4th International Conference on Student Mobility and ICT
It is our pleasure to invite you to the 4th S-ICT Conference "Student Mobility and ICT: Virtual Mobility", which will be held on the 3rd and 4th of November 2011 in Vienna (Austria). The conference is organised by the VIRQUAL project in co-operation with Vienna University of Technology and Maastricht University.

This year Virtual Mobility will be in the focus of presentations and discussions, completed by topics like e.g. knowledge acquisition and construction in e-learning, life-long learning, or description and assessment of learning outcomes. Keynote one and two double sessions will be organised by the team of the VIRQUAL project (Virtual Mobility and European Qualification Framework in HE and CE Institutions).

The conference will be opened by Alfredo Soeiro, Sevgi Özkan, Branca Miranda and Barbara Class with an introduction to VIRQUAL: "Virtual Mobility and how to enhance it with VIRQUAL" - seen from the perspectives of students, individual course designers, and institutions.

The VIRQUAL workshop will provide the best opportunity for the target groups mentioned above to test the product of the project (e.g. the learning outcomes repository, comparison of EU countries concerning their recognition practices) and to experience their potentials for improving daily work in the mobility business.

Last but not least the VIRQUAL roundtable will close the conference. The debate will confront the different viewpoints of experts from relevant fields - among them a representative of European students - and find an answer to the question "Improving Virtual Mobility - (how) can we benefit from VIRQUAL?"

General Theme of the Conference
Increasing internationalization in higher education, notably the introduction of the Bachelor-Master structure proposed by the Bologna rules, is removing borders for learners. Moreover, education is no longer confined to borders of age. Students become lifelong learners, and lifelong learners (might) become students.

But heterogeneity of prior knowledge, skills and competences of enrolled students has increased due to changes in secondary education. Furthermore, lifelong learning implicates a higher diversity in age range of learners which also adds to the diversity in educational and professional background and experience. Given this increased heterogeneity of student and lifelong learner enrolments, it is reasonable to expect that transitional problems become larger.

The 4th S ICT conference is focusing on how ICT and e-learning can help learners and institutions to use and optimize virtual mobility for both, replacing or supplementing physical student mobility. It is an opportunity to present your recent research findings and good practices, and to discuss with other scholars. (For more details see -> Call for Proposals at the confernce homepage).