Aurora Digital Campus: Laying the Foundations for a Joint Digital Campus
Over the course of four intensive days, IT experts and administrative staff gathered at Universität Innsbruck to set the course for a joint digital campus.
Part of the Aurora 2030 project includes enabling seamless access to educational and training activities for students and staff from Aurora universities. Set under Task 6.1. Aurora IT Development & Services of work package 6 for Green and Digital Campus, this task further aims to deliver shared interoperability, in line with the expansion of EU standards for online authentication and authorization to access digital services.
The starting point of these discussions was to develop a common understanding of the digital campus. Three key building blocks were identified. The first building block is a common central course catalogue that collects information on courses from each individual university system. From this foundational block come procedures for automated enrolment and course registration processes in the local systems. This includes access to the local teaching management systems. Finally, the last building block constitutes the issuance, exchange and archive of digital credentials, for which new IT solutions will need to be developed.
For the joint course catalogue, a pilot that has already been developed will be expanded to include Aurora universities the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Universität Rovira i Virgili (URV). The functionality of this joint course catalogue will be further tested. The University of Duisburg-Essen and the URV will also develop a proof of concept for automated enrolment and course registration within the local university systems. In the meantime, the Universität Innsbruck and the University Federico II of Naples will be responsible for developing a concept for digital credentials.
The four-day meeting and workshop culminated in setting up additional working groups to tackle the various topics and to further realise the plans for a joint digital campus for Aurora universities.