Swiss Virtual Campus > The SVC at a glance

Home > The SVC at a glance > Program Contents

Site Map

English

Deutsch

Français

Program Contents

Goals
The Swiss Virtual Campus program is part of a process aimed at promoting the information society in Switzerland as well as enabling education - in particular higher education - to take advantage of the opportunities now available through new information and communication technology.

In this respect the program hopes to provide students with a virtual mobility that will enable them to play an active role in learning processes and follow high-quality courses on their computer monitors.

Principal aim
The principal concrete aim of the program is to develop teaching modules that will be used through the Internet in several regular study programs of the Swiss universities.

Information about the SVC Consolidation Program

Main aims
The three main aims of the program are:

To improve the quality of student learning processes and strengthen interactive teaching by broadening university teaching into a range of available courses for both on campus and corresponding students. The students should be encouraged to use all the information and resources available on the Internet as part of their real studies.

To strengthen of collaboration between the universities. Several institutions should be involved in each project. A system of credits should be set up to support the virtual mobility offered by the Swiss Virtual Campus system as well as life-long learning over the long term.

To develop of high-quality teaching materials and methods. The steering committee’s recommendation to create multilingual modules and use a common set of tools for setting up modules and for management functions should ensure that the course programs created by the Swiss Virtual Campus are of the highest quality. This high level of content, didactics and ergonomics should also guarantee a demand for these courses outside Switzerland.

Projects
The Swiss government intends to provide special support for a certain number of projects for a maximum period of three years so that the established targets can be achieved. The two Swiss federal institutes of technology, the universities of applied sciences and any interested private or foreign institutions are also invited to participate in the Swiss Virtual Campus but will fund their own involvement in the program.

General framework
In general, each project should develop a course that can be followed via the Internet that includes teaching material, exercises, seminars or practical work as well as online or direct aids and assessment (self-assessment and examinations). Projects involving teaching modules for large numbers of students will be particularly welcome. The courses developed should be part of a curriculum of the participating universities.

Support
The projects receive support from an interdisciplinary team of teaching, education and technology specialists with the requisite knowledge in the course subject matter, as well as people with specific knowledge of the IT tools necessary for implementing the course. All the parties involved should draw up the aims and content of the course proposals, and the question of certification of qualifications or credits must be clarified within each university.

Availability
The courses will be made available to the general public after the partners involved in the project have evaluated them. The modules that make up a course will be drawn up by one or several of the participating institutions, which will appoint a competent, motivated person as a project co-ordinator (part-time, at least 50%). At the same time, they will set up the appropriate infrastructure and ensure that the modules can be tested under controlled teaching conditions.

Worldwide use
The Swiss Virtual Campus projects differ from other efforts to enhance teaching through the introduction of new information and communication technology in that they involve complete courses that can be followed independently over the Internet. They will thus open the way to correspondence courses and life-long learning as an addition to the current range of courses available. Thanks to their autonomous character, the Swiss Virtual Campus projects will be well suited for use outside Switzerland.

Please note that this website is based on the information available at the conclusion of the federal program and will not be further actualized