Virtual Global University

From Researching Virtual Initiatives in Education

The Virtual Global University (VGU) is a private organisation founded in 2001 by 17 professors from 14 universities across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. VGU courses are focussed on a synthesis of IT and management, or 'Business Informatics' (BI) - i.e. the effective use of IT to develop business solutions for global challenges. Certificate and master's courses may be taken either full time or part time, either as pure distance-learning programmes or in blended mode (master's courses lead to the International Master of Business Informatics, or MBI).

All courses that they teach are based on Web modes and electronic interaction. Exercises are given in most courses and provided for download. The students can solve an exercise and submit the solution electronically. There are several kinds of media that they use to share the information with the students:

• Video-based course: The weekly lectures are recorded, and converted in an accessible streaming format, the students can download these presentations with the slides that they use.
• Hypermedia course: all material is provided electronically and can be viewed with a browser.
• Audio-based course: Here the students can download a WMA file where they can find the slides used in classroom attached the explanation of the teacher.
• Web-supported textbook course: In these course the students have to buy the textbook or download it, and study it by themselves, and then, the class meets at least once a week in a chatroom for discussion.
• Case studies, projects, seminars: The students have to prepare the reports,projects etc. by their own and submit them electronically, then they can discuss about what they did.

As of 2007, VGU cooperative partner universities were based in countries including Russia, Egypt, Taiwan and Malaysia.

The Virtual Global University web site is at http://www.vg-u.org/

More information is available in the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_university#History_of_Virtual_Universities

> Programmes