Role of Universities

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THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITIES IN AN OPEN EDUCATION AND OPEN
INNOVATION GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT

Roumen Nikolov*

*University of Library Studies and Information Technology and Sofia University, 119 Bul. Tzarigradsko Shosse,
Sofia 1784, Bulgaria, e-mail: e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The paper analyses the changes which the ICT and open innovation drive in a global scale, such as: globalization of higher
education, development of e-infrastructures for e-science, the open educational resources' movement, changes in the existing university and
business models and the emergence of new ones, such as: Research University, Entrepreneural University, Digital University, Virtual
University, Living Labs, Innovation University, University 2.0 and Global Campus. New generation research scientists and engineers,
teachers and e-infrastructure career professionals will be required. The universities would need to develop new, hybrid degree programs
combining library science with a scientific discipline. The e-infrastructures will impact the portfolio of skills and knowledge of the business
people, the professionals and the citizens at large by enhancing communication and lifelong learning opportunities related to scientific
inquiry and innovations. Some concrete examples based on the author's experience in a number of European projects will be presented.

Key words: knowledge society, e-learning, e-infrastructure, e-science, open educational resources, e-library, web 2.0, virtual organizations,
university models, Living Labs, Global Campus Model

1. Introduction
The European Commission (EC) very clearly recognized the role of the universities in building Europe
of Knowledge. The main aim is to improve “the performance and international attractiveness of
Europe's higher education institutions and raise the overall quality of all levels of education and
training in the EU, combining both excellence and equity, by promoting student mobility and trainees'
mobility, and improve the employment situation of young people” (http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020).
The EC aims at increasing universities' excellence in research and teaching [18]. The European
universities have to identify the areas in which they have attained some excellence essential for Europe
and to concentrate funding on them in order to support academic research. The commission supports
not only intra-European academic mobility, but also mobility between universities and industry, thus
opening up new career opportunities for young researchers. The EC reports also that the number of
young technological (spin-off) companies created by universities has been on the rise in Europe.
However, their average density is far smaller than it is around the American campuses. A major
obstacle to better exploitation of the university research results is the way intellectual property issues
are handled in Europe. In addition, it was identified that the European universities still do not have
well-developed structures for managing research results.
Another important measure is to open up universities to the outside world and increase their
international attractiveness and thus - preparing them to a broader international competition, especially
with the American universities which attract the best talents from all over the world. The regions of
the EU are supposed to play a very important role through the development of technology centres,
science parks, and other cooperation structures between the business sector and the universities, and
thus - to catalyze development of university regional development strategies and stimulate regional
networking of universities. In all mentioned priorities and actions the effective use of Information
and Communication Technologies (ICT) is of great importance.
2. Current and Emerging University Models
Operating in a very complicated world, universities and other higher education institutions have to
adjust themselves to handle concurrently contrasting trends, such as: globalisation versus national
needs; government steering versus institutional autonomy; harmonisation versus diversity; public
versus private sectors; basic versus applied research; competition versus collaboration; and intellectual
property versus intellectual philanthropy [17]. They adopt some characteristics of the current and the
emerging university models, such as Research University, Entrepreneural University, Digital
University and Virtual University.
A distinguished characteristic of a Research University is that it puts great importance on the creation
of new knowledge, applies new knowledge to solve important societal problems and contributes to
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improving the quality of life. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education
definition, a research university provides doctoral degree granting - “at least 10 doctoral degrees per
year across at least 3 disciplines, or at least 20 doctoral degrees overall” (carnegiefoundation.org).
However, while most of European research universities try to integrate education, research and
innovation at a MSc and PhD level, many of the American research universities target the BSc level as
well [4]. The research universities can offer a learning environment which is not typical for the small
colleges and non-research universities. A baccalaureate student who studies in such environment
develops his or her own research capabilities. The research universities could be both student-
centered and research-centered through a “synergistic system in which faculty and students are
learners and researchers, whose interactions make for a healthy and flourishing intellectual
atmosphere” [4].
The America’s research universities typically have an international orientation - they attract
students, particularly at the graduate level, from many parts of the world, thereby adding valued
dimensions of diversity to the community. The international graduate students often become teaching
assistants, so their presence becomes a part of the undergraduate experience. And many research
universities offer an array of interdisciplinary programs seldom available in smaller institutions. The
graduates of these programs make the names of the American research universities recognized and
respected throughout the world. The concept of integrated education at a research university requires
restructuring both the pedagogical and the management aspects of the university. Because
research universities create technological innovations, their students should have the best opportunities
to learn state-of-the-art practices. The international organizations, such as UNESCO, OECD and
World Bank, emphasise on the importance of research for the quality of higher education as well and
the importance of developing and sustain research capacity [32, 42, 43]. The global models
embrace research universities that see their mission as transcending the boundaries of the nation-state,
educating for global perspective and advancing the frontiers of knowledge worldwide [25, 26, 27].
The framework of Entrepreneurial University was defined by Clark [6]. “Entrepreneurial” is
considered as a characteristic of the whole university systems, i.e. the entire universities and their
internal departments, research centers, faculties, and schools. The concept is derived from ‘enterprise’
and puts attention on the willingness to take risks when initiating new practices whose outcome is not
certain. An entrepreneurial university actively seeks to innovate in how it operates. It seeks substantial
shift in organizational character in order to better perform in the future. Capitalization of research
findings is one of the primary features of an entrepreneurial university. The main characteristic of such
university is that it “understands the commercial value of knowledge” [6]. Clark identifies five
elements that constitute the minimum of entrepreneurial actions for an entrepreneurial university. The
degree of implementation of each of these actions provides a set of indicators for successful
transformation of a university towards the framework of an entrepreneurial university. These actions
are:
 Strengthening the steering core;
 Expanding the developmental periphery;
 Diversifying the funding base;
 Stimulating the academic heartland;
 Integrating the entrepreneurial culture.
Clark describes several case studies of universities which managed to become entrepreneurial [5, 6].
Most of them have established specialized units and structures, such as: science parks, incubators,
technology transfer offices, liaison groups, strategy committees, R&D outreach offices (marketing,
spin-offs), alumni networks, fund-rising initiatives, flexible load structure (education, research,
industry), etc. The Science Park and Knowledge Park models are used by the entrepreneurial
universities as instruments for establishing better links between universities and industry and for
brain-gain, i.e. for attracting back the talented specialists to the countries of origin [19]. These models
have their origin in the model of of the early fifties when the Stanford Research Park (1951) and the
Cornell Business and Technology Park (1952) were established. Today, the Stanford Research Park
has 140 companies in electronics, software, biotechnology and other high-tech fields and employs
23,000 persons (lbre.stanford.edu/realestate/research_park).
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In order to become “enterprise like organizations” the universities tend to adopt ICT not only for e-
learning, but also for management and administrative purposes. The most critical challenges that the
campus information technology leaders in US were facing in 2008, were: security and Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) systems along with change management and e-learning [14]. An emerging
issue was recognised, namely “cyberinfrastructure” - hardware and software systems, distributed
computing, data, communications technology and tools for collaborating of the research communities.
There exist some European higher education projects that aim to integrate the ICT into all university
activities. For example, Technical University in Munich is developing a Digital University project
[3]. The university re-aligns its ICT strategically in co-operation with the Leibniz Supercomputing
Centre. This re-alignment follows an overall university strategy by means of closely interconnected
projects in the areas of organisation, campus management, e-learning and ICT infrastructure. In 2004
University of Edinburgh started a “change project which would include the implementation of a new
student system, as well as fundamentally reviewing the way processes were carried out to identify
shared solutions” (www.euclid.ed.ac.uk). The primary objective of the project was to develop a
“streamlined, modern approach to interacting with enquirers, applicants and students which reflects
our international standing and the calibre of our teaching and research”. In 2002 the author initiated
a pilot e-university project at Sofia University which evolved into an eCampus university model [26,
29].
Virtual University (Virtual Campus) can be considered as a "metaphor for the electronic, teaching,
learning and research environment created by the convergence of several relatively new technologies
including, but not restricted to, the Internet, World Wide Web, computer mediated communication"
[41]. The notion of “campus” reflects the American traditions in higher education. Turner states: “As a
kind of city in microcosm, it (the campus) has been shaped by the desire to create an ideal community,
and has often been a vehicle for expressing the utopian social vision of the American imagination.
Above all, the campus reveals the power that a physical environment can possess as the embodiment
of an institution's character”[39]. Although not many universities are “campus universities”, any
university could afford building its own virtual campus. In this respect it would be more appropriate to
use the term “virtual campus” rather than “virtual university”.
Appart of competition between universities, a clear need for cooperation between them is of crucial
importance. Many universities use the partnership as a means of entry into the global e-learning
market and to penetrate less economically advanced countries [2]. The partner institutions from
the less economically developed countries bring adaptation to local culture, language benefits, local or
national accreditation, sharing of costs and risks, and access to neighbouring markets or markets with
similar language and culture. These all are considerable benefits for a partner from a more developed
country as well. Many countries have announced national virtual university initiatives of various kinds
[8]. Some of these initiatives are intended to extend and enhance local provision while others are
targeted at international markets.
3. New Technology Advances
The technology environment that is related to higher education is changing very fast, especially with
the advent of the Web 2.0 technologies and cloud computing. The global education movement gave
rise to another one, namely – Open Educational Resources (OER), which demonstrates great
potential to overcome the demographic, economic, and geographic educational boundaries and to
promote life-long learning and personalised learning. The term “Open Educational Resources” was
adopted at a UNESCO meeting in 2002 in order to refer to the open provision of educational
resources, enabled by ICT, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-
commercial purposes [8]. A definition of OER is: “digitised materials offered freely and openly for
educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research” [33]. For
instance, Share.TEC (share-tec.eu) could be considered as a European digital library - OER in teacher
education, and OpenScout (openscout.net) – as a European digital library - OER in the field of
management education and training [26, 38]. According to OECD, there are more than 3000 open
access courses (opencourseware) currently available from over 300 universities worldwide. For
instance:
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 MIT OpenCourseWare (ocw.mit.edu) is the most popular example of institutional OER
model - they published on the Web more than 2000 courses which are made available to
educators and learners worldwide at no cost;
 OpenLearn initiative (openlearn.open.ac.uk) launched by the UK Open University to make a
selection of their materials available for free use by anyone and to build communities of
learners and educators around the content using a range of tools and strategies. Currently more
than 600 free online courses are available;
 OpenCourseWare Consortium (ocwconsortium.org) - a collaboration of more than 250
higher education institutions and associated organisations from around the world creating open
educational content using a shared model.
Special case of OER are the open textbooks [16]. The cost of textbooks in higher education is usually
paid directly by the students and their parents, and it is now a substantial part of the total and rapidly
increasing cost of higher education. At the same time the cost of textbooks has risen, their usefulness
in the teaching and learning process in higher education is declining as more material is available for
free on the internet and neither the pedagogical approach nor the learning assessment process is well
tied to them. A model of a SmartBook based on the new technologies emerged: dynamic, interactive,
regularly updated (including by users), localized, customized, remixed, etc [21]. Open courses
available on the web can also be the center of communities of students and teachers. These books
and communities could be employed in teacher professional development in ways not possible or not
as easily attainable with static texts. The open textbooks, as well as all OER movement, are very
important instruments to approach the educational gap in the developing countries.
Some recent OER developments are related to building open repositories of research publications
and other research outputs, e.g. – Dspace at MIT (dspace.mit.edu), DSpace of the TENCompetence
project (tencompetence.org), Open Research Online of the UK Open University (oro.open.ac.uk),
TeLearn (telearn.org), the OpenAIRE initiative of the EC (openaire.eu), etc. The Dspace at MIT
Thesis Collection, for instance, contains more than 20 000 items. Open access is critical to ensure fast
and reliable access to EU-funded research results, in order to drive innovation, advance scientific
discovery and support the development of a strong knowledgebased economy (openaire.eu). Sofia
University and other Bulgarian partners have established their open repositories of research
publications and other research outputs (e.g. research.uni-sofia.bg) that are linked to OpenAIRE and
other European digital repositories [26, 38]. They have jointly developed also thematic digital
repositories and services, such as Share.TEC (share-tec.eu) and OpenScout (openscout.net).
The e-infrastructure (cyberinfrastructure) is a combination of hardware, software, services, personnel
and organization, which provides a wide range of services for the global research communities, such
as [1]: high performance computation services; data, information and knowledge management
services; observation, management and fabrication services; interfaces and visualization services;
collaboration service. The service layer is built upon base technology for computation, storage, and
communication. E-infrastructures should enable research communities and projects to rely on an
effective, application specific and interoperable knowledge environments for research and
education. New types of scientific organizations and supporting environments are emerging, e.g
“laboratories without walls”, colaboratory, grid community, e-science community, and virtual
community. It is needed to “enable, encourage, and accelerate this grass-roots revolution in ways that
maximize common benefits, minimize redundant and ineffective investments, and avoid increasing
barriers to interdisciplinary research” [1].
The term “e-infrastructure” refers to a new research environment in which all researchers - whether
working in the context of their home institutions or in national or multinational scientific initiatives -
have shared access to unique or distributed scientific facilities (including data, instruments, computing
and communications), regardless of their type and location in the world [12]. Increasingly, new types
of scientific organizations and supporting environments for science based on research communities are
emerging. They can serve individuals, teams and organizations in ways that revolutionize the research
practice. The industry could be an important partner in development and deployment of e-
infrastructure, but it could also benefit from it. The e-infrastructure could be a platform for co-
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investments building new partnerships by universities and industry and thus – catalyze new
organizational forms for knowledge creation and education in the digital age [1].
The recent developments in the area of e-science digital repositories and e-infrastructures in Europe
(http://e-scidr.eu/) aim at embedding them into “a single science information space that serves
multiple stakeholders and permits multiple perspectives: for science, scientists, researchers, students,
schools, the publishing community and industry” [13]. Such e-science repositories and e-
infrastructures should embrace all EU countries and target their specific needs, and thus - to bridge
differences between the well developed and less developed countries in the field [13]. There are many
examples of implementation of e-infrastructure projects, such as:
 The European Grid Infrastructure - EGI (egi.eu) project is funded by the EC and aims to
build on recent advances in grid technology and develop a service grid infrastructure which is
available to scientists 24 hours-a-day. It was created (on the basis of several preliminary
projects and initiatives) on 8 February 2010 to coordinate and maintain a sustainable pan-
European infrastructure to support European research communities and their international
collaborators. EGI is the largest multi-disciplinary grid infrastructure in the world, which
brings together more than 140 institutions to produce a reliable and scalable computing
resource available to the European and global research community. At present, it consists of
approximately 300 sites in 50 countries and gives its 10,000 users access to 80,000 CPU cores
around the globe. EGI cooperates with the Open Science Grid – OSG (opensciencegrid.org),
iniative supported by the Nationals Science Foundation (NSF) in the USA which aims to
advance science through open distributed computing;
 nanoHUB.org was created by the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology –
NCN (nanohub.org). NCN is a network of universities with a vision to pioneer the
development of nanotechnology from science to manufacturing through innovative theory,
exploratory simulation, and novel cyberinfrastructure. Many students, staff, and faculty are
developing the nanoHUB science gateway while making use of it in their own research and
education. nanoHUB.org is designed to be a resource to the entire nanotechnology
discovery and learning community. Computation and software is a cross-cutting theme that
connects computer scientists and applied mathematicians to problem-driven scientists and
engineers, to address large scale problems and develop community codes for nanotechnology.
E-infrastructure and virtual organizations are enabling new form of learning: learning through
interactive visualizations and simulations [31]. In order to realize these radical changes in the
processes of learning and discovery, cyber-services also demand a new level of technical
competence from the workforce and citizens [31]:
 Future generations of research scientists and engineers. The new tools and functionality of
cyberinfrastructure are transforming the nature of scientific inquiry and scholarship. New
methods to observe and to acquire data, to manipulate it, and to represent it challenge the
traditional discipline-based graduate curricula. Increasingly the tools of e-infrastructure must
be incorporated within the context of disciplinary research;
 Teachers and faculty. To employ the tools and capabilities of cyberinfrastructure enabled
learning environments effectively, teachers and faculty must also have continued professional
development opportunities. Undergraduate curricula must also be reinvented to exploit
emerging e-infrastructure capabilities and the students should be able to do e-infrastructure-
enabled scientific inquiry and learning;
 E-infrastructure career professionals. Ongoing attention must be paid to the education of
the professionals who will support, deploy, develop, and design current and emerging e-
infrastructure. For example, the increased emphasis on data rich scientific inquiry has revealed
serious needs for digital data management or data curation professionals. Such careers may
involve the development of new, hybrid degree programs combining library science with a
scientific discipline;
 Business and industry workforce. The e-infrastucture will impact the portfolio of skills and
knowledge the business people and professionals should strive to achieve through professiona
certification training continual workplace learning;
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 Citizens at large. E-infrastructure extends the impact of science to citizens at large by
enhancing communication about scientific inquiry and outcomes to the lay public. E-
infrastructure enables lifelong learning opportunities as it supports the direct involvement by
citizens in distributed scientific inquiry.
The vision of Europe is that by 2030 a scientific e-infrastructure that supports seamless access, use,
re-use, and trust of data will exist [11]. This will have impact in many directions:
 All stakeholders, from scientists to national authorities to the general public, are aware of the
critical importance of conserving and sharing reliable data produced during the scientific
process.
 Researchers and practitioners from any discipline are able to find, access and process the
data they need. They can be confident in their ability to use and understand data, and they can
evaluate the degree to which that data can be trusted.
 Producers of data benefit from opening it to broad access, and prefer to deposit their data
with confidence in reliable repositories. A framework of repositories work to international
standards, to ensure they are trustworthy.
 Public funding rises, because funding bodies have confidence that their investments in
research are paying back extra dividends to society, through increased use and re-use of
publicly generated data.
 The innovative power of industry and enterprise is harnessed by clear and efficient
arrangements for exchange of data between private and public sectors, allowing appropriate
returns to both.
 The public has access to and can make creative use of the huge amount of data available; it
can also contribute to the data store and enrich it. All can be adequately educated and prepared
to benefit from this abundance of information.
 Policy makers are able to make decisions based on solid evidence, and can monitor the
impacts of these decision. Government becomes more trustworthy. Global governance
promotes international trust and interoperability
The e-infrastructure allows the virtual research labs to conduct experiments “in silico”, that enables
new models of learning, teaching, doing research and business. Thus, the virtual research labs can
become “real” – the researchers with different backgrounds could conduct global experiments
remotely in real time and can collaborate on the same set of data from different perspectives.
The model of Global Research Library (GRL) is also emerging (grl2020.net). The fast development
of the Web 2.0 technologies, OER and e-infrastructures are driving changes in the library model as
well. Several best practice cases are reported, e.g. in the area of Nanotechnology, Earth Sciences, High
Energy Physics. Some of the key challenges are:
 The expectations of faculties and students, now and in the future, will be growing;
 The global research libraries will transform the university mission in a technology enabled
world;
 There is need of investments and focus in the face of limited resources, conflicting priorities,
proliferating user groups and often competing clientele.
The GRL of the future should be: multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual; a collaborative and
global environment, which emphasises the ethical issues surrounding data; purposefully inclusive to
different cultures. Building pan-European electronic libraries is among the main priorities of the EC. A
typical example of such libraries is Europeana (europeana.eu).
4. The Living Labs Model
Living Labs can be defined as “an environment for innovation and development where users are
exposed to new solutions in (semi) realistic contexts, as part of medium- or long-term studies targeting
evaluation of new solutions and discovery of innovation opportunities” [15]. Recently emerged, Living
Labs represent an open innovation infrastructure including many innovation stakeholders -
companies, universities, research organizations and community, developers, local and regional
authorities and end-users, involved in early stage innovation processes for complex products and
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services development. They have been already applied in various settings and have proved their
efficiency. Living Labs is an evolving concept, fast spreading around Europe supported by the
European Network of Living Labs – ENoLL (openlivinglabs.eu). This is a form of user-driven open
innovation ecosystem, based on a partnership which enables users to take an active part in the
research, development and open innovation processes. Living Labs represent a research methodology
for sensing, prototyping, validating, and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life
contexts [24]. They bridge the innovation gap between technology development and the uptake of new
products and services. They allow early assessment of the socio-economic implications of new
technological solutions by demonstrating the validity of innovative services and business models and
become the main testbeds for development of innovations. Living Labs are organized on regional
principle, enhancing local knowledge sharing by involvement of the main stakeholders in specific industry
areas. ENoLL highlights the opportunities for increasing collaboration effect by sharing best practices and
widely disseminating Living Labs success stories within European perspective. Many universities are
active participants in these success stories. For instance, the Bulgarian Virtual Services and Open
Innovation (VirtSOI) Living Lab aims to integrate a broad vision for virtual services development and
implementation within the society related to different sectors, such as: e-Learning, e-Government, e-
Health, e-Content, e-Inclusion, etc. In this respect the VirtSOI plays the role of a regional living lab
and an active marketplace platform for regional expertise/innovation/service seekers and providers.
After reaching a level of maturity, the VirtSOI Living Lab started making efforts to incubate a set of
service-oriented living labs targeting different industrial and public sectors. The first pilot living labs
are: the Multilingual e-Content and e-Library (MLeCeL) Living Lab (livinglab.itd-bg.eu), the Serious
Games Living Lab (seriousgame.it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg) and the Internet of Things (IoT) e-Health Living
Lab - in the framework of the FP7 ELLIOT Project “Experimental Living Lab for the Internet of
Things” (elliot-project.eu).
5. The Global Campus Model
The Global Campus Model (GCM) is based on some advanced ICT and incorporates the main
characteristics of the Research, Entrepreneurial, Digital and Virtual University models [25, 26]. The
GCM universities considers their mission as transcending the boundaries of the nation-state, educating
for global perspective and advancing the frontiers of knowledge worldwide. The GCM is intrinsically
global since the ICT provides natural means to cross borders. The GCM adopts the assumption that the
“current educational reform is driven by three major factors - asynchronous space and time,
responsive environments, and virtual reconstruction” [23] and follows the model of Virtual Campus as
a virtual reconstruction of the existing campuses and “bricks and mortal” buildings, i.e to “redesign
and reconfigure the human experience of existing physical spaces without having to make physical,
structural changes in buildings”. Thus, virtual spaces would complement the physical spaces when
designing an effective, student centered, learning environment. A virtual campus will be a virtual
learning environment that not only integrates a variety of software tools but also - all physical tools
that can be found in a physical campus [10]. A (global) virtual campus should be enourmously opened
towards the other stakeholders and the users and provide virtual places where they could meet,
cooperate, communicate, and share information and knowledge. In order to meet this challenge, a
GCM university could transform towards the University 2.0 Model [28] and incorporate the OER
strategy [21]. Such university could also benefit from the movement of creation of e-libraries, e.g.
global research libraries and the recently opened European portal Europeana (europeana.eu). As
virtual organizations, GCM universities will adopt new form of learning: learning through
interactive visualizations and simulations on e-infrastructures for e-science [30] and use global
serious gaming environments.
One of the indicators for global reach of universities is the percentage of foreign students, PhDs and
postdocs. GCM universities could promote virtual mobility schemes, e.g by following the Virtual
Erasmus model, which complements to the existing Erasmus exchange programmes [34]. The virtual
Erasmus can be used to prepare and follow-up the physical mobility or/and take courses at the home
university while staying abroad. In addition, it embeds “networked e-learning (in transnational
collaboration of teachers and students) as an integrated part in mainstream higher education, aiming
at transferability, scalability and sustainability: joint programme and course development, joint
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learning activities as virtual integrated elements of blended learning, ‘following’ (e.g. elective)
courses abroad in a virtual mode” [34]. The model of virtual mobility would be very useful for
developing countries in their efforts to reduce the brain-drain and turn it into a brain-gain status
and thus - contribute to their home countries’ national growth and helping to reduce the rising
“knowledge gap” between them and the developed countries. In order to fulfill this mission, the GCM
universities should closely cooperate with international non-governmental and multi-governmental
organizations.
The GCM universities should be increasingly more research intensive and apply scientific methods
in disciplines outside the sciences in order to fulfill their third mission, i.e. for solving problems of
global importance of the society as well as to have strong orientation towards regional
development and open innovation, e.g. through participation in European and global innovation
infrastructures like living labs, research intensive clusters and science parks.
Professors in a GCM university will face fast increasing global competition, especially with the
development of the mixed virtual/physical mode of mobility and recruitment. In addition, they will
have multiple responsibilities, i.e. not only to conduct publishable research but also to teach graduate
and undergraduate students, to provide service to their universities, and to use their knowledge for the
benefit of global, local and national communities. The use of ICT demands new skills and additional
time for effective usage. The GCM universities will need a future generations of research scientists
and engineers [25, 30] which are able to use tools and services of e-infrastructures and apply new
methods to observe and to acquire data, to manipulate it, and to penetrate into new interdisciplinary
areas of research reflecting the complex nature of modern science and engineering problems. The
faculties must be provided with opportunities for continued professional development.
A GCM university should be an entrepreneurial university as well. It could adopt most of the
characteristics of the Innovation University Model in Finland, e.g to become leading actor in the field
of continuing education and development services provided for working life and to increase intangible
capital both inside the universities and through them in society [22]. All this will shift relationships
among universities and government, business, and society. On the way to a knowledge society in a
dynamic ICT environment the universities should catalyse a process of deep institutional change. As
Unsworth states, one of the major challenges facing the universities in the next decade is to reinvent
themselves as information organizations. He emphasizes that the “universities are, at their core,
organizations that cultivate knowledge, seeking both to create knowledge and to preserve and convey
knowledge, but they are remarkably inefficient and therefore ineffective in the way that they leverage
their own information resources to advance that core activity” [40]. The model of University 2.0
naturally emerged as a framework for universities to adapt to the social computing phenomena and to
the networked information economy. The University 2.0 model can be defined as a “research and
entrepreneurial university which integrates Web 2.0 technologies and applications in all university
activities, including ones with all knowledge intensive stakeholders, and implements the features of the
Enterprise 2.0” [26, 28]. The Web 2.0 based virtual learning environments provide opportunities for
students, professors, companies and other stakeholders to cooperate in a 24/7 fashion. The virtual
space of a University 2.0 is a natural place, where the two worlds – the academic and the corporate
ones, could establish solid bridges and naturally integrate, especially if the universities cooperate
with Entreprise 2.0 like businesses. An extreme GCM university organizational structure could be the
“Cloudy Academy” [20]. A GCM university could also become a virtual organization. Virtual
Organizations (VOs) are a fast-growing phenomenon in all work settings. A VO is “a group of
individuals whose members and resources may be dispersed geographically and institutionally, yet
who function as a coherent unit through the use of e-infrastructure” [7, 30]. A VO is typically enabled
by, and provides shared and often real-time access to, centralized or distributed resources, such as
community specific tools, applications, data, and sensors, and experimental operations. Quite often,
these resources use high-performance computing as a core capability. Such VOs are for instance EGI
(egi.org) and nanoHUB.org (nanohub.org). The term VO can encompass, at least in part, systems
known by other names such as collaboratories, e-science or e-research, distributed workgroups or
virtual teams, virtual environments, and online research communities. VOs include a broad range of
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operational options, e.g they can be formal or informal, planned or unplanned, transient or long lived.
They share several common characteristics [7, 30]:
 distributed across space, with participants spanning teritories and institutions;
 distributed across time, with asynchronous as well as synchronous interactions;
 dynamic structures and processes at every stage of their lifecycle, from initiation to
termination;
 computationally enabled, via collaboration support systems including e-mail,
teleconferencing, telepresence, awareness, social computing, group information management
tools, etc.;
 computationally enhanced with simulations, databases, and analytic services that interact
with human participants and are integral to the operation of the organization.
6. Conclusions
The technologies are ever changing and the new generations of Web are on the horizon – Web 3.0,
Web 4.0, etc. Web technologies are increasing the intelligence of the Web and give rise of a new
interdisciplinary science – Web Science [36]. Davis desfcribes these trends: “The semantic wave
embraces four stages of internet growth. The first stage, Web 1.0, was about connecting information
and getting on the net. Web 2.0 is about connecting people — putting the “I” in user interface, and the
“we” into Webs of social participation. The next stage, Web 3.0, is starting now. It is about
representing meanings, connecting knowledge, and putting these to work in ways that make our
experience of internet more relevant, useful, and enjoyable. Web 4.0 will come later. It is about
connecting intelligences in a ubiquitous Web where both people and things reason and communicate
together” [9]. An emerging trend is the integration of the Web technologies with the global e-
infrastructure and the academic world [35]. As we can observe a clear trend of integration of all
existing forms of education, we might expect that a ultimate result of the process of transformation of
education - the whole world would become a Global Campus in the next few decades.
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