Bocconi in the New ECOL Network
Bocconi University is among a group of eight top European universities and business schools that have joined forces to create a 'European Common Online Learning' (ECOL) network in response to the COVID-19 outbreak's educational impact. The aim is to drive innovation and accelerate digitalization while keeping the value added of different educational approaches. The ECOL network will provide a permanent offer of online credited elective courses that will co-exist with their current academic offer for undergraduate students from the network.
The network's partners are Aalto University School of Business (Finland); Bocconi University; Copenhagen Business School (Denmark); Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (The Netherlands); Esade Business School (Spain); HEC Paris (France); University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), and WU, Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria).
"This initiative," comments Stefano Caselli, Dean for International Affairs at Bocconi, "is a great example of the quantum leap of cooperation between top European schools to have more impact. Digitalization does not become an alternative to physical mobility but, with content mobility, an opportunity to augment the international exposure of our students and to enrich their curriculum through the access to a high-quality platform of online undergraduate courses."
Beginning in academic year 2021/22, the courses offered will be especially designed for online teaching and delivery in a synchronous way. They will be innovative in their content and pedagogical approach, including lectures, seminar discussions, and team projects, aiming to develop the student's teamwork competencies and cross-cultural perspectives aimed at developing the students' interpersonal and intercultural skills, in addition to the technical ones.
In this way, besides on-site international mobility programs, which will resume their normal operations, undergraduate students from the network will be able to take at least one credited online elective from another top European institution. The partners in the network all belong to the PIM and CEMS alliances and have a wide history of institutional cooperation, through double degrees, joint degrees, joint projects and a large pool of undergraduate students exchanged over decades.
The ECOL initiative also underscores the importance of building a common European online curriculum that can be expanded and developed over time, following the European Union's principles of innovation, digitalization, sustainability and inclusion.