Managing Inter-University Digital Collaboration from a Bottom-Up Approach: Lessons from Organizational, Pedagogical, and Technological Dimensions

Abstract

Driven by education policies, digitally enhanced partnerships between higher education institutions (HEIs) have become increasingly important in the pursuit of sustainability in European education. This article emphasizes the necessity of evidence-based policy implementation to prevent tensions between the decision-making layer (the upper level) and the institutional layer adopting the new norms (the bottom level) in the context of digital inter-university collaboration. To address this need, we conducted a comprehensive three-year (2020–2022) research project within the framework of Erasmus+. Our consortium comprises seven renowned European universities. The project’s primary objective was to investigate how digitalization impacts HEI cooperation and joint learning activities both at the intra- and inter-institutional levels. We conducted experiments that accounted for specific challenges or lessons emerging from three perspectives: organization, pedagogy, and technology. In the organizational domain, we identified challenges related to HEI alliance aspects, such as trust, teacher incentives, legal frameworks, operational requirements, external policies, and mobility needs; and information flow, specifically in terms of disseminating local projects, and clarifying local institutional jargon. The pedagogical perspective revealed challenges in pedagogical support, especially in developing teachers’ digital skills; learning assessment, involving agreement among teachers and externals participants; and course design, including a wide variety of aspects, such as course flexibility, different calendars, async/sync balance, mandatory and optional regimes, content creation, and learning validation. Lastly, in the technology dimension, we found challenges related to the relevance of software choices, and centralized digital structures. This research aims to highlight the importance of evidence-based data in shaping education policies. By drawing on real-world experiences from a consortium of universities, we shed light on the intricate dynamics of digital inter-university collaboration.