Ever the learning and innovation aficionados, we trekked towards new learning terrain as the summer semester got underway.
Having taken off on 1 April 2026, our pilot course on leveraging AI for Learning, offered jointly to students of the FernUniversität in Hagen and the Spanish distance‑learning institution UNED, has completed its maiden voyage and is now taxiing to arrivals. The course was inspired by the broader OpenEU initiative and explored whether an access course could be strengthened through shared synchronous activities in preparation for its enthronement as an official microcredential. Microcredentials offer flexible learning pathways — novel ways of stacking up ECTS and joining the upskilling brigade.
First contact
Although overall participation fell short of expectations, those students who did give it a fair shake praised the flexible navigation within the course, the rich selection of materials and the dynamic learning activities. The interviews, screencasts, examples and quizzes were also mentioned in the long list of accolades, since this panoply of components allowed learners to pick and choose the elements most useful to them individually. After all, when it comes to introductory or bridging courses, a one-size fits all formula is wont to fall flat.
The course evaluations, which we are still pouring over, are jam-packed with so much praise for the content that to list it all here would make you think we’re just showing off.
A debt of gratitude is owed to the students who persevered with the plenary sessions and the project work. Six participants completed a group project as originally designed, albeit absent of a Spanish contribution. A further eight students took it upon themselves to complete individual projects, and this time, the bulk of the submissions came from the Iberian south.
Fourteen active learners sounds good, but not if you were expecting fifty.
The trouble with tribbles
This dismal ending — at least where numbers are concerned — is not what we had imagined as the volunteers stepped forward during the recruitment period, back in March. The course attracted early interest, with 84 students requesting to join the study. Of these, 50 duly entered the learning environment when invited, right as the summer semester was getting underway. The Moodle-embedded icebreaker activity was a hit, and we were looking forward to our real-time interaction with the students who’d touched base. But then only seven showed up for the opening plenary, of whom, as aforementioned, six completed the collaborative project.
It goes without saying that synchronous activities don’t jell well with the majority of distance learners. Right when one wants to log into a university seminar at 6 or 7pm, one’s progeny may selfishly decide that they would like to eat, thank-you very much.
Yet, other students in fact yearn for more interaction, more opportunities to meet their peers and to engage in learning activities that entail more than just battling to stay awake whilst scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through long passages of complicated text, highfalutin text, text that they must ultimately grasp. Before the demise of the beloved Studienbrief, you could at least grasp a stack of paper and pretend you were learning.
What to do…what to do to stave off the demotivation of solitary study?
Yesterday’s enterprise
The pilot also highlighted a recurring difficulty in virtual exchange initiatives. In our AI for Learning course, what was meant to be an opportunity to engage in invigorating cross-continental intercultural exchange in a second language morphed tout de suite into a glorified study group with people who might as well have been one’s neighbours from down the road. However, the fates were onside: ultimately, the participants had only good things to say about their collaboration, and they completed their work over the course of three independently organised meetings.
Moving forward, we can’t in good conscious promise an ‘internationalisation at home’ experience if it cannot be guaranteed.
Because engagement is a known unknown, recommending the virtual exchange format to colleagues in other disciplines would be a tough sell.
The best of both worlds
Nevertheless, the upside of the course must be broadcast far and wide. When students are already predisposed to wanting to get stuck in, the format enhances their enjoyment of the course, adding that extra special element they do not get from other completely self-paced courses. With over 368 000 students enrolled across the OpenEU partner universities, it goes without saying that there will be some percentage, no matter how small, who would relish the chance to spice up their distance learning experience. Besides, joint ventures are the very point of a university alliance. Therefore, at studyFIT we will continue to refine the format and seek a happy medium that preserves opportunities for interaction while accommodating students who cannot commit to synchronous sessions.
We may not have achieved warp speed this time, but we are adjusting the shields, recalibrating the sensors and plotting a new path to Planet Microcredential. That, and keeping our fingers crossed that the next cohort won’t beam out on us before the mission is accomplished.
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