Many European countires (and Universities) are doing applied research on Higher Education research within each country. It is unfortunately rarely aggregated or scaled to a EU level. The past year EUNIS has started to move in this direction through the BI-survey as well as the BenchHEIT initiatives, and both of them have reached very good results in terms of participants and, more than that, they both got the interest and attention of many Countries.
Indeed the added value ERAI brings is of course the wider perspective. ERAI could on one hand leverage on local research, disseminating it to a larger audience; on the other hand it could develop specific studies collaborating with the EUNIS’ members, becoming the “trend setter” for IT innovation in Higher Education and suggesting/defining the issues on which European Academic Institutions should focus.
ERAI – the EUNIS Research and Analysis Initiative – wants to be the answer to a very simple question: Where can a European Higher Education CIO or University leader find information about the use and trends of IT for the European Higher Education system?
The main goal of ERAI is to provide a platform where to find this information and share it. Through ERAI, EUNIS will: provide case studies from specific countries, compare studies between two or several countries, share contributions coming from Members, write EUNIS’ articles, publish and promote surveys and analysis of the Task Forces, etc.
ERAI will allow Universities to find solutions to their IT problems by looking at how other Universities in Europe have dealt with the same problems.
ERAI will support the European Union in understanding differences and similarities of the Higher Education IT issues in the different Countries.
ERAI will offer Corporate Members the opportunity to establish a fruitful collaboration with the Universities, instead of a client-vendor relation.
Most important of all, ERAI will give EUNIS the possibility to collect and manage the contents coming from Europe, making it the official “megaphone” of the all 27 Countries.
ERAI Project manager
Anna Pacholak – Administration & Communication Manager