The CIVIS Inter-University and Digital Campus: A Strategic Guidebook for a Shared Community Space

June, 2024Building on strategic documents of the first funding period and evaluating the practical experiences of the first phase, implementing the CIVIS2 project proposal as well as the CIVIS2 Mission and Vision Statement, and further elaborating the CIVIS Inter-University Campus Strategy, discussed and adopted earlier by the Steering Committee, this guidebook refines the strategy for the core infrastructure of the alliance, defining goals and guiding principles, evaluating needs and challenges, and suggesting different tools and processes as well as prioritised actions towards their implementation.

CIVIS Alliance is committed to enabling broadened, diversified, and enriched experiences of students, academic and non-academic staff, intensive and sustainable transnational cooperation, institutional learning, digitalisation, and innovation. In building the shared inter-university and digital campus, the partners agree in four areas of commitment:

1. inclusiveness, equality, and diversity,
2. sustainability and the green dimension,
3. global exchanges and collaboration, in particular with our partner institutions in Africa, and
4. collaboration with local and regional partners. Guided by these principles and objectives this guidebook defines strategic pathways in the fields of mobilities, digital infrastructure, inclusion and diversity, and gives an outlook on local, regional and global partnership.

In the different fields of action, 22 goals are identified and an action plan for achieving these goals is outlined, whereby a distinction is made between short-term measures and priorities and a long-term outlook, to which these short-term measures are directed.

The CIVIS Mobility Strategy focusses on a rich variety of classic and modern, short-term and long-term, physical, blended and virtual mobility formats for students and (academic and non-academic) staff. CIVIS Alliance’s great success story up to now are the CIVIS Blended Intensive Programmes, which form the core of CIVIS’s innovative short-term blended mobility offer, while classic semester mobilities are also greatly enhanced by the opportunities offered in the alliance. Key areas of development are virtual mobilities, as well as doctoral (training and research) mobilities, as well as all types of staff mobility. In all of these, the main focus is on sustainability and green mobility. As concerns the CIVIS Digital Campus, the strategy builds on three guiding principles:

1. Its tools and solutions are as de-centralised as possible, as centralised as necessary,
2. the use and promotion of European standards and solutions as well as Open Source solutions, and
3. making sure that CIVIS Alliance activities and the CIVIS Digital Campus are inclusive for all CIVIS Alliance partners and they can develop the involvement at a pace they can sustain. The inclusion and diversity strategy builds on an evaluation of the different institutional settings and framework conditions shaping the reality at the different partner universities. This includes bridging the disparities in economic and legal conditions, the different cultural traits, legacies and traditions, and in particular overcoming potential language barriers through multilingualism.

The considerations of this guidebook are based on the firm conviction that the common work of our partners will take cooperation, exchange, learning, inclusion and the experience of the European Higher Education Area to a new level. The guidebook is intended as a strategic guide not only to achieve this new level, but also to secure, shape and develop it sustainably, to create a stable and reliable inter-university and digital campus infrastructure on which CIVIS Alliance can thrive as a successful European University Alliance.

Explore the guidebook