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 ve 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.)
6 provides some practical advices for the implemen-
tation of similar programmes. We conclude with a
discussion.
2 GENERAL DESCRIPTION
OF VRTUOSI
VRTUOSI allows the exchange of virtual courses
between these five universities: Universidad Rey
Juan Carlos (URJC, Spain), Universit Paris-Dauphine
(France), Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal),
´
Obudai Egyetem (Hungary) and Tampereen Teknilli-
nen Yliopisto (Finland). The company Habber Tec
S.L. also participates in the program as a partner.
VRTUOSI focuses on the exchange of courses at
the postgraduate level (Master and PhD degrees) for
students original from these five universities in Deci-
sion Sciences. It provides open access to part of the
material, being the rest of the material restricted to the
students taking the courses, who will get credits after
completing the proposed tasks.
The courses are taught in English, including the
following courses, all of them of 3 ECTS (European
Credit Transfer and Accumulation System units):
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Spain)
(VR MAD001) Simulation;
(VR MAD002) Quality Control: Six-Sigma;
Universit´e de Paris-Dauphine (France)
(VR PAR001) Tools for public policy evalua-
tion;
(VR PAR002) Game Theory and Practice;
Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal)
(VR COI001) Multiobjective Meta-Heuristics;
(VR COI002) Multicriteria Decision Analysis;
´
Obudai Egyetem (Hungary)
(VR BUD001) Operational Research Methods;
(VR BUD002) Computational Intelligence;
Tampereen Teknillinen Yliopisto (Finland)
(VR TAM001) Many valued similarities;
(VR TAM002) Data Mining.
Each university teaches two courses and sends six stu-
dents to each course. Therefore, each course is under-
taken by 30 students, and the whole master is attended
by 300 students in this first edition 2010–11, which
covers 30 ECTS. Each student is allowed to register
in a maximum of 6 ECTS (the usual academic load is
60 ECTS per year for postgraduate students).
3 IMPLEMENTATION OF
VRTUOSI
The implementation of VRTUOSI has required spe-
cific actions from each participant university, as well
as a common coordinated action. In this section, we
outline the most important issues regarding the imple-
mentation of VRTOUSI.
3.1 Legal Framework
One of the most difficult tasks in the implementation
of VRTUOSI was to provide it with a legal frame-
work. An initial agreement was signed by the coor-
dinating university (URJC), and the EU. An ad hoc
agreement was issued by the six members of VRTU-
OSI, based on the standard agreements of the FP7-
type projects http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm .
Such agreement may be useful for future similar pro-
grams. See the VRTUOSI webpage for specific de-
tails.
3.2 A First Insight on the Virtual
Campus
Our initial idea was to launch a Metacampus over the
virtual campuses of the ve participating universities.
However, due to the different maturity of these
virtual campuses, we eventually opted to create a
new website offering information about VRTUOSI,
containing open-access material and facilitating ac-
cess to the URJC Virtual Campus. All the VRTUOSI
courses are then hosted at the URJC Virtual Cam-
pus, http://www.campusvirtual.urjc.es, supported
by a WebCT platform, see www.blackboard.com,
http:// courses3.webct.com/webct/public/home.pl for
details.
A username and password was provided for teach-
ers and students not belonging to the URJC. The user
interface giving access to VRTUOSI is shown in Fig-
ure 1.
Once we have chosen a specific course, we can ac-
cess all the related information and materials, which
are organized as shown in Figure 2.
3.3 Virtual Campus e-Learning Tool
Through the VRTUOSI webpage, and once identified
by the system after introducing his/her unique login
and password, a student can access his/her assigned
courses.
The Virtual Campus is the main tool for e-learning
purposes. It hosts basic information, materials and
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298
Figure 1: Entering VRTUOSI.
Figure 2: Six-Sigma VRTUOSI course structure.
rules about the courses. But it also allows participants
to communicate within a secure environment.
The main modules from within Campus Vir-
tual are: Control Panel, Guide, Materials, Calendar,
Teachers, Students, Marks, Progress, Resources, As-
signments, Exams, Communications and e-Talk, as
shown in Figure 2. A sample course which shows
the basic structure of a hypothetic course is avail-
able through the Virtual Campus for didactic purposes
for intervening lecturers. We outline now the general
structure of the most important modules:
At the Control Panel there is a File Manager,
which allows the user to manage his/her files dur-
ing the course. It is possible to upload, delete,
move, zip, unzip files to the system, among other
actions;
The Guide module provides a small description
of the course, and contains the planning for the
course;
The Materials module hosts all files needed for
the course, except assignments and exams, which
are placed in separate modules. It is possible to
display an organized hierarchy of documents;
The Calendar module is a very useful tool in or-
der to synchronize the teachers and students. It is
possible to publish special dates on it;
The Teachers module provides a small descrip-
tion of the profiles and CVs of the teachers of the
course;
The Students module shows the profiles and
records of the students;
The Marks module manages the students’ marks.
It is possible to edit each mark or assignment from
there;
The Progress module allows students to track
their evolution during the course;
The Resources module stores relevant informa-
tion regarding the course as e.g. links to external
contents;
The Assignments module allows teachers to set
assignments for the course. It also manages sub-
missions of students and their eventual evaluation
by teachers;
The Exams module is an interactive tool that al-
lows teachers to prepare and launch on-line and
off or on real-time exams and tests for the stu-
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299
dents, who may be remotely connected while ac-
complishing it;
At the Communications module, the user can
find different tools. The most important one is the
Email service, through which students can com-
municate the teachers and vice versa;
The e-Talk module works as a forum, where stu-
dents can post questions to other students and/or
the teachers, or debate about them.
It is important to note that any of these components
can be hidden or revealed to the students. For ex-
ample, it could be interesting to hide part or all the
files in the Materials module until the beginning of
the course, depending on the pedagogical strategy.
3.4 Training
Given the different maturity degrees in the develop-
ment of the virtual campuses of the five universities,
we undertook three training courses for the teachers
taking part in VRTUOSI. The first session took place
in the classroom in Madrid. Two others were on-
line sessions using Adobe Connect
c
for that purpose.
Sixteen teachers attended the courses.
3.5 Diffusion and Registering
The VRTUOSI program was advertized in various
ways: through VRTUOSI website, and through the
deliverance of brochures and posters in the areas
of influence of the five universities. Besides, addi-
tional diffusion was achieved by including it in differ-
ent seminars, conferences, websites, distribution lists,
etc.
The registration process is implemented through
VRTUOSI website. After validating the origin of the
applicant students, we grant them an accreditation,
username and password to gain access to the selected
courses.
3.6 Courses
Within the Virtual Campus, the ten courses follow the
same methodology, based on that of the URJC Virtual
Campus, acknowledged with the quality certificate
EFQUEL (http://www.qualityfoundation.org/). The
main part of the teaching material, except the tests and
the exams, are available in the open-access area of the
Virtual Campus. In general, the courses are taught se-
quentially, in three-weeks slots (plus the time needed
by the students to accomplish and deliver the tasks).
The time length needed to implement VRTUOSI is 36
weeks, being the overall time length of the program
two years.
4 METHODOLOGY FOR
QUALITY ASSURANCE BASED
ON SIX-SIGMA
We give now an insight of the most relevant issues we
have encountered in the implementation of our Six-
Sigma based methodology. As it is well known, Six-
Sigma improves any existing process by a constant
revising and returning of the process. To achieve this,
Six-Sigma uses a methodology known as DMAIC
(Brassard et al., 2006), which is the acronym of:
Define opportunities;
Measure performance;
Analyze opportunity;
Improve performance;
Control performance.
Six-Sigma incorporates basic principles and tech-
niques used in Business, Statistics, and Engineer-
ing. These three elements form the core part of our
methodology. Six-Sigma improves the process per-
formance, decreases variation and maintains a consis-
tent quality of the process’ output. This leads to bet-
ter results and an improvement of students and stake-
holders’ satisfaction.
The main objective of our implemented method-
ology is to assure the quality of the exchange scheme,
and identify potential enhancements for future edi-
tions of the exchange scheme, the implemented vir-
tual Master and the developed courses.
4.1 Quality Principles Adopted in the
Project
For the deployment of the project, we have selected
and adopted the following quality principles:
Focus on our students;
Understand expectations of interested parties
(stakeholders);
Involve our organization’s people (administrative
staff, teachers, etc.);
Use a process management approach;
Adopt a systems approach for management;
Encourage continuous improvement;
Grasp the facts before deciding;
Work with our organizations stakeholders (com-
panies, other universities, students, etc.).
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Table 1: Project road map.
Define Measure Analyse Improve Control
Develop a vision Collect baseline data
on mistakes and
possible causes
Create focused
project statement
Create possible
solutions for root
causes
Develop and
document standard
practices
Map the process Analyse for special
causes
Explore potential
causes
Select solutions Train staff teams
Understand students
needs
Create Pareto
analysis
Calculate starting
level
Create detailed
process maps
Organize potential
causes
Collect Data
Use statistical
methods to quantify
cause and effect
relationships
Develop plans
Pilot plans
Implementation
Measure results
Evaluate
Monitor
performance
Create process for
updating procedures
Summarize and
communicate results
Recommend future
plans
4.2 Six-Sigma Project Road Map
The project follows the DMAIC sequence displayed
in Table 1.
4.3 Process Selected for Measuring,
Analysing, Improvising and
Controlling
As we have mentioned before, the core process of the
project is the DMAIC cycle. After defining the aim
of the project (letter “D” of the acronym) we have se-
lected the following processes for each stage of the
remaining of the cycle (MAIC):
Normative Framework;
Course development methodology;
Six sigma based quality assurance methodology;
Platform final timing;
Course development;
Exchange scheme implementation;
Scheme quality assessment evaluation;
Dissemination.
4.4 Accomplished Tasks
During the project we have completed the following
tasks:
Review of the European University Quality in e-
Learning (UNIQUe) self-assessment and evalua-
tion protocol http://unique.europace.org/p34.php,
under a DMAIC approach;
Develop a guide of good manners and best prac-
tices under a DMAIC approach.
5 IMPROVING QUALITY USING
SIX-SIGMA
To ensure satisfactory quality levels in the rendered
service to the potential users of VRTUOSI, we have
developed and implemented a Six-Sigma based qual-
ity management system, which allows us to identify
the weaknesses of our program or its courses (Pizdek
and Keller, 2009; Pande et al., 2007).
5.1 Background
Various methodologies aimed at improving the qual-
ity of postgraduate degrees have been and are still be-
ing used, either in the design phase, or in its develop-
ment and implementation stages. The most remark-
able ones are: Factor analysis; Clustering analysis;
Multidimensional scale analysis; Conjoint Analysis;
Legal or referential guidelines, as e.g. those given
by the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO), www.iso.org; Excellence models, as e.g. those
recommended by the European Foundation for Qual-
ity Management (EFQM), www.efqm.org.
However, we have opted for Six-Sigma, because
it is a more flexible methodology whose stages are,
in addition, based on the principles of the scientific
paradigm. The keypointwithin this approach is to use
the scientific method for the design and implementa-
tion of the VRTUOSI project. In this way, the whole
project can be afforded as a scientific problem and, as
a consequence, the scientific method can be used to
solve it. Therefore, we have used characteristic tech-
niques of the Six-Sigma methodology on the design
and development of the processes within VRTUOSI.
We outline the most relevantones in the followinglist:
DMAIC cycle;
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
(Stamatis, 2003);
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Anticipation and Fool Proof techniques,
like Poka-Yoke (Shimbun, 1988), see http://
www.poka-yoke.org.uk for further details;
Processes Mapping, like the Suppliers, Inputs,
Process, Outputs, Customers (SIPOC) standard
(Damelio, 1996);
Advanced Data Analysis, like multivariate statis-
tics, Multivariate Analysis of the Variance
(MANOVA), and others (Spicer, 2005).
5.2 Initial Objectives
At the early stages of the implementation of VRTU-
OSI, we had several objectives in mind, which can be
summarized in three main ideas:
Launching an online and international master, de-
signed to fulfill as much as possible the prefer-
ences, needs and motivations of our potential stu-
dents;
Developing an internal quality management sys-
tem for an online and international master, based
on the “do it well at the first try” and “paper-free”
mottos;
To create a Six-Sigma based work methodology
which could take advantage of its intrinsic tech-
niques to remove errors and defects, and to im-
prove quality.
These initial objectives have been monitored through-
out the implementation of VRTUOSI.
5.3 Activities
The implementation of the Six-Sigma quality man-
agement system has been accomplished in the usual
way, i.e., following the guidelines of the DMAIC cy-
cle:
Stage 1. Development and implementation of
the internal quality management system (students
management, teachers management, courses man-
agement, etc.);
Stage 2. We collect data from, at least, students
and teachers;
Stage 3. We improve the quality of the project by
incorporating the actions established at previous
stages;
Stage 4. We monitor the process, making sure
that the accomplished actions have been success-
ful and have fulfilled their goals. Results are elab-
orated and published using different means of dif-
fusion.
5.4 Validation
Final validation is done in a similar way to that of the
“transcript and keeping records” of the ERASMUS
program. In order to reduce the bureaucracy burden,
we will deliver a single report for each course. Af-
ter its reception, each university will make their own
ECTS validation process.
6 RECOMMENDATIONS
AND BEST PRACTICES
In this section, we provide some recommendations
and best practices for potential institutions wishing to
elaborate and develop similar programs:
Regarding the Virtual Campus
For each course within the program, compose
a “student’s guide” describing the course, the
slides in the PDF file, and a short oral embed-
ded presentation;
Use exclusively the Virtual Campus communi-
cation tools in order to contact your students.
In particular, avoid using your personal email
address;
Make the students aware that there are sched-
uled slot times for posting and answering ques-
tions, submitting assignments files, and for
solving tests and exams. All these time and
work structures must be respected and followed
by both parts, students and teachers;
It is expected that the teachers use the Assign-
ments module tools as part of the evaluation
process. This tool facilitates continuous eval-
uation.
7 CONCLUSIONS
VRTUOSI is a pioneer online program for the inter-
national exchange of virtual courses. Our university
is favoring the internationalization of our postgradu-
ate programs, allowing our students to access high-
quality courses of other European universities, and
giving access to 24 foreign students per course. The
interaction between teachers from different universi-
ties is facilitating the launching of new similar joint
programs. In this way, apart from various research
programmes we have in mind, we are planning to
launch a joint Virtual Master based on the VRTUOSI
courses.
All the procedures that have been developed can
be used as a paradigm for other similar programmes
CSEDU 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education
302
that different consortia of universities aim at launch-
ing. Our main contributions are the establishment of
a detailed legal framework, the access and registering
system, the validation system and the quality manage-
ment and improvement system.
The open-access area is arousing some interest
among the teaching community, and we are prepar-
ing a professional training model business based on
VRTUOSI courses
Regarding the implementation of the Six-Sigma
methodology, it has been a great success both in the
MDSE and VRTUOSI, allowing us to:
Remove redundant activities;
Remove systematic errors;
Perform a better analysis of the recorded data.
In summary, we have managed to remove most
sources of uncertainty and errors, as well as to reduce
the unfulfillment of the academic and administrative
rendered services.
Besides, we have also accomplished some addi-
tional features:
The encouragement, intensification and optimiza-
tion of the use of Information and Communica-
tions Technologies (ICT) and of the Virtual Cam-
pus in the lecturing and learning areas;
Favoring autonomous learning in the students;
The optimization of the students’ performance,
leading to reduction of the academic failure and
absenteeism.
Since 2010-11 is the first academical course in
which VRTUOSI is being implemented, we are cur-
rently recording our first empirical results, which will
be included in future works.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
VRTUOSI is a project of Lifelong Learning
Programme with code 502869-LLP-1-2009-ES-
ERASMUS-EVC. Research supported by grants
from Rey Juan Carlos University Innovation and
Improvement on Education Programme, and project
MTM2009-14087-C04-01 from the Spanish Ministry
of Science and Innovation.
We sincerely acknowledge the contributions of the
partners and staff of the Campus Virtual division at
URJC, and we are especially thankful to Mar´ıa Teresa
Gonz´alez de Lena, Ra´ul Moreno, and Javier Ramos
de Castro, also from URJC, and to David R´ıos Insua
from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Spain.
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