EDUC is making significant strides in creating innovative mobility programs and fostering international collaboration. Join Project Manager Sujal Chouhan for a deep dive into the various achievements and to learn more about the different initiatives, the challenges faced, and the future goals that promise to reshape the academic landscape.
With a passion for the international arena and a commitment to fostering connections, EDUC Project Manager Sujal Chouhan at the University of Rennes brings a wealth of experience and a unique perspective on international relations.
“I have a keen interest for the international arena, international relations and a desire to help bring people closer together. EDUC is a stimulating multicultural initiative that can help European universities evolve,” he says.
Chouhan is in charge of two EDUC Tasks, one on the Internationalisation of Curricula and one on Short Formats, notably concerning summer schools. Beyond that he also contributes to or co-lead other tasks, notably on the Entrepreneurial Mindset activities for doctoral students.
In addition to this Chouhan also have an internal role within the university’s International Relations Dept, on the internationalisation of the educational offer and pilot the EDUC pedagogical engineers.
Committing to Cooperate
Over the years EDUC has made significant strides in creating innovative mobility programs. Asked to highlight a few key achievements during the pilot phase (2019-2022) that he’s particularly proud of, Chouhan is reminded of the expression ‘alone we go faster, together we go further’.
“This expression rings quite true with EDUC. We have demonstrated the force of working together. It enabled us to develop and run 48 new distance-learning courses, with 350 new teacher collaborations and 5000 student beneficiaries. We are now increasing these numbers. The positive knock-on is that these ‘collaborations’ can lead to more structured and longer-term ‘cooperation’ commitments. This becomes long-standing and not ‘one-shot’ solutions,“ Chouhan says.
During the pilot phase EDUC also generated 10 new summer schools which had over 300 participants and over 1000 applications for the programmes – taking place during or around Covid-19.
“These numbers are an excellent indicator from our students and shows we have every reason to push such activities further. Many of our universities are not organised to especially manage such an activity and can use this as an opportunity to envisage a way of structuring it,“ Chouhan says.
Capitalising on Conception
The EDUC universities also joined forces to create the still running course Initiation to Research and Critical Thinking. This course is designed to introduce students to the research professions and also to enhance their critical thinking abilities across diverse situations. It serves as a dual-purpose initiative, cultivating knowledge, and enriching students in their capacities and skills, and strengthening their employability.
“The course Initiation to Research and Critical Thinking was successful not through the number of students, which was 400, but because it was a new way for our universities to conceive a course with multiple contributors and complementary content for a single fully online self-study programme. This has opened the way in EDUCs second phase to develop many other self-study courses. We are thus capitalising on our conception and development processes, which can be reused by each university,” he says.
The Initiation to Research and Critical Thinking has now doubled and enriched its content.
Off the Shelves
EDUC has created a rich blend of innovative physical and blended short-term and long-term mobility formats.
“The traditional semester-long abroad remains valid but EDUC provides an enriched pallet of opportunities that changes the way we see international experience and making it more accessible and inclusive. We are strongly supported by our Vice Rectors of Education, helping to change policies and practices for the sake of future generations,” Chouhan says.
Among the various formats we find: Teachers opening their courses through virtual mobility to a European community; Collaboration between teachers on courses offered to a selection of students or open to all; Summer Schools; Blended Research Summer Schools, Self-paced learning modules for Bachelor through to doctoral students, including entrepreneurial mindsets and favouring employability.
“All of our efforts show the high level of diversity and flexibilisation we try and offer, enabling students to enrich their own study pathways in a more individualised and personalised manner,” Chouhan says.
He emphasises the work to encourage and favour faculties to include courses developed by other teachers to international their programmes in an off-the-shelf fashion. And also stresses the importance of encouraging programme heads to discuss with like-minded programmes from other universities to generate joint programmes, leading to a recognised model such as double or multiple degrees.
Highlighting Experiences
EDUC is currently undertaking a lot of activities to extend its portfolio of educational formats, especially in terms of micro-credentials, collaborative virtual learning scenarios, and short-term intensive programs. All these activities are extended in the formats mentioned above, as well as for doctoral and post-doc students.
“We’re working on ways to highlight the experiences for students. This could be through the future policy on micro-credentials, but also through a summer school label to clearly earmark EDUC-initiated or EDUC-friendly programmes,” Chouhan says.
He also mentions constant improvements in the EDUC Course Catalogue and working with key local departments to favour all forms of recognition for students in their study programme.
“We are conscious and seek to favour their career paths by expressing results in terms of skills and competencies, more aligned with the professional world. Our focus on the Entrepreneurial Mindset self-paced course is a solid example of this bridge between the academic and professional sectors for doctoral students. The self-paced module in preparation for work placements is also favouring international, cultural and professional awareness,” Chouhan says.
International Experiences at Home
Creating seamless connectivity across European campuses is a key goal for EDUC. The aim to develop a digital campus is a driver and a necessary tool in this case.
“European university alliances are about bringing change management into our university structures and driving this initiative in terms of internationalisation. This includes how to recognise virtual mobility as an international experience ‘without leaving home’, how to favour more staff weeks or periods abroad for teachers,” he says.
EDUC continues to cultivate its notoriety and energy is deployed for local understanding of the EDUC initiative.
“We reach out to high-school pupils that come for open days to nurture an international feel from very early on. EDUC is a European classroom, where students should feel that they have enrolled in 8 universities by enrolling in one. Communication is a key word and there are many avenues to market the existence of the Alliance,” Chouhan underlines.
Developing Virtual and Exchange Mobility Educational Components
Chouhan provides valuable insights into EDUC's strategy for developing virtual and exchange mobility educational components. He explains that there are two levels of coupling between the flexible format of international educational components and the more structured form of joint programmes. The first can feed into the second or stand alone.
"The strategy involves developing and offering components managed by several EDUC Tasks. This cross-task synergy leads to compiling a single portfolio that can be presented to programme heads," he explains.
This approach allows programme heads to determine which components can be offered to their students and recognised in their study pathways. Each programme head could choose different components from the portfolio or leave their students to choose if they are open to accepting all the opportunities.
According to Chouhan, a key point is that programme heads recognise and accept the student's choice, either as elective or as a replacement for a compulsory course.
"We will document and analyse the level of impact based on the number of students, study cycles, and types of components, allowing us to fine-tune over time," he states.
Establishing Joint Programmes
Joint programmes have gone through indexing of all existing internationalised programmes. Chouhan points out that EDUC is actively reaching out to programme heads, establishing connections, and accompanying any newly flourishing cooperation.
"The strategy is dependent on changing internal practices and policies, having the support of key management and Vice-rectors, reworking and simplifying processes and procedures," he explains, underlining that this strategy only will work if there is a mechanism that is easy for teachers and simple for students.
Chouhan highlights the main outcomes of the strategy:
"We aim to have at least 48 programmes newly internationalised and at least 6 new Joint Programmes. The deeper outcome is to pursue internal changes that favour internationalisation, regardless of the format, and render future initiatives much easier to implement."
SIMPs and Summer Schools
The EDUC Short Intensive Mobility Programmes (SIMP) pertain mainly to summer schools and cover all formats, but the main ones are fully physical or blended summer schools.
"They have gained popularity with students as they require only one week abroad instead of the traditional two-week courses," Chouhan explains.
Traditionally, summer schools are conceived and managed by one establishment. One of the specificities through SIMPs is engendering collaborative summer schools, with at least one other partner being involved pedagogically.
Chouhan has noted the positive spin-offs from such collaboration, such as the signing of faculty-level agreements and partnerships.
"The direct results were overwhelming given the Covid-19 context: 10 instead of 9 courses run, one of which was fully-online; coverage of various themes and topics to reach out to all students; multidisciplinary and multi-study cycle programmes creating a wide-scale peer-learning experience," he details.
Each programme was limited to 30 places, totalling 300, but the strong interest was evident as they received over 1,100 applicants.
"There could be a real push through our experience for the European Commission to allocate funds on a long-term basis for short formats," Chouhan concludes.
Adding spice to our lives
EDUC has various indicators to provide, to demonstrate its activities. This is done at the smallest denominator, that of the Tasks, where data collection and analysis take place.
Chouhan explains:
“On a micro level, each virtual mobility project is evaluated, through questionnaires and meetings with pedagogical engineers. This enables educational changes to be made to provide the most appropriate course to Alliance students. It also means teachers can revisit their practices and fine-tune their approach. Evaluation is thus at ‘project’ and ‘course’ level. Through the Quality Assurance Plan, we also have tools to analyse Course Quality compliance and ensure that what is developed in EDUC can be accepted in all universities through a principle of mutual trust. This is also an important mechanism to favour seamless mobility. There are, of course, indicators and tools at several levels, including the Project Management and Steering Committee.”
What challenges do you anticipate in implementing the strategy, and how are the project plans to overcome them?
“Challenges bring spice to our lives and we have a few when setting up a new collaborative organisation such as an Alliance. One key challenge is being known and recognised within each university. Many teachers don’t know or understand the extent of EDUC. For students it’s the same and they live their life-cycle which means starting afresh with new students each year. Being able to manage ‘scaling up’ is important to address, to ensure that the processes developed are not geared to made-to-measure solutions, but able to massify.”
Many hurdles come from internal policies and differences between countries; how to implement a common approach when faced with several national or internal policy constraints?
“This is being worked on but can be a slow process with multiple speeds; in the meantime, teachers can be reticent if the processes are not easing their burden. We are approaching this with staggered timelines and changing communication depending on the inroads that are made. We have to be agile and flexible in our conception, be able to question our own choices so that we take a direction which is fully geared to the end-user and not to ‘project’ needs. This includes the choice of vocabulary and terms we use, to avoid project jargon and ‘speak’ clearly to our public."
Challenges, Milestones and Achievements
What is the biggest challenge of EDUC?
“Probably to be known and understood. It’s like a shop, if the window dressing isn’t clear and attractive, people don’t know what they’re selling and won’t walk in. The hardest is to get people to push the door and come into EDUC. Once they’re in, they’ll see all that is on offer.”
What are EDUC's key milestones and goals in the coming years?
“Probably to make the digital campus a reality and ease student registration for all: students, teachers and administrative personnel.”
What is your personal biggest achievement regarding EDUC?
“What I really enjoyed and appreciated was working with the Short Intensive Mobility Programmes team on summer schools and our great last meeting and workshop for EDUC Pilot in Brno. It was the first time the team physically met, and given our positive results, it was good to share and project for the future. This was a wonderful human experience, but there have been many others!”
Save the date!
Curious to learn more about Sujal’s perspective and this key EDUC topic? Dive into the insights at the upcoming EDUC online event:
European Universities Alliances: Empowering Digitalization and Internationalization of Curricula at Home’, taking place on September 30, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM.
This dynamic session is your perfect opportunity to delve deeper into one of EDUC’s core themes, engage in meaningful discussions, and expand your knowledge with professionals at the forefront of their fields.
We look forward to welcoming you online and sharing this collaborative moment together. Registration opens soon