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Higher education is incorporating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at a fast rate for different purposes. Scientific papers include within the concept of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) the myriad applications of information and communication technology, e-resources, and pedagogical approaches to the development of education. TEL’s specific application to higher education is especially relevant for countries under rapid development for providing quick and sustainable access to quality education (UN sustainable development goal 4). This paper presents the research results of an online pedagogical experience in collaborative academic research for analyzing good practice in TEL-supported higher education development. The results are obtained through a pilot implementation providing curated data on TEL competency’s development of faculty skills and analysis of developing sustainable higher education degrees through TEL cooperation, for capacity building. Given the increased volume and complexity of the knowledge to be delivered, and the exponential growth of the need for skilled workers in emerging economies, online training is the most effective way of delivering a sustainable higher education. The results of the PETRA Erasmus+ capacity-building project provides evidence of a successful implementation of a TEL-supported methodology for collaborative faculty development focused on future online degrees built collaboratively and applied locally.

Background: In technical subjects, the "hands-on" aspect is important because the students cannot assimilate some concepts until they practice with real industrial systems. They need to have the demonstration that what they are performing is real and works in order to create a true mental image of the subject concepts, which translates as an increase in professional skills.Application Design: In this work, it is described a step forward in integrating mobile devices and real physical laboratories in a ubiquitous learning approach. Contribution: The latest experiences with mobile devices showed that it is possible to get near real "hands-on" by combining specially designed equipment and flexible virtual scale models running on the mobile device, without requiring physical laboratories or classic remote labs. This approach can be applied to many technical subjects that face the same issues.Findings: Based on the evaluation results, the proposed u-lab architecture provided strong evidence of the benefits achieved. The proposal presents interesting advantages from the economic and professor productivity point of view, obtaining better academic achievements. The resulting platform should facilitate educational activities which use mobile devices. This approach can be applied to many technical subjects that suffer economic restrictions.This opens up new scenarios for mobile device-based learning without excessive additional costs.