The national flagship universities that are pursuing 'shared universities' through academic credit exchanges are exploring a phased transition to a digital consortium education system by developing a 'portal-type integrated LMS' to strengthen their joint educational framework. There is growing interest in whether this could become a game changer for university education.

The Council of Presidents of National Flagship Universities (Chair Kim Dong-won, President of Jeonbuk National University (JBNU)) discussed this agenda at the 2nd regular meeting of the Council of Presidents of National Flagship Universities and the Council of Chairpersons of National University Hospital Boards, held at Kangwon National University Future Library on June 2 and 3.

At the regular general meeting attended by the presidents of the ten member universities, JBNU attracted attention by proposing the establishment of a portal-type integrated LMS as an agenda item to strengthen the consortium education system of the national flagship universities.

The nine national flagship universities, excluding Seoul National University, established the so-called 'KNU9 LMS' in March 2020 for inter-university credit exchange and have operated a total of 89 courses over four semesters to date.

However, as it has operated only online credit exchanges centered on regular courses, it lacks student-tailored features and course diversity, and its linkage with inter-university exchange models currently in operation, such as Regional Innovation Platform (RIS) projects or innovation shared-university initiatives, has been very limited. Functionally, it also had limited scalability, failing to support social platform–based content curation and metaverse features needed for team teaching, mentoring, industry–academia education, and adaptive learning.

The 'KNU10 Portal-Type Integrated LMS' proposed by JBNU that day would overcome the expansion limitations of the existing system and, by linking with inter-university exchange–related programs, could lead to expanded credit exchange scope and increased learner choice.

For example, by establishing this system, not only could the national flagship universities share the 35 types of content produced last year through seven Energy New Industry Innovation Shared-University Projects, but they would also be able to jointly use the countless contents that will be generated through Regional Innovation Platform (RIS) projects.

Through building this system, additional expansion is possible into developing and utilizing a new academic-exchange virtual campus (architecture) and into exchange projects such as the Center for Innovation in Joint Education currently operating in six regions.

Specialized services beyond remote lectures—such as team teaching, mentoring, and career design—support for various teaching methods and interactive learning solutions using educational content curation and real-time videoconferencing tools, and the introduction of a blockchain-based authentication system to address prior shortcomings like login errors and to secure the stability of student grade data are expected to improve user convenience and streamline academic administration.

Kim Dong-won, Chair of the Council of Presidents of National Flagship Universities (President of Jeonbuk National University (JBNU)), said, 'We propose adopting a common portal-type LMS platform for the ten national flagship universities to further strengthen academic credit exchange systems and to enable scalability through linkage with existing shared-university projects. Doing so will allow sharing high-quality lecture content in new industry fields developed through digital innovation shared-university projects, thereby greatly contributing not only to university education innovation but also to the cultivation of one million digital talents.'

Meanwhile, at the regular meeting, Chonnam National University and Gyeongsang National University proposed establishing and operating Graduate Schools of Medical Science at the national flagship universities to cultivate specialized personnel for the advancement of the biohealthcare sector to global leadership, to respond to new diseases, and to foster convergence-type talent to revitalize related industries.