Cooperation among French UniversitiesKhadija DibFrench Ministry of Higher EducationYves EpelboinUPMC-Sorbonne Universités & UNR Paris-IdF

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Cooperation among French Universities : Regional Digital universities

www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr

Ministry of national education, higher education and research

A global vision for a digital, open, lifelong and flexible education

• Law on new basement for the Republican School (July 8th 2013)

• Law on higher education and research (July 22th 2013)

• Digital agenda (october 2nd 2013) – France Universite Numerique

• a brand• a portal• a national platform for MOOCs and distance

learning

A national strategy

More autonomy for all universities and institutions (law on liberty and responsibility 2007).• Groupment of universities and institutions in HE and

Research based on a geographical neighboorhood• Each institution has its own digital strategy

but a national answer is required

• coherence within the community • equity of treatment for each student• the lowest cost• pooling and sharing• innovation• coping with French specificities about distance learning

Background

2003:

A national initiative to provide funding for major operations through a new organization called “Digital Regional Universities (Universités Numériques Régionales)“

Strategic objectives:•Development of digital services on campuses to provide to the academic community, primarily to students, digital services such as podcast, unified portal access and basic tools, computer loans… •Development of an infrastructure to facilitate the access to these services: WiFi, networking…•Support for the use of these digital services

Background(2)

The UNR are based on a relation between:• The Ministry of HE and Research• The regional government• The consortium of the local universities and other Higher

Education Institutions

The Ministry provides the initial impulse through its funding

The regional government and the consortium add their own funding

The achievements are periodically reviewed before starting a new contract.

Examples of cooperation in France

• RENATER: National Internet infrastructure for Education and Research

• UNT (Universités Numériques Thématiques): a national initiative about Open Educational Resources since 2004• per discipline• Peer reviewed• With national grants

• FUN-MOOC:a national MOOC consortium

http://www.france-universite-numerique.fr

The 17 UNR

2003 Phase1 with 10 Regions

2006 : Phase 2 with 15 Regions

2008 : 17 Regions (total cover of the country)

Development of digital services on campuses Digital workspaces (ENT)

•Access to Student Information Systems: timetables, grades, diploma,...,•Information & communication: email, forums, ...,•Desktop services,•Access to LMS,•Library & Documentation,•Podcast, video,

23%

8%

10%

9%5%

45%L1

L2

L3

M1

M2

Divers

23%

22%

17%

10%

7%

21% Santé-sport

Sciences sociales

Droit

Sciences fondamentales

Economie-gestion

Divers

level study taught disciplines

Development of digital services on campuses Digital workspaces (ENT)

•Social services, University Life,•Corporate Relations,A common technology for a vast majority of universities: uPortal and a community to share experience and developments: ESUP (more than 80 members)

https://www.esup-portail.org/

MobilityIn 2009 the Ministry planned to consolidate the wireless Wi-Fi networks of Institutions with impact on:

•development of nomadism•improvement of living and working students’ conditions (access to their timetables, pedagogical learning contents ...)•Special support of a common initiative from UNR Paris Ile de France: Eduspot

Development of an infrastructure to facilitate the access to these services

Eduspot

Why Eduspot?

Eduroam, the European common Wi-Fi infrastructure access, managed by GEANT, requires a complex installation on personal computers and is not available from public computers.

An easier technique was required to encourage Wi-Fi access from any campus: Eduspot

What is Eduspot

A captive portal nationally available to all students and staff from most campuses, dormitories…

A common national SSID in all universities: eduspot

A Shibboleth based authentication system

112 institutions members of the network

https://services.renater.fr/mobilite/eduspot/

C2IInformation Technology and Internet certification

A national certification opened to all incoming students, managed, at local level, by academic staff from the institutions, members of the UNR for computer literacy:

Basic level

Advanced level:

Law

Engineering

Teaching

Health

Environment

Organization and communication

http://c2i.education.fr/

Support for the use of these digital services

Political policy implementation

Several areas:

- Promotion and communication among students and teachers,

- Training of students (Certifications),

- Training of teachers: oriented assistance devices for the production of educational contents.

Support for the use of these digital services

www.unpidf.fr

Paris Île-de-France Digital University

36 Institutions

450 000 Students50 000 Staff (Searchers, Teachers...)

An example: UNPIdF

Staff trainingRegistrations

Distribution of staffAcademic

Support

StudentsQuality

Satisfaction

TeacherAnswer to need

Number of institutions

Number of classes

91.3%

Filling of classes

Student multipurpose card

One common student card for all universities (450 000 students)

Student ID with picture

Access to libraries on campus and in most other universities

Access control on campus

Access and payment to students restaurants and cafeteria

Payment of facilities: vending machines, copies, printing…

Professional ID card for staff in many universities

Professional ID with picture

Access control

Access and payment to staff cafeteria

Facilities

Digital university user’s guide

A common user’s guide with 16 common pages + 16 pages for each university:

Two editions, one for students, one for staff

Since 2008, from printing to digital versions

UnivCloud

Why?

• Establishments partners mandate UNPIdF (November 2010 ...)

• Improved services : More, Better, Faster

• Quality of services (24/7) / PRA, PCA, PSSI

• Optimization of process / Industrialization

• Team undersized / Easy Deployment

• Saving Energy / Infrastructure Optimization

• Thrift of scale / Reducing the carbon Footprint

• Pooling/ Best effort

• Payment services to use / Innovative Economic Model

• Target Infrastructure « Private Cloud Community »

UnivCloud

When?

• End of study project : 31 july 2013• Writing specifications leading to tender : January 2014• AMOA (Integrator Functional / Technical)• First Infrastructure deployments : end 2014 / begin of 2015

Where?

• POC (Proof of concept) in Paris Région Île-de-France / Partners Involvement

• Reproducible at the National level (Pooling and co-construction)

• National Recommendations on Cloud-Computing

Rue des Facs

A question and answer service born from a complex geography .

Operational since January 2009 and carried today by 27 university libraries in Île-de-France.

Ruedesfacs.fr now covers all fields of knowledge. More than 1500 are answered annually. Since 2011, many answers are placed on a "research notebook" hosted by hypotheses.org, one of three platforms of research development proposed by OpenEdition (Cleo). This book receives more than 40,000 visits per year.

www.ruedesfacs.fr

The Digital Shop

Best bargains in Paris area for hardware and software

Restricted to students, staff and family of UNR members

Impact of UNR actions

New servicesRegional offer for staff training to the digital worldSimplified schedule access, exam dates, documentation, educational platform, universities’ restaurants and dormitories...Development of infrastructures for mobility,Interoperability of Information Services with urbanization of the Information Systems and standards.More robust technical infrastructureQualitative impactsA national Dynamics based on a common work from actors with different profiles (CIO, President, Vice-President...) from various Institutions, Mutualization aid and support by sharing resources, ideas, significant projects (difficult to achieve on an individual basis.)

Discussion(1)

Impacts are of several kinds: •First, all students enrolled in universities have now access to a bunch of free digital services and resources related to their studies : student system, e- education , podcast, multiservice student card, communication tools and e-mail , documentation, academic life, relationship with companies and potential employers... •100% of the spaces, dedicated to the students, are equipped with Wi -Fi connections, to encourage the use of numerous services available through laptops, tablets or phones. •In addition to quantifiable inputs , the cooperation between universities Impulses national projects through a dynamics and synergy between teachers , CIO , ICT staff and librarians.

Discussion (2)

Cooperation between universities is a key factor to enable all universities to offer a quality ICT environment at an affordable cost.

Other similar initiatives exist all around Europe.

The US Higher Education system is very different from the European ones. However the French experience might be of interest to other universities to embark on this path with solutions adapted to their own environment. Among them sharing practice and software in all common fields, opening Wi-Fi access to all the community, local initiatives for staff development…