The EPICUR Inter-University Campus (EIUC)

The EPICUR Inter-University Campus is a central online gateway for supporting flexible virtual, physical and hybrid mobilities for all students and staff across the alliance. One of its unique features is its fully digitalized, paper-free process for student admissions that is supported by a secure, scalable and transparent solution based on free and open-source software. Furthermore, EIUC offers innovative functionality to monitor mobilities, issue and recognize certifications (including ECTS and micro-credentials).  

Get access to the different components 

EIUC Components 

The following figure is presenting a high-level architecture of the EPICUR Inter-University Campus.   

The main EIUC components are the following: 

• Single Sign On (SSO) Services in order for the users to have access with their institutional account. 
• Virtual University Registrar System (VURS): Centralised Campus Management System/Student Information System (CMS/SIS) keeping the necessary information for the students’ mobilities and services.  
• Virtual Campus Learning Platform (VCLP): The Learning Management System (LMS) of EPICUR along with a Decentralised LMS server acting as gateway to local LMSs of the partners. 

Please find below a short description of VURS and VCLP. 

VURS (Virtual University Register System)

VURS is a complete CMS/SIS which consists of the following components for supporting the necessary functionality to monitor mobilities, issue and recognize certifications (including ECTS and micro-credentials): 

• Course Catalogue. Public course catalogue of all learning pathways offered to the EPICUR students. 
• Candidates App. The application for the prospective students to apply for participation in the EPICUR learning pathways.  
• Students App. The application for the selected students attending the EPICUR learning pathways. 

• Registrar App. The application for the administrative staff to monitor EPICUR learning pathways and students mobilities. 
• Faculty App. The application for the teaching staff delivering a course that is part of an EPICUR learning pathway. 
• Admin Panel. A specific part of the application for the Registrar App to admin the rights and roles of the rest of the users. 
• VURS API Server: The core service interacting with all the apps above and the VCLP component. 

VCLP (Virtual Campus Learning Plateform)

VCLP is a full Learning Management System, which is based on ILIAS. ILIAS is an open-source and free Learning Management System, which is popular in Germany and Switzerland. Both German universities of the EPICUR alliance are using ILIAS as their main Learning Management System. ILIAS is completely web-based, hence requires only a web browser on the client side to use it. It supports learning content management and tools for collaboration, communication, evaluation and assessments. It is published under the GNU General Public License. The functionality of ILIAS can also be extended with Plug-Ins. There exists a variety of free and commercial Plug-Ins for ILIAS, adding missing functionality for specific cases. As the VCLP is a complete Learning Management System, courses can be directly hosted on the VCLP itself. However, since the VCLP is based on ILIAS, it can also be integrated with other LMS by connecting the LMS to one or more “Decentralized LMS servers”. 

More information 

For more information, please:

• download a guide that has been written to provide a general introduction to the EPICUR Inter-University Campus design and functionalities. The intended target audience includes experts on digitalization of Higher Education Institutions as well as learning technology experts.
• read the interview of Thrasyvoulos Tsiatsos (leader of the EUIC implementation) about the 1st prototype of EIUC (March 2021)