AVICENNA - VIRTUAL CAMPUS (Mediterranean University Network)

Project website

http://avicenna.unesco.org

Community program

First contractor

Objectives

As part of Sector 5 of the EUMEDIS call, the AVICENNA project aims at speeding up the adoption and utilization of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) linked to Open and Distance Education (ODL) in 11 EU and extra-EU Mediterranean countries, creating a self-sustainable virtual campus. Therefore, the project intents to create an infrastructure capable of facilitating the transfer and sharing of know-how and best practices among the various universities and the educational agencies. In particular, the universities involved in the project will set up 15 “Avicenna Knowledge Centers” that will act as reference points for all the universities of the involved countries, even if they are not actual project partners and will supply the following services:

Technical support of experts in the use of the new technologies applied to distance learning;
Training of the trainers activities;
Activities of adaptation of the already existing courses into multimedia and multilingual versions;
Design and production of new web-based courses.

The implementation strategy will be focused, on the one hand, on the identification of already existing courses to be adapted and, on the other one, on the use of the new technologies for the production, distribution and exchange of new courses.
Avicenna Virtual Campus appears as a multimedia platform enabling a large number of European International organizations to match and share resources and know-how with a large number of Euro-Mediterranean institutions. In brief, its operational objectives are:

Setting-up of 15 distance training centres;
Interconnection among different centres;
Training of the trainers activities;
Realization of a Virtual Library for storing courses;
Organization and definition of the contents of the new courses to be produced;
Review and use of advanced testing and validation tools;
Activities of adaptation, production, translation and delivering of training courses.

NETTUNO role

Setting-up of AKC based on the project required standards;
Participation in the activities of the Steering Commitee among AKCs’ directors, participation in the activities of the Scientific Commitee in order to identify production modes;
Appointment of experts playing different active tasks in design and production;
Offer of courses to be adapted according to AVICENNA standards;
Participation in activities of training of the trainers as well as of technicians and teachers;
Participation in the re-definition of the new contents;
Participation in the communication, promotion and marketing activities.

Duration
From March 2002 to October 2005

Partners

Leading partner
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation ( France )

Participating Partners
Université de la Formation Continue ( Algeria )
University of Cyprus ( Cyprus )
Faculty of Computer and Information - Cairo University ( Egypt )
Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance ( France )
Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers ( France )
Université de la Méditerranée Marseille II ( France )
Middle East Technical University ( Italy )
NETTUNO - Network per l'Università Ovunque ( Italy )
Philadelphia University ( Jordan )
Lebanese University ( Lebanon )
Malta Council for Science and Technology ( Malta )
École Nationale Supérieure d'Informatique et d'Analyse des Systemes ( Morocco )
Al-Quds Open University ( Palestinian Authority )
Universidad National de Educacion a Distancia ( Spain )
Faculty of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering University of Damascus ( Syria )
Insitut Supérieur de l'Education et de la Formation Continue ( Tunisia )

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