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SOPHIA Research & Innovation was created in 2009 in Rome (the initial name being SOPHIA Consulting) to promote the participation of Italian public and private organisation in R&D and Innovation programmes, manly those funded by the European Union. In this respect SOPHIA R&I provides consulting and management services in the public and private sectors, but more importantly it participates in real projects in order to keep the pace with technological and methodological innovation especially, but not exclusively, in the area of Education and Training. The founding partners have all over twenty years of main experience also in worldwide enterprises.
The team of experts has conveyed passion, energy and strong know-how in order to provide high-standard in consulting and management services, ICT solutions, education and training, research and development. The professionalism and experience gained have enabled SOPHIA to develop methodologies and tools that are constantly updated and tailored to the needs of customers with a well defined approach for each assignment.

The University of Leicester is a leading university located in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom, committed to international excellence through the creation of world changing research and high quality, inspirational teaching. Leicester is in the world’s top 2% of universities and is the most socially inclusive of Britain’s top-20 leading universities. Some of the most outstanding discoveries at the University of Leicester were DNA fingerprinting in 1984, and the remains of King Richard III of England, lost for centuries but discovered in Leicester in 2012.The University of Leicester’s interest in Open Educational Resources (OER) extends back to 2009, when its learning innovation research department with the name Beyond Distance Research Alliance, now the Institute of Learning Innovation, which headed up the OTTER project which created an early institutional OER repository as well as a framework for institutional creation of OER, CORRE. Research into OER continued with three SCORE fellowships, examining iTunes U and the OER U as well as the evolution of OER reuse. The study of the OER U included a theme now arising in eMundus, that of institutional cooperation in the awarding of credit earned through studying via OER. The SPEED and METIS projects created ways of sharing learning designs as OER. The POERUP project launched in Leicester, and has looked over the world to detail and chart international OER initiatives and developments. In 2013, Leicester is also launching two courses in the first European-born MOOC platform, FutureLearn.The University of Leicester is therefore a fitting and eager partner in the eMundus project, as this brings us to the next phase of international cooperation of credit-awarding institutions in the acknowledgement of academic standards achieved through OER. Professor Gráinne Conole has principally investigated many of the aforementioned Leicester projects. Terese Bird has investigated and also researched and implemented on several of the mentioned OER projects at Leicester.

International University of La Rioja (UNIR, www.unir.net, Spain) is a young online university founded on a global vision of education directly linked to companies and business. UNIR facilitates an
exclusive, innovative and high quality virtual model of higher education, which leans on a personalized, pro-active, and collaborative distance learning method of instruction.UNIR is an academic institution established in compliance with the current regulations governing universities (100% open university, SME), fulfilling all parameters and regulations of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). UNIR provides international courses, in English and Spanish, and comprises an academic community of over 900 highly knowledgeable lecturers across the world, along with a strong team of more than 500 multidisciplinary professionals, working on R&D projects and support services (i.e. tutoring, legal, publishing, editing, technical, administrative, etcetera . Student number keeps increasing exponentially, surpassing this academic year the fifteen thousands (ratio of 1 support staff/20 students; 1 lecturer/20 students). UNIR has premises in Spain (Logroño and Madrid), Argentina (Buenos Aires),and Santa Cruz (Bolivia), and a number of collaboration agreements with Latin American universities.Research at UNIR covers the various scientific and humanistic fields of study (i.e. Communication, Social Science, Education, et cetera), with particular emphasis on the information and communication technologies (ICT) applied to education (Technology-Enhanced Learning).
UNIR contributes to many national and international organisms related to Technology-enhanced Learning, such as International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), Institute of International Education (IIE), Technology Enhanced Learning European Advanced Research Consortium (TELEARC), European Distance Education Network (
EDEN), European Foundation for Quality in eLearning ( EFQUEL), European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL), Asociación de Informática Educativa (ADIE), and Consejo Riojano de I+D+i.The main research areas and programmes of the university were established in accordance with the European Union’s regulations as well as with the National Plan and the R&D Plan of the region of la Rioja. UNIR participates actively in European R&D consortiums and collaborates as contributor, consultant and evaluator in the European Commission’s programmes such as the Seventh Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, Lifelong Learning Programme, Tempus,Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support,European Research Area and Erasmus Mundus.eMundus Project With over 20 research agreements with international universities and a wide network of project partners, UNIR wishes to promote and mainstream open education and Technology-Enhanced Learning internationally, with the support and expertise of institutions who share this objective. In this context, eMundus represents a great opportunity for UNIR to strengthen cooperation with European and international higher education institutions, exploring the potential of MOOCs and Virtual Mobility, two fields in which UNIR shows a strong interest. In the frame of eMundus project, in addition to its participation in all specific activities, UNIR will coordinate the creation of the eMundus umbrella-repository, presenting a selection of tools and approaches to integrate VM and MOOCs in the internationalization strategy of universities. Exchanging the best practices in the field is one of UNIR’s priorities, and the University will contribute to the project dissemination activities thanks to its international network of universities. UNIR sees in eMundus project a chance to go further in its efforts to promote a wider access to educational opportunities and a better quality of learning. Key staff involved in the project:
•Daniel Burgos , Head of Research [email protected] Tel: +34 91 567 43 91
•Aurora Carrasco, Research and management team [email protected] Tel: +34 91 567 43 91 Ext. 227
Marie-Anne Le Bot,Research and management team

The University of São Paulo Will be represented in the project by the Fundação de Apoio à Universidade de São Paulo, a non-profit foundation that was created to give flexibility and efficiency to the University of São Paulo State. It was planned to have the commitment to give managements support to the Institutes,
Schools and other university agencies to help in the execution of the projects that USP needs to run. USP is one of the largest and most important research,technological end high education institutions of the Brazilian federation and Latin America. Founded in 1934, USP is a public state institution and has several campi located in seven different cities in the state of São Paulo. With teaching and research activities in all the fields of knowledge and science, USP offers nearly 250 undergraduate programs, 224 graduate programs and 1,119 extra-curricular programs. FUSP / EPUSP have a powerful experience in participating in the European projects from DG INFSO, ALFA III and others.
• Why we are participating in eMUNDUS USP is a long term developer and user of ICT in High Education. The MOOCS
are a solution of great foreseen importance. It is becoming the tool to an “off system” education that is gaining strength. HE must adapt to use this tool and get bigger actuation range with it. It is also a great way to achieve one of the biggest goals USP is working on: a tool to the internationalization and virtual mobility.
• Our project team (Names and Positions in the project, with links to online CVs if you wish) Edison Spina
– coordinator – www.poli.usp.br/~espina ; http://lattes.cnpq.br/7279368529085920
Romero Tori– researcher –
www.romerotori.blogspot.com;http://lattes.cnpq.br/8901320181295016
Luiz Barco –consultant – http://lattes.cnpq.br/3753141623505636 Role in the project: Coordinator of project valuation, will organize a fact-finding seminar, will activate the HE communities in Brazil and promote the project outcomes in the country, and will contribute to all project activities.

UAM is a Mexican public University that offers undergraduate and graduate programs on main scientific fields. Furthermore, its full time professor does theoretical and applied research. The university has more than 3000 employees and 45,000 students in its five campus in different regions of Mexico City. UAM is an
active member of national and international university networks, and also participate in several European
commission projects. In relation to this project, UAM-A is engaged in three important activities. First, the
university created a digital repository to disseminate the academic production of its professors. Experts of
UAM-A developed this repository using DSpace software, and it is already in operation. As a member of the
Union Lationamericana de Universidades (UDUAL) UAM-A is working in another two projects. One of them aim to create a Latin-american open space for distance education provided by universities of the region. This space will include a repository of Open Educational Resources provided by the universities. In the other project, UAM A will develop a digital repository for UDUAL, that will contain the LA publications on history of the universities in the region. Furthermore, in this case, the software used will be also DSpace

Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI) was founded in 1932.
Nowadays it is one of the leading Russian universities and combines wide experience and scientific traditions with innovative processes for educating and training professionals. Today MESI is a venue for around eighty thousand on-campus and distance learning students, including foreign learners from fifty-two countries.
It offers study programmes at all levels, from pre-university courses to secondary professional and higher professional education as well as continuing education. MESI is a distributed university with a network comprising of a parent institution in Moscow and more than twenty branches located in different parts of the country
and abroad and for this reason develops virtual mobility. ICTs are widely used in teaching and learning, research, managerial and social activities. MESI regularly holds the university, regional, all-Russian and International conferences on distance education and e-learning and is an active member of ICDE, OECD-IMHE, EUA, EDEN, EADTU, EFQUEL and other international organisations in the field of education. Though the University started using OER for teaching and learning many years ago, the first steps in design of open online courses were made only in 2013, including participation in the OpenUpEd initiative. MESI is interested in sharin gexperience within the project for he benefit of all partners.The project team consists of staff members of different MESI units and includes the experts as follows.
Irina Smirnova,Ph.D. in Philosophy, worked as a lecturer,Chief Expert at International System Research Centre for Higher Education and Science (affiliated to UNESCO) and Project Manager at UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education. At present she is Chief of the Department for International Projects of MESI and is in charge of relations with major international organizations in the field of education. She repeatedly acted as an expert, coordinator and/or project manager in international projects on ICT application in education and lifelong learning.Alexandre Molchanov has a degree in Mathematics, Informatics and Information Technologies and PhD in Theory and Methods of Professional Education. As Vice-rector for e-Learning of MESI he is in charge of e-learning development at all levels of university education, open educational resources and cources. His professional interests include informatization and modernization of education, innovation in education and IT management. Since 2001, he has been a leader of a number of major projects in these areas, including those implemented in some universities and Moscow city within the framework of e-Moscow programme.
Natalia Dneprovskaya has PhD degree in Economics and Management. She combines two positions at MESI as a lecturer and Head of Knowledge Management Department. Her professional activities include research in e-learning, open educational resources, knowledge management, innovation projects, and information society. She collaborates with UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education in the area of open educational resource, e.g. she designed an open course which has been launched at the UNESCO IITE website as open educational resource. She has research publications, textbooks and e-courses on knowledge management, information resources, networked economics and others.

The Open Education Resource (OER) Foundation is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that provides leadership, international networking and support for educational institutions to achieve their objectives through Open Education.Why we are participating in eMUNDUSThe OER Foundation is coordinating the implementation of the OER university (OERu). The OERu is a network of “like minded” institutions from five continents who will provide free learning opportunities to all students worldwide using courses based on OER with pathways to gain formal academic credit. The OERu uses micro Open Online Courses (mOOCs) for the delivery of its international courses. As organisation, we are committed to open philanthropy and look forward to collaborating with eMUNDUS partners to widen access to more affordable higher education futures.

AU is Canada’s only open university and as such, it is dedicated to the removal of barriers that restrict access to and success in university-level study and to increasing equality of educational opportunity for adult learners worldwide. Athabasca University, Canada’s Open University (AU) was established in 1972. It is recognized by the Government of Alberta,Canada. AU has the mandate for the provision of university-level distance education programs in Alberta as one of the four public comprehensive universities in the province. As an open university, AU is committed to the goals of eMUNDUS in using Information and Communication Technologies for promoting an open knowledge society and lifelong learning. AU is an active participant in national and international projects for education and training using innovative methodologies and
applications.
Project Team:
Rory McGreal, Professor
UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning Chair in OER
Director of the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research
Institute (TEKRI)
Website:http://unescochair.athabascau.ca

Universitas Siswa Bangsa Internasional (also known by the acronym USBI) is an international university located in Jakarta,Indonesia . USBI is the first university in Indonesia to offer an accredited U.S. degree. It is a private university, owned by Putera Sampoerna Foundation. USBI’s history goes back to when in 2009, the Putera Sampoerna Foundation (PSF) founded the Sampoerna School of Education (SSE) to address the
insufficient number of high-quality math and English teachers in Indonesia. This was followed in 2010 by PSF’s establishment of the Sampoerna School of Business (SSB) which offered degree programs in accounting, finance, marketing and management. In 2013, both SSE and SSB were relaunched as the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Business and Economics, respectively. Together with newly launched Faculty of Art, Design and Media and the Faculty of Science and Technology, as well as the new Institute of Languages and Communication, they now constitute the academic units of Universitas Siswa Bangsa Internasional. Based on current arrangements, upon entry to any USBI degree program, students are automatically dual-enrolled in Lone Star College, a community college located in Houston, Texas. Students earn both Lone Star College System and USBI credit during their first two years of study. After the successful completion of two years of study, students are awarded a Lone Star College associate degree. This is the first such mechanism awarding both American and Indonesian credit to students in Indonesia. Following the award of an associate degree, students are eligible to transfer to any university in the United States which recognizes Lone Star College System credit. Past transfers from LSCS have successfully graduated from universities such as Harvard ,Yale,Princeton,UCLA,Texas A&M University, and Texas Tech University
, among others. Other arrangements with universities overseas are being pursued and will offer students additional pathways internationally. USBI has a current staff strength of about 180 but this will soon grow to about 220 before the end of 2013 to support the delivery of a total of ten undergraduate programs in September 2013. Key to the provision of quality education, the Center for Learning, Teaching and Curriculum Development was established to introduce new learning approaches to design a student-centered learning environment with experiential learning opportunities that will produce a new generation of learners suitable for the digital age. New learning technologies will be employed. New learning strategies such as flipped learning and use of OERs will be trialed. Virtual mobility is also an important criterion for USBI. It anticipates some students entering USBI with prior learning experience. It has been discussed that this could be in the form of MOOCs or enrolling in USBI’s open courses that are offered to those interested prior to applying at USBI.