VCRP - Virtueller Campus Rheinland-Pfalz

Description

In contrast to other virtual universities the virtual Campus of Rhineland-Palatinate is primarily an information and exchange platform for the eLearning activities of the universities of the state. As a central education Internet portal it offers study informations, services and consultations to both students and instructors at Rhineland-Palatinian universities and is open to anyone. The virtual campus maintains a search engine of all publicly available online materials of the state's universities.

Goal

The main goal is the further integration of eLearning into the academic daily routine. The coworkers of the VCRP support interested instructors with the implementation of eLearning. A great potential of eLearning in the academic environment is it's supplementation of already existing activities, by making the latter more accessible and attractive. For example, the additional online learning resources offers to students the change for arranging their study times more flexible and effective.

Single projects, which primarily have content development as a goal, are not promoted by the VCRP; instead one wants to cultivate a favorable climate spurring growth of additional online content. Logically the central fields of activity of the VCRP cover:

1. Supporting instructors in implementing net-based courses and events:
   • Suppling learning platforms and author systems to supplement traditional teachings efforts.
   • Offering training courses for the usage of eLearning platforms and author systems.
   • Hosting user conferences and workshops about net-based teaching.
   • Offering legal advice on copyright and communication media law.
   • Recommending production aids for online instructional content.
2. Organization of administrative structures:
   • Maintaining the Internet portal itself.
   • Promoting academic 'self-administration' including:
     Accounting, online enrollment and unenrollment, seminar registration, maintaining database of lectures with online content offerings and/or online meetings, etc..
   • Student autonomy.
   • Self organization of university's online groups.
3. Development of incentive systems:
   • Building a cooperation network between individual Rhineland- Palatinian university instructors and universities or university federations outside of Rhineland-Palatinate.
   • Offering help on content modularization of traditional courses, facilitating the creation of supplementing online material.
   • Determining the interface for communication between the participating universities.
   • Production of virtual learning modules at the universities with support by the VCRP.
   • Compilation of the learning modules for full or partially net-based courses.
   • Development of marketing strategies of net-based offers for university instructors.
   • Marketing by the VCRP in an agency function and distribution of profits between the universities and individual instructors.
   • Supporting and coordinating the preparation of grant proposals.
   • Distributing net-based training courses over the Internet portal of the VCRP.
   • Limited promotion of infrastructure strengthening projects within the available means of the VCRP.

1. The traditional universities increase the value of their teaching offerings by cross-linking among themselves.
2. The virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate makes states universities more attractive to students and potential students.
3. Virtual teaching is guided by the traditional academic principles of autonomy and responsibility.
4. The virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate promotes university life beyond teaching itself.

Investors

The Virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate includes:

The organization of the VCRP is structured as follows: The steering committee is made up by members of the executive committee of presidents from the state's universities and professional schools (LHPK), one representative of the universities, one representative of the professional schools, the director of the Regional University Computing Center at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, a representative from the state's Ministry for education, science and culture, and the director of the office of the VCRP. The committee analyzes the needs of the universities and provides general directions. The office of the VCRP implements the committee's decisions and coordinates all projects.

A designated representative, called ``contact person'', facilitates the communication between the VCRP and the universities. Last but not least there are the working groups made up by university instructors and scientific staff. The interdisciplinary working groups assemble usage essentials for the new media (net and portal structures, author systems, didactics, copyrights). The subject specific working groups are largely responsible for content development. For example, they might work on a detailed syllabus for students minoring in management economics or computer science.

The VCRP is physically located at the Regional University Computing Center at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern.

Contact

Links