Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR courses
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All these digital formats increase accessibility and enable a wider group of students to benefit from a wide range of EPICUR courses. Whilst physical mobility can be very rewarding, and in-person interactions can enhance learning experiences, it is not possible for all students and staff to travel and stay abroad whilst studying. This is where digital course formats have a significant role to play. They can facilitate collaboration between course designers/educators and enable a wider group of students to benefit from a more diverse range of courses.
Consider which digital format will suit your course best:
Online Course
An online course requires all course elements: resources, interaction, teaching to be online. The course may be synchronous or asynchronous or a mixture of both.
You can find out more about designing and teaching an online course from the Online Courses resource sheet.
Blended Course
A blended course includes in-person and online elements. For an EPICUR course the in-person elements need to facilitate physical mobility with intense periods of in-person teaching and learning. In this way, students have the opportunity to meet and work in-person with the teacher/s and fellow students for consecutive days over short time periods. This course design makes the course accessible to a wider group of students. For example, a blended course could begin with online asynchronous self-study followed by a short intense in-person element (2-5 days) followed by online self study or group work.
Remember, students and staff from collaborating universities will require access to funding to enable their participation in the in-person elements. Before deciding on this option, check with your EPICUR Institutional Coordinator/s about funding opportunities for staff and students, and ask your university’s Erasmus coordinator about BIPs as ways to design and fund participation in blended courses.
You can find out more about designing and teaching an online course from the Blended Courses resource sheet.
Hybrid Course
A hybrid course provides online synchronous access to in-person teaching. In this situation some students are present in person and others are present online.
You can find out more about designing and teaching an online course from the Hybrid Courses resource sheet.
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This page is part of a Wiki, the "Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR Courses" by the EPICUR European University Alliance, consisting of the University of Strasbourg, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Southern Denmark, The University of Amsterdam, Adam Mickiewicz University, University of Haute-Alsace, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna and the University of Freiburg.
Please attribute according to TASLL rule as follows: Best Practice Guide for Designing and Delivering EPICUR Courses, by EPICUR. Any icons included are protected by copyright, © The Noun Project, used with permission.
License: This work and its contents are – unless otherwise stated – licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .
Last edited: 23. Jun 2025, 09:05, Hutz-Nierhoff, Dorthe [dh1076@rz.uni-freiburg.de]