008.
On the basis of the available materials, the authors have come to the following main
conclusions:
1) Firstly, during the time of 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 were quite confident in the future and
stated that responsibility for elearning can now be fully taken by the institutions themselves. At
the same time, a number of problematic cases emerged where the CCSP is still in development
or the situation is largely unclear. Thus, in our opinion, support and promotion of CCSP has
been the most successful part of the whole Consolidation Programme and a solid heritage for
the future development of elearning.
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. CCSPs 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 the CCSP as very positive and well-functioning. It is also
stated that in the future, projects will be used not only by the leading house, but also by partners
and, overall, the collaboration between different institutions has been judged as positive.
3) Finally, the steering and management of the programme have been generally appreciated,
while the mandates had a clearly lower impact, largely because of the additional functions
assumed by the CCSP. In particular, the decision to establish a national LMS based on a
commercial system revealed itself a posteriori as not a good one.
Overall, the opinions collected give a rather positive assessment of the programme across its
whole life. The SVC Programme gave a strong impulse to elearning and was decisive in
introducing elearning in to the Swiss higher education institutions. Also, there is a strong feeling
in the community that, from an initial concept too strongly oriented towards the development of
products and technology, the programme developed a healthy trajectory and the evolution to
the themes decided for the consolidation phase – support to the CCSP, reduction of the size of
the projects, their integration with CCSP – was quite important in this respect. Thus, in our
opinion, the decision not to continue with the programme is largely justified, even if there
remains a major issue of how to coach and assist the HEIs which are still developing their
CCSP and/or are unclear concerning their elearning strategy.
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