Presentation of the e-LERU initiative

e-LERU is an initiative of 7 universities all members of the League of European Research Universities. It intends to bring a European dimension to teaching and research activities in European universities by encouraging them to collaborate, notably through the construction of trans-national combined course structures and through the international virtual mobility of their students within the European Higher Education Area.

In order to attain this goal, e-LERU wants to provide a virtual dimension to European co-operation in higher education by encouraging the development of new organisational models for European universities (virtual campus) and for European exchange and sharing schemes (virtual mobility).

On the other hand, e-LERU's aims to stimulate the entrance of the partner universities into the European Higher Education Area. e-LERU partners offer an integrated service of know-how building, process evaluation and trial-and-error whilst in the process setting up pilot projects to create examples for future developments.

The main goal of the e-LERU is to develop a showcase of the partner universities' strengths and specificities in the field of higher education and research. Therefore, the partner universities will contribute to high-quality e-learning modules built into academic degrees (bachelor, master or Ph.D) and a series of high-level lectures given  by outstanding academics from these institutions. The concept of a virtual campus to be integrated in the existing LERU network should, however, be synonymous with "excellence" so that it will be fully recognized by the LERU consortium.

With this intention, LERU universities with a high research performance in Europe, are willing to collaborate efficiently to set up a shared virtual campus structure. This will allow to create common e-learning resources, enabling each e-LERU university to offer its students virtual mobility (by means of teaching modules from other partner universities to be integrated through distance learning) as a complement to international mobility.