Virtual Exchange of Students Mobility Experience – University of West Hungary , Department of Geoinformatics

For the VM-BASE project, the teachers of the Faculty of Geoinformatics at the University of West Hungary , set up a pilot called ‘Virtual Exchange of Student Mobility Experience' focusing on outgoing students.

Student motivation and the availability of useful information are of crucial importance to increase the number of exchanges and the success of the exchange programmes. Students considering going on an exchange might be more convinced by their colleagues, who have already lived through the experience.

In the past, the exchange students finishing their mobility activities provided a text document in which they presented their experiences. The amount of useful information in these documents was minimal because only a few topics were dealt with. The set-up of a collaborative, online content management system appeared to be a suitable alternative. During the exchange, the students report their experiences in online diaries or blogs. A diary or blog can contain some private or public data that is being categorised through tags. They can use free tagging in order to categorise the blog entries.

Through the combination of all the blog entries, a thematic information set was organised named Mobility Guide. Students who spend a learning period at a partner university regularly refresh information related to this institution in the Mobility Guide. Through the categorisation, outgoing students can find the right answers to their questions.

At the time of writing, it is too early to know what kind of changes might have to be implemented in the future. Experience shows however that students find the portal easy to use for blogging.

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