This week I was in the Netherlands in the main for a GÉANT TF-EDU (Education Taskforce) meeting but was also attending the 1EdTech Learning Impact conference before ending the week meeting up with Dutch colleagues from SURF.

I was quite impressed that Amsterdam was only a one hour flight time from Bristol to Amsterdam, so spent longer at Bristol waiting for boarding, and just as long at Amsterdam going through passport control. You have to say the process of doing this at one end for the Eurostar and DFDS ferries at Dover makes the disembarkation process so much faster.

The first part of the week was spent in Delft, which I have never been to before. It’s a beautiful city, though as is the case with attending meetings and conferences, I spent a lot of time in the conference venue, with just a short amount of time to explore and enjoy the sights of Delft.

I hadn’t originally planned to attend 1EdTech Learning Impact conference when I was doing my conference planning earlier in the year, but it was recommended to me by my SURF colleagues and when I looked over the programme I saw that my CEO Heidi was presenting.

Though the education landscape across Europe has a lot of similarities with the UK there are also lots of differences.

When I was at the Western Colleges Consortium back in the 2000s I was very much aware of the standards issues and interoperability. Now looking at the current landscape, standards and interoperability at an institutional level is mature.

Whereas standards and interoperability at a national level is challenging, especially in relation to student mobility and LLE requirements. Though students can move between institutions it is a difficult process with a lot of duplication and repetition. Access, authentication, and authorisation also becomes a barrier rather than an enabler. Standards and interoperability at an international level is virtually non-existent, especially in relation to student mobility.

Alongside the planned meetings and the conference, I also engaged in various side meetings and conversations with European colleagues, and UK based delegates.