Many researchers have underlined the benefits of student mobility in strengthening their communication skills. Studying a foreign language and fostering knowledge about behavioural attitudes are the most common research cases. One of the major issues of mobility, by its very nature, is that it implies significant travel and accommodation costs. Virtual mobility, or Virtual Exchange (VE), can be introduced as a proactive alternative solution. This work presents an evaluation of a telecollaborative online course model organised as a VE between German and Moroccan universities. It was established to explore the benefits of integrating a VE experience by practicing some 21st-century knowledge elements as tools for the development of intercultural, language, and digital competencies from the perspective of mobility. In this paper, we present a VE model and its design, structure, and progress. Then, we evaluate this first experience to overcome some challenges that similar future experiences could face. We analyse the tools proposed in this design, the interactions between the different actors, and their feedback. The evaluative study shows the acquisition of awareness of cultural differences and the improvement of language skills through practice in addition to the development of some digital skills.

The increasing number of enlistees claiming their right to enroll in the programs of African Universities and the limited number of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) were the prime reasons of students overcrowding in classes. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) showed a potential to help limiting the challenges of massification in open access HEIs. As the literature review of the MOOC situation in Africa is still nascent, we will qualitatively share the experience of Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, Morocco (UCA) in launching a MOOC for its learners as a case study. Created in 2013, this MOOC was entitled UC@MOOC and appeared to respond to the challenges of massification in open access HEIs and the language difficulties faced by students. We will also present an overview of this project, its achievements and the quantity of knowledge delivery it accomplished. This MOOC experience attracted learners from other countries. And we have found that a shortage of MOOCs in Africa drove learners from other African francophone countries to learn from UC@MOOC. Yet a low-cost MOOC with certain limitations such as the weak ICT infrastructure available to the African public will thrive if operated using a MOOC platform and boosted its financial means.

Open education is one of the most important settings in every society. It grants everyone the right to learn freely. Today, technology is helping to make learning even more open by providing an environment of online education, which plays a remarkable role in shortening distances and encouraging students to learn. At Cadi Ayyad University (UCA) the new-enrolled students are facing linguistics barriers as well as overcrowding in classrooms, in particular for those in open access institutions. Subsequently, they cannot have an easy access to their face-to-face courses. To help students to overcome these problems, the university has decided to design an online environment for all courses and programmes. The most innovative project adopted at UCA to face massification was inspired from the massive open online courses and was designed as an open Educational platform entitled UC@MOOC. More than 120 scripted courses have been posted online so far. In this paper we will describe and discuss an analytics research on geometrical optics course designed for around 2000 students at UCA. Through out this research we will explain how this initiative has been considered as a source of producing open educational resources.

New manganese defect metastable ferrites with spinal structure were prepared by oxidation at a temperature lower than 500&C of submicron manganese substituted magnetites, Fe3-xMNxO4(0 \\leq x < 1). X-ray diffraction measurements and thermal analysis studies have been carried out on these systems. Low-temperature magnetic measurements have also been carried out. With these studies, it has been possible to depict the cation distribution in substituted magnetites and oxidized compounds, and to understand the complex process of oxidation. In defect spinels, vacancies are formed not only from oxidation of Fe2+ions, but also of Mn2+and Mn3+ions. Manganese-rich compound with x = 0.97 having high content of Mn3+and Mn4+ions show an important increase in coercive force, which exceeds 700 Oe at 4.2 K.