Internationalisation has been a key theme in higher education (HE) for decades. Multiple initiatives across the world have contributed to creating offerings of high-quality online education, with collaborations across national borders. Two of the concepts that have proved to be influential are Virtual Mobility (VM) and Open Education (OE). Virtual mobility refers to study activities that students enrolled in HE in one country undertake online in other countries without physically moving. Such activities are certified and mutually acknowledged by participating institutions. Open education covers global initiatives increasing access to free online quality education, without or with alternative forms of certification. The research presented in this article identifies the learner skills and competences that are supported by Open Virtual Mobility (OpenVM), a new trend in online education that builds upon these two concepts. A group concept mapping study based on the contributions of experts in both VM and OE resulted in defining seven learner skills and competence areas including: intercultural skills and attitudes; networked learning; active self-regulated learner skills; media and digital literacy; autonomy-driven learning, interactive and collaborative learning in an authentic international environment and open-mindedness. The study provided input for further conceptualising of OpenVM as a bridge between VM and OE.

Online mobility—learning activities where students engage online with other institutions abroad, while physically remaining at their home institution—has been of interest for several decades in Europe and at KU Leuven. This article describes the journey KU Leuven is going through to bring this form of learning into their mainstream offering to their 60,000+ students. Framed in Educational Design Research, this article presents a study where the authors explore the core needs regarding didactic support and student administration to devise interventions facilitating the university-wide uptake of online mobility. They reflect on the steps taken towards policy-level strategic vision development as well as micro-level sustainable support structures.

The chapter first describes the concepts of virtual campus and virtual mobility and refers to several past and present projects and initiatives in the field. Through these previous experiences, a shift of concepts is noticed: from the fully online virtual campus to virtual mobility, whereby the more traditional universities open their borders and “blended models” gain more and more interest. Three cases demonstrate this evolution: the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) is progressively organising its educational support from a multicampus perspective; the Open University of The Netherlands is broadening its tasks towards lifelong learning; and in the GIS case, the virtual campus is used as a strategic means to ensure a valuable and transdisciplinary approach. To redefine the concept of virtual campus in order for it to be applicable to the changed educational needs of today, the Re.ViCa project has been set up. The project makes an inventory and systematically reviews cross-institutional virtual campuses from the past decade. Outputs will include a set of recommendations that can be applied to ensure the realisation of new successful virtual campus initiatives.

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