Collaborating across borders

Janina van Hees and Ecca Berhitu of Utrecht University tell how they are tackling the challenge of interoperability. "The joint master's is the largest educational product within our alliance," says Janina van Hees, Project manager and Lead IT Strategy at CHARM-EU. "In September, the fifth cohort will start; then, for the first time, all nine partners will participate. Students follow the programme synchronously in multiple locations. That's quite an operation."

Pragmatic solutions

To make this possible, CHARM-EU developed hybrid classrooms, which allow students to study from their own campus at the same time. The University of Barcelona handles the enrolment process, but all institutions must have the same student data and process them in their own systems. "That can be done manually, but of course you don't want that," says Janina. "We are investigating whether we can automate that with the Open Education API."

Then there is the authentication issue: students need to be able to log in to the learning environment. How do you arrange that across institutions and countries? "And eventually you also want to issue a diploma," Janina continues. "That is now physically signed in five places, soon in nine. That process takes four months! We are looking at whether digital signing is possible, but laws and regulations get in the way. In practice, we often have to look for pragmatic solutions. Then it works, and from there you can improve processes further."

National contexts

"That doesn't mean we are being very reactive," says Ecca Berhitu, enterprise architect at Utrecht University. "Indeed, the issues at play and what we are up against are the usual suspects: identities, the course catalogue, standards for data. But what we do discover within the alliance is the context in which those issues arise. You have to ask the different institutions about it and then you come back with surprising things, which you don't think about as a Dutch institution."

"In Hungary, for example, they always register the mother's surname," says Janina. "That has to do with national legislation. While elsewhere this is a common security question for when someone has lost their password. So we work with systems that may look similar on paper, but in practice are heavily influenced by national context. And that is exactly why this work is so important: we actually bring Europe closer together. By getting things working collectively and building something that works for everyone. We call that a seamless experience. To do so, we have to cross thresholds, but we also learn an awful lot from each other. Starting from pragmatic solutions, we work towards sustainable improvements.

Working on a common language

Cooperation across national borders requires more than technical solutions. This also applies to the alliance's partners' technological cooperation. "When we first got together with all the IT people two years ago, it turned out that we were all using different terms for the same things," says Ecca. "Scheduling, admission and enrolment... Everyone just called it differently and also had a different image of it."

To get a grip on collaboration, they deployed the HERM (Higher Education Reference Model) capability model. "We systematically went through all the capabilities ," Ecca explains. "For each component, we discussed what it meant in the context of our alliance and where IT could play a role. Colleagues involved in content also participated in these discussions." This created a shared picture as well as a common focus.

What makes HERM so suitable is that it is structured according to the learner journey: from orientation and application to testing and certification. That structure helped to get IT practitioners and non-IT practitioners on the same track. Meanwhile, HERM has really come to life within the alliance. The fact that the model is in English and understandable for different disciplines certainly contributes to this.

Next, that whole student journey was mapped out. "We looked at where things were going well and where they were chafing at each stage, from the student perspective as well as from the process side." That fit-gap analysis showed where bottlenecks were and what could be improved in the short term. The result was an overview that helped to set priorities and properly substantiate the impact of choices.

One support organisation

One of the first action points on the joint IT roadmap of CHARM-EU was the creation of a support organisation. This took shape in the Joint Virtual IT Office, within which the IT work is shared among the partner institutions. "We first mapped the areas where support was needed," Janina explains. "Then we started 'quarteting': who has what expertise, where is capacity, and who wants to deal with which themes?"

Each support area is now carried by one or two institutions. "That way you exploit local expertise, without each institution having to be able to or do everything. Together you maintain a complete support package, across institutions and national borders. There are few alliances that have set it up like this. I'm quite proud of that!"

Added value for UU

CHARM-EU is more than an international collaboration for Utrecht University. It acts as a testing ground for digital collaboration across all kinds of borders. "It is a manageable alliance with a manageable group of students," says Janina. "Despite the complexity of the national contexts, it is an ideal environment to try things out. You learn a lot about how international cooperation works, and what of it is useful for wider applications." Ecca adds: "You actually have a lot of freedom of movement within such an alliance. Little is fixed yet, so you can really build something."

Importance of interoperability

At the same time, working within CHARM-EU makes it crystal clear how important interoperability is. "The more you want to do together, the more complex it becomes," says Ecca. "If you're not interoperable yet, i.e. if systems don't connect properly, it comes at the expense of the student experience."

"Sometimes it seems like a small detail," he continues, "like registering the mother's surname. But if you don't solve things like that, you can't automate processes properly. And without interoperability, you keep running into limitations. In Europe, we just haven't reached the point where everything can be automated and effortless. Until then, we must continue to seek cooperation and try to work on solutions."