Designing networked learning with 4Ts

This paper tackles the issue of how to support the design of effective collaborative activities in networked learning contexts. At the crossover between the ‘learning design' and the ‘networked learning' research sectors, notions such as ‘collaborative techniques', ‘design patterns' or ‘scripts' are often used to describe and/or run online collaborative learning activities. Based on these concepts, technological tools have been implemented that reify these notions and support several phases of the learning design process, including the sharing and reuse of design representations. Despite the differences among tools, most of the them support the representation of learning designs that are already "in the designer's mind", while few technological tools specifically provide guidance and support in the early phase of the design process of collaborative activities, i.e. the conceptualization of the design. Focusing on this gap, this paper proposes a model and, based on it, a game supporting the conceptualization of online collaborative activities for networked learning contexts. Both the model and the game are based on the interplay of four variables, the 4Ts: Task, Teams, Time and Technology, regarded as the key aspects of the decisions to be made. The model suggests that, to design the online activity, the teacher/designer will need to "juggle" around with these four variables and their reciprocal relationships in a cyclic, iterative process, regardless of whether she wants to start the design from scratch or to reuse an already existing collaborative. Implemented with the aim of scaffolding such iterative process and supporting a group of teachers in the decision taking phases, the game consists of a board, representing the Time component, and of 5 decks of cards (respectively for the Task, Team, Technology, Technique and the Jokers). Each deck contains cards describing instances of Task, Team, Technology or Technique, while the Joker cards are empty and should be filled in by players with new instances. To guide the decisions, each card illustrates the dependencies between that particular instance of T and the others, thus making the decision criteria as explicit as possible and stimulating reflection on how each variable impacts on the others. Both the 4Ts model and the game have been field tested and evaluated by the developers with a group of 48 teachers. The results encourage the development of a digital version of the game, where cards are still tangible objects, and augmented reality techniques are employed to digitize the results of conceptualisation

Supporting and representing Learning Design with digital tools: in between guidance and flexibility

Producción CientíficaThe research field of Learning Design (LD) has been active for some time now, but several questions remain open for the scientific community. In particular, the article tackles issues that have been core concerns in LD over the years: (1) how to support the different phases of the LD process; (2) what representations should be used in the various steps; and (3) to what extent should digital LD tools be structured or flexible, either guiding the teacher/designer or leaving them free to pursue their own design path and style. The authors investigated these open questions through an LD tool called the Pedagogical Planner. This tool has been evaluated in authentic contexts with the goal of providing input for the ongoing debate. Evaluation has focused on the perceptions and actual usage by teachers, generating significant evaluative data to be used as a spur for further reflection on LD.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Project TIN2017-85179-C3-2-R)Junta de Castilla y León (Project VA257P18)European Commission (Project grant 588438-EPP-1-2017-1-EL-EPPKA2-KA

Information and Communication Technologies and Intangible Cultural Heritage education: opportunities and challenges

The safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has acquired a growing relevance in the last decades and in particular after the promulgation of the “Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage” (UNESCO, 2003). The convention itself highlights the importance of education to this scope and, for this reason, some projects have been proposed at national and international level. Nevertheless, ICH education remains a scarcely explored topic and poses several challenges, due to the intrinsic characteristics of the cultural expressions and the traditional transmission methods. Considering these challenges, we developed our research question related to which technologies and methods could be effectively adopted in the field of Cultural Heritage, to open up new opportunities for teaching and learning. In this paper, we discuss both the main challenges to be faced in the specific field and the results of our research carried out in the framework of the i-Treasures project. In the project, grounding on the opportunities offered by technologies, were developed innovative solutions in terms of methods and tools for ICH education

UniSchooLabs Toolkit: Tools and Methodologies to Support the Adoption of Universitiesâ?? Remote and Virtual Labs in Schools

The UniSchooLabs project aims at creating an infrastructure supporting web access to remote/virtual labs and associated educational resources to engage learners with hands-on and minds-on activities in science, technology and math in schools. The UniSchooLabs tool-kit supports the teacher in selecting a remote or virtual lab and developing a lab activity based on an inquiry model template. While working with the toolkit the teacher has access to three main features: a) a catalogue of available online laboratories; b) an archive of activities created by other users; c) a tool for creating new activities or reusing existing ones

"ProgeTTTTare" l'apprendimento collaborativo con T4

Questo articolo si colloca al crocevia tra il settore del Learning Design (LD) e quello del Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) in quanto propone un metodo per supportare la progettazione di attività di apprendimento online di tipo collaborativo. Nel settore del CSCL, le ‘tecniche collaborative’ e gli ‘script’ sono considerati concetti fondamentali per progettare attività di apprendimento collaborativo online e le proposte di strumenti tecnologici basati su tali concetti sono numerose. Tuttavia, la maggior parte di questi strumenti nasce con l’obiettivo di rappresentare il progetto educativo, al fine di favorire la comunicazione attorno ad esso, partendo dal presupposto, talvolta implicito, che questo sia già chiaro nella mente del docente progettista, mentre più rari sono gli strumenti tesi a supportare il docente nella fase di ideazione e concettualizzazione di un’attività collaborativa. Il metodo presentato in questo articolo appartiene a questa seconda categoria ed è basato su un modello per la progettazione di attività collaborative e su un gioco ad esso ispirato. Il modello è uno strumento concettuale che supporta la fase di ideazione di un’attività collaborativa definendola in termini di quattro componenti (le 4T): il Task (Compito), il Team/s (Gruppo/i), il Time (Tempo), e la Technology (Tecnologia). Il gioco costituisce uno strumento tangibile costruito sulla base del modello, comprendente delle carte e un tabellone che vengono usati dai progettisti per dare corpo al proprio progetto. Il metodo proposto è stato sperimentato con successo da 44 insegnanti e costituirà la base per lo sviluppo di uno strumento digitale ispirato al metodo stesso

UniSchooLabs Toolkit: Tools and Methodologies to Support the Adoption of Universities’ Remote and Virtual Labs in Schools

The UniSchooLabs project aims at creating an infrastructure supporting web access to remote/virtual labs and associated educational resources to engage learners with hands-on and minds-on activities in science, technology and math in schools. The UniSchooLabs tool-kit supports the teacher in selecting a remote or virtual lab and developing a lab activity based on an inquiry model template. While working with the toolkit the teacher has access to three main features: a) a catalogue of available online laboratories; b) an archive of activities created by other users; c) a tool for creating new activities or reusing existing ones

Dyads Versus Groups: Using Different Social Structures in Peer Review to Enhance Online Collaborative Learning Processes

The Peer Review (PR) is a very popular technique to support socio-constructivist and connectivist learning processes, online or face-to-face, at all educational levels, in both formal and informal contexts. The idea behind this technique is that sharing views and opinions with others by discussing with peers and receiving and providing formative feedback enriches the quality of learning. In this study, a class of trainee teachers conducts an online PR. The resulting interactions are analyzed and evaluated by the researchers through the application of an evaluation model based on both quantitative and qualitative data. In particular, two conditions are studied, namely the PR in groups versus the PR in dyads. Results show that students who carried out the PR in groups were less active from the cognitive point of view, while they devoted more effort to deal with organizational matters and discourse facilitation

Digital vs. Hybrid: Comparing Two Versions of a Board Game for Teacher Training

This study compares two versions (one digital, one hybrid) of a serious board game for teacher training called the “4Ts game”. Teachers play the game in groups to learn about—and directly engage in—the joint design of collaborative learning activities for their students by choosing the Tasks to be proposed, the Timing of activities, the Technologies to be used, and the Team composition, in an iterative process of decision making. The game comes in three versions: fully tangible, digital, and hybrid. This paper focuses on the interaction design of the digital and hybrid versions. In both cases, teachers pick cards up from four decks, read the prompts provided in the cards, and place them on a board to design a learning activity together. Their decision-making process is scaffolded by the digital or hybrid game versions, which provide feedback and suggestions and guide teachers toward the creation of a coherent design. The user experience is quite different in the two formats. In the hybrid game, teachers physically manipulate tangible cards on a tabletop board, and the board status is replicated on a laptop application that displays automatic feedback and guidance. By contrast, the digital version is played using an Interactive Whiteboard with touch-screen capabilities, thereby allowing teachers to manipulate digital cards on a digital board. The game was used in the context of two training initiatives targeting in-service school teachers (N = 42). Data were collected on acceptance of the model upon which the game is built, acceptance of the game itself, overall user satisfaction, and knowledge gains. Results show that teachers generally liked both versions of the game, especially the opportunity provided for receiving guidance in the design process. Additionally, teachers’ knowledge about learning design and collaborative learning increased significantly between the pre- and post-test for both the digital and the hybrid game groups. However, few significant differences were found between the groups that used the digital and hybrid versions of the game: the digital version was perceived as being slightly easier to use (p < 0.001). Overall, the study suggests that both versions of the game have the potential for teacher training, while the user interface of the hybrid version should be further refined to fully harness the game’s potential