The HIBLend project (for more details see ACA Newsletter Education Europe - February 2023) team is prepping to launch the official HIBLend Community of Practice (CoP) in early 2024, a multidisciplinary community of practitioners, involving higher education actors interested in Student Blended Mobility (SBM). And before that, a series of online focus group discussions are foreseen for November and December 2023. Designed to be a platform for both administrative and academic staff active in SBM, these sessions have the ambitious agenda of identifying challenges and best strategies to enhance student blended mobility experiences with the ultimate objective of fine tuning the upcoming HIBLend digital toolbox to best serve higher education institutions’ needs when it comes to SBM.

If you are active in SBM, join us in these focus groups and play an instrumental role in sculpting the landscape of student blended mobility across Europe. Submit your interest via this form until the 9 November 2023.

Some of the ideas planned for discussions in the focus groups have already been tested at the EAIE conference. In a bid to foster active engagement in discussions about the future of SBM, the HIBLend project took the stage in Rotterdam, organising a workshop on Tuesday 26 of September 2023. The workshop, attended by 26 HE practitioners from around the world, served as more than an informational platform; it was a forum of professionals that actively contributed to the discussion through their personal experience with SBM. The workshop shed light on the significance of SBM in higher education, its models and approaches, and defining features. The project’s recent survey on mapping SBM’s current state in the post-pandemic era, played a pivotal role in guiding the workshop discussions, complemented by two thought-provoking SBM related simulation exercises.

To further promote awareness of the current SBM landscape outside of the workshop, the aims and early results of HIBLend were also showcased in one of EAIE’s poster presentations, which reached a wider audience. You can see the poster below.