Strengthening the European Higher Education Area through Technology-Enhanced Solutions

Twenty years after the Sorbonne Declaration, the key challenges of opening up higher education, improving the quality of teaching and learning, reforming assessment and recognition, and promoting internationalisation and mobility remain the same for all countries in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). We argue that digitalisation can significantly contribute to overcoming them.

Europe needs new visions for higher education in the digital age. Digitalisation is not only an additional challenge, but also an effective means to address key challenges for higher education in the 21st century. The new publication “Bologna Digital 2020 – White Paper on Digitalisation in the European Higher Education Area” highlights opportunities and challenges as well as examples of good practice.

Since December 2018, a large group of European experts have discussed priorities for digitalisation in higher education, exchanged innovative ideas and collected many impressive examples of good practice. Two “Bologna Digital 2020” workshops in Berlin and Vienna gathered university representatives, European higher education stakeholders, governmental staff from different member states and other experts active in European higher education.

Participants included representatives from public authorities in Austria, Germany, the Holy See, Italy, the Netherlands and Romania as well as European stakeholder organisations such as the European University Association (EUA), the European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE), the European Students’ Union (ESU), the European University Foundation (EUF) and the European Quality Assurance Register (EQAR).

Attaining a ‘Bologna Digital’ by 2020 is not a separate action line, but a cross-sectional goal which can improve higher education performance in all existing action lines.