1.
Digital Education and
University Alliances
EADTU-EU Summit 2021
Sanna-Katja Parikka, University of Helsinki
Chair of the Una Europa IT for Education

2.
Topics
• Una Europa – Overview of the alliance
• Flexible Support Services for academics at Una
Europa
• Innovative course formats: Challenges and solutions

3.
Freie Universität
Berlin
Alma Mater
Studiorum Universitá
di Bologna
The University
of Edinburgh
Helsingin
yliopisto
Uniwersytet
Jagielloński
w Krakowie
KU Leuven Universidad
Complutense
de Madrid
Université Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne

4.
Una Europa University Partners
+ Freie Universität Berlin
+ Università di Bologna
+ University of Edinburgh
+ Helsingin Yliopisto
+ Uniwersytet Jagielloński
w Krakowie
+ KU Leuven
+ Universidad Complutense
de Madrid
+ Université Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne
4

5.
Una Europa presentation 5
Our Focus Areas
Data Science & AI European Studies One Health
Cultural Heritage Sustainability

6.
Pilot courses and programmes
Cultural
Heritage
European
Studies
Sustainability
Data Science
& AI
Joint Bachelor
Joint Master
Joint Doctoral Spaces
Joint Micro-Credentials
Joint Continuous
Education Certificate
Joint MOOCs
OER
Una Chairs
Challenge-based &
service learning
6

7.
Guiding principles
• Promoting multilingualism
• Facilitating interdisciplinarity
• Fostering integration between education, research and
innovation
• Creating an international learning space, where physical
and virtual presence are integrated
• Integrating peer-to-peer collaboration
• Involving local communities in educational practice
• Stimulating active and deep-level learning through high
impact pedagogies.
7

8.
Flexible Support
Services for
Academics

9.
Una Workflows
• Specialist clusters that support academics in the co-creation of the
Una Europa courses and study programmes: Teaching & Learning
cluster, Legal cluster, IT for Education cluster, etc.
• Empowerment of staff through Continuous Professional
Development, including annual staff weeks and international
benchmarking among clusters.
• New concepts on international team teaching and course
development with the Pilot team approach = lead university +
support.
• Operations overseen by the Una Europa Executive Committee and
Coordinators of the project.
• Regular meetings for chairs of thematic clusters, work package leads;
each cluster organizes their own workflow and meetings as relevant.
”Pilot team
approach”

10.
Specialist Clusters
Doctoral Training cluster
Legal Cluster
Mobility cluster
Quality Assurance cluster
Student Administration cluster
Research Coordination cluster
Teaching & Learning cluster +
Continuous education cluster
IT for Education cluster
Each cluster has
representation from
each Una Europa
institution

11.
Una Europa IT for Education
Cluster – Key Purposes
To share and further develop best practices in online
learning design within Una Europa
To write recommendations for Una Europa concept
papers and project documentation
To support Una Europa course designs and build into
the LMS's through consultations and workshops for Una
Europa faculty and course-building staff
To function as a hub for educational technology
questions within Una Europa.
To reach out to relevant specialists in the Una Europa
institutions to collaborate on various course design
processes at Una Europa.

12.
About the Cluster
8 specialists in educational technology
+ affiliated specialists and guests when needed.
For example, KU Leuven MOOC team members take part.
Skillbase: IT leadership, elearning software administrators and
designers, elearning pedagogy specialists.
Benchmarking and mapping of programs, services, and trainings
among Una is of key importance.

13.
Examples of Work by the IT Cluster
Training, consulting, support for faculty on use of all infrastructure that is in use for digital teaching,
learning, examinations at the respective universities.
Benchmarking between Una Europa institutions to share best practices.
à These benefit Una Europa and also local courses and workflows.
In course planning phase – minimum 3 hr workshop or webinar:
MOOC
Principles Online
assessment
Course
visual
design
+ Customized
trainings

14.
Development of the Digital
Education Formats

15.
Learning Management Systems (LMS)
• Altogether 15 + Learning Management Systems used in Una
institutions: Moodle, Blackboard, EdX, Toledo, FutureLearn, etc.
• Decision to use local LMSs, and in joint teaching courses typically the
lead university’s LMS.
• This is to get the academic program up and running
and to avoid overlapping work; courses should run on top of existing
infrastructure to capitalize on what we already have.
• Some of the courses are for practical reasons in local LMSs à not
limiting to only ”Una Europa LMS” keeps the door open for those courses,
as well.
• IT/eLearning support is from the local institution and also based on the
academic program lead.

16.
ABC Course Design Method
Una Europa presentation 16
In 2020, the cluster mapped existing trainings
à Three of the Una institutions were already utilizing the same course
design method, called ABC.
ABC was created in the University College of London by
Dr. Clive Young and Nataša Perović (https://abc-ld.org/) and further
developed through an Erasmus+ project in 2018-2020.
The workshop idea is to visually create the storyboard of a course using
cards that refer to elearning pedagogy and online tools.
During Covid-19, the workshop is conducted online with the teaching teams
and elearning technology specialists, using digital cards and online canvases.
à Proven quite useful for creating courses with a team of teachers
à ABC helps to facilitate the key discussions among the design
team

17.
Una Europa Microcredentials
and Joint Innovative Formats

18.
Many Innovative Types of Courses
• Microcredentials and Joint Innovative Formats include a variety of
course types from self-guided MOOCs to collaborative and jointly
taught cross-discipline small courses.
• Courses are online and/or may have local or field task elements.
• May include collaborations with work life both as course participants
and as challenge-based assignments.
à The ABC design method helps with the online
workflows. The workshop’s pedagogical content can be
customized to design a variety of course and program types.

19.
A Challenge to be Solved
• How to design open courses or MOOCs for
course themes that would benefit from small
group work and interdisciplinary collaborations,
that however, also need to provide university
credits instead of ”only” MOOC certificates?
à The Una Europa pilots will produce and test
solutions for pedagogy, international course team
design workflows, and international student
registration processes.

20.
Conclusion
• In general, European Universities are in pilot phase and therefore testing
different models of digital education.
• This presentation discussed just one aspect of Una Europa, namely the work of
the IT cluster so far; however, there are many more Una Europa project elements
in progress.
• As Una Europa, we are committed to sharing and scaling our formats with other
partners through the development of manuals, guidelines, etc.
• We are using our experience to contribute to EU policy developments on, e.g.
micro-credentials, the European Degree, the framework for Quality Assurance.
• We are looking forward to the roll-out of the European Universities initiative to
further develop and scale our formats.

21.
@Una_europa
#Una_Europa
Follow us on Social Media

22.
Thank You
sanna.parikka@helsinki.fi