A Business Model for the Exchange of E-Learning Courses in an International Network

Abstract

In three projects funded by the European Commission (EC), European and Latin-American project partners have developed, improved, and successfully tested an e-learning business model for the exchange of e-learning courses. Typically, high-quality e-learning is expensive and many ambitious e-learning projects have been discontinued after the end of the funding period. The mission of the three EC projects was to ameliorate this problem by creating an organisational model for exchanging e-learning courses with limited resources. The design of this model rests on two pillars: firstly the re-use of existing resources and secondly the sharing of resources in an international network. Each university in the consortium develops one e-learning course, which is based on an existing course and teaching materials. This is then provided, including teaching, to the students of the partner institutions. In return, each partner university receives two or more courses on a non-fee basis. As a result, the business model was validated. After the end of the project, eduGI, the project partners have continued with the model, exchanging e-learning courses without the need for further funding and with even lower costs and higher benefits than providing the courses as regular face-to-face classes. Although this business model was developed by institutions specifically in the context of Geoinformatics, the exact field is irrelevant; teachers and decision makers of all scientific fields can apply this business model.