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VRTUOSI
A Pioneer Virtual Exchange Program between Five European Universities
Andr´es Redchuk, Javier M. Moguerza and Javier Cano
Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Rey Juan Carlos University, 28943 Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain
Keywords:
on-Line education, e-Learning, Postgraduate, Exchange, Internationalization, Quality Improvement, Six-
Sigma.
Abstract:
Exchange programs have been very successful in Europe at the undergraduate level. However, difficulties arise
when attempting to implement it at the postgraduate level because of the ties (personal, professional, etc.) of
more mature students. We describe here the organization and implementation of VRTUOSI, a pioneer virtual
exchange program between five European universities. We also introduce a Six-Sigma based methodology
designed and developed to improve the quality in the VRTUOSI standards. We describe its structure and
web implementation, as well as its application to improve other european e-learning programs and our online
Master in Decision Systems Engineering (MDSE), emphasizing its positive effects on its internationalization
and popularization.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is commonly acknowledged that the ex-
change program ERASMUS (European Action
Scheme for the Mobility of University Students
http://ec.europa.eu/about/ds
en.htm) can be regarded
as one of the biggest successes of the European Union
(EU) educational policy. Since its launching in 1987,
more than 3,000,000 students and teachers have par-
ticipated in their programmes. However, the majority
of the participants has been undergraduate students,
being the presence of postgraduate students merely
testimonial (something that the Bologna Process
www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/
aims at changing). One of the main reason for this
phenomenon may be that postgraduate students
might have more restrictive family, professional
and/or work ties being more mature.
With this motivation in mind, we have proposed
the EU our VRTUOSI, http://www.vrtuosi.com,
within the Virtual Campus framework of
the EU Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP)
http://ec.europa.eu/education/index
en.htm. Ours
was one of the five proposals chosen by the EU in
the 2009 call. In this work, we provide a detailed
description of VRTUOSI, placing special emphasis
on its more paradigmatic issues. Indeed, these might
be of interest to other Higher Educational Institutions
planning to implement similar programmes.
Quality is an important issue within the Euro-
pean educational framework, as only outstanding
programs will benefit from European and national
funds and will call attention of a larger number of
students, ensuring their survival in a very competitive
environment. In this regard, we provide details of
the design, development and implementation of a
Six-Sigma based methodology to assess the quality
in our Master degrees (Chua, 2004; Cullen et al.,
2003; Harry and Schroeder, 2000). This quality
management system was first implemented in our
Master in Decision Systems Engineering (MDSE)
http://www.masteringenieriasistemasdecision.com/,
over the five-year period 2005–2010, and has been
adapted to monitor the launching of the first edition
of VRTUOSI. In this preliminary work, we focus
on the description of the project, its concept and
the implementation framework. In future works,
empirical data will be provided.
The structure of the paper is as follows. In Section
2 we provide an overall description of VRTOUSI and
its basic structure. Section 3 presents the guidelines
of the implementation process and legal framework
of VRTUOSI. Section 4 introduces the basic theoret-
ical guidelines of the Six-Sigma based methodology
we have followed in our master degrees programmes.
Following, Section 5 shows how our Six-Sigma based
management system can be used in practice to im-
prove the quality of our teaching standards. Section
297
Redchuk A., M. Moguerza J. and Cano J..
VRTUOSI - A Pioneer Virtual Exchange Program between Five European Universities.
DOI: 10.5220/0003345002970303
In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 297-303
ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)