Skip to main content
European Education Area home page European Education Area home page

European Education Area

Quality education and training for all

Published:  22 Oct 2024

What does it take to interconnect the IT architecture of universities and alliances?

Takeaways from the second workshop of the higher education interoperability workgroup.

Participants at the design thinking workshop on higher education interoperability, in Potsdam, Germany
Participants at the second design thinking workshop on higher education interoperability, in Potsdam, Germany

The higher education interoperability workgroup members met in September 2024 at the Hasso Plattner Institute’s (HPI) d-school in Potsdam, Germany, to participate in the second design thinking workshop. Representatives of European University alliances also attended the workshop.

During the two-day workshop, workgroup experts and representatives developed prototypes for ready-to-use tools which will help institutions and alliances build interoperable virtual learning environments. The tools will serve as a practical toolkit for leadership, management, and operational staff to use and implement the European Higher Education Interoperability Framework.

The workshop was organised by the European Digital Education Hub.

Highlights from the workshop

The workshop participants built on the workgroup’s previous developments, including use cases where interoperability is key to trans-national cooperation. They mainly focused on 4 priority use cases:

  • Discovery of learning opportunities
  • Applying and getting recognition
  • Digital credentials
  • Interoperable user identity

Based on these, the participants designed:

  • a set of ready-to-use tools to address interoperability at the leadership and management levels within institutions and alliances
  • specific guidelines based on the reference architecture and inventory of existing standards and solutions

Next steps

In the coming months, alliances will test the prototypes. The final implementation guidelines will be presented in January 2025.

The workgroup plans to release the finalised European Higher Education Interoperability Framework in February 2025.

Join the workgroup

Since its inception in 2023, the workgroup has grown to more than 200 members from a wide variety of backgrounds. This diversity is a key ingredient in achieving the group's mission.

Do you have a relevant skill set? You could contribute to testing and validation of a practical toolkit and other parts of the framework to ensure stakeholder collaboration for interoperable virtual learning environments. With the framework set to be released in February 2025, we are now working to finalise key deliverables.

Tagged in:  Design thinking Interoperability
Published:  22 Oct 2024