The Open University of Catalonia (UOC) is an online, on-the-Web university with no physical campus, yet with an online teaching and management structure, capable of facilitating interactive communication between professors and students, with complete timetable independence, a characteristic normally known as synchronism. The virtual campus contains everything that can be found on a conventional university campus: teaching, research, dissemination of knowledge, as well as student services.

Since its creation, on 6 October 1994, the UOC has shaped a widely diverse university community and has brought together over 37,000 people in more than 45 countries. It is an innovative institution, created at the request of the Autonomous Regional Government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya). It has become a reference point throughout the world in the area of virtual education, or e-learning, and aims to lead new initiatives in education, research and dissemination of knowledge.
UOC courses are organized into undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes, designed according to the criteria of the 1999 Bologna Declaration for the construction of a European Higher Education Area. Current knowledge areas of UOC programmes are Law, Political and Administrative Sciences, Psychology and Educational Sciences, Economics and Business Sciences, Humanities and Philology, Information and Communications Sciences, Computer Studies, Multimedia and Telecommunications, Health and Environmental Sciences. Details are available at http://www.uoc.edu.