EADTU - European Association of Distance Teaching Universities

EADTU is Europe's leading institutional association for open and distance higher education, and is at the heart of the modernization agenda of European universities. Growing from its eleven founding members in ten European nations, EADTU now has a membership of fifteen institutions and fourteen national associations across 25 nations. Its membership covers over 200 universities and around 3 million students.

EADTU has a European coverage and is regarded as a key-partner of the European Commission as far as lifelong open and flexible learning in distance higher education is concerned.

We are committed to the creation of a European Learning Space in accordance with the Bologna Declaration and the ET2020 Strategy. We define ourselves through three critical features of European open and distance higher education:

• student-centered learning based on high quality online learning environments;
• openness to learners achieved through flexible, inclusive structures and methods that take higher education to students when and where they need it;
• networked education and mobility, where students can learn across national, sectoral and institutional boundaries.

Activities

The EADTU activities arise from a strong bottom up approach, based on institutional needs, experienced by the universities or associations. EADTU and its members have a strong track record on:

• quality benchmarking for online and flexible education. E.g., E-xcellence
• open educational resources (OER) and MOOCs. See e.g. the OpenupEd on MOOC?s
• collaborative curricula and virtual mobility. See e.g. the Epics initiative on virtual mobility.

In addition EADTU members offer their expertise concerning student-centered online education to the entire sector to assure that online teaching and learning in all European universities will reach the highest quality standards.

Members

EADTU is a membership organisation. EADTUs mission is to empower and support its members by:

• developing and sustaining sector leadership at national and European level;
• fostering the development of open and flexible higher education in Europe;
• supporting the extension of learning opportunities and student mobility through networking and collaboration between institutions.

Any higher education organization can apply for membership and profit for the benefits of being part of EADTU, as long as they fulfil the criteria of one the four categories for membership. Check our website for detailed information.

Current Members

EADTU now has a membership of fifteen institutions and fourteen national associations across 25 nations:

1. Open and distance teaching universities

• FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
• Hellenic Open University, Greece
• International Telematic University UNINETTUNO, Italy
• Open University of Cyprus, Cyprus
• Open University of the Netherlands, Netherlands
• The Open University UK, United Kingdom
• Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Spain
• Universidade Aberta (UAb), Portugal
• Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain

• Anadolu University (AU), Turkey
• Istanbul University (Open and Distance Education Faculty) (IU), Turkey

2. Associations or consortia of conventional universities

• AGH University of Science & Technology, Poland
• Business Information Systems, Ireland
• Consorzio NETTUNO, Italy
• Czech Association of the Distance Teaching Universities, Czech Republic
• Danish Association of Open Universities, Denmark
• Distance University, Switzerland
• FIED, France
• JKU / Center for Distance Learning, Austria
• Lithuanian National Distance Education Association, Lithuania
• National Distance Education Centre (OSCAIL), Ireland
• Polish Virtual University / Polski Uniwersytet Wirtualny (PUW), Poland
• Slovakian Association for Distance Higher Education, Slovakia
• Studiecentrum Open Hoger Onderwijs (StOHO), Belgium

• National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL), Ireland
• Norwegian Agency for Digital Learning in Higher Education (NADLHE), Norway
• Slovenian Rectors' Conference, Slovenia

3. Single university membership for associations in development

• Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Finland

4. Associate members for non-European organisations

• Open University of Israel, Israel
• Private Technical University of Store (UTPL), Ecuador