Design & trust as key factors for e-teaching

The offer of new possibilities for teaching and learning with new media increase the complexity of educational environments. This fact consequently increments the possibility of negative learning outcomes, and makes the development of student-instructor trust more difficult. The design of procedures for learning activities may decrease s complexity by guiding students in the use of complex learning devices. On the other hand, if procedures are not designed, students are pushed to find out by themselves how to use learning devices, acquiring meta-cognitive abilities. On the basis of both theory and a case study, conclusions are drawn and expressed as guidelines for managing the introduction of new media in education from the point of view of instructional design

The New Media Juke Box: a multimedia project

The New Media Juke-Box is an experiment carried out at the University of Lugano in collaboration with the RTSI – Radio and Television of Italian-speaking Switzerland. The goal of the project was the integration and exploitation of archive media artefact into a new learning context. After a review of a general model of educational multimedia, a case study is presented, along with lessons learnt, general conclusions and some critical remarks

Becoming a guide for pilgrims in a time of secularization

The goal of this case study is threefold: first, to introduce the concept of postmodern pilgrim, leveraging on two pilgrimage experiences in Switzerland; second, to propose a model (PEARL) for developing training modules for pilgrim guides; and finally, to make concrete pedagogical suggestions based on the proposed model, which point out the effective uses of ICT applications. The model is based on the concepts of informal learning and reflective practice, which are also illustrated in the paper. The PEARL model is designed as an open source to be further integrated and tested

Using audiovisual TV interviews to create visible authors that reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers

Can archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format) and about another scholar's ideas through reading a formal text description (i.e., invisible author format). For the invisible author, native language speakers scored significantly higher than the non-native language speakers on a corresponding exam question (i.e., a cognitive measure), generated more words on the exam question (i.e., a motivational measure), and mentioned the author's name more often in answering the exam question (i.e., an affective measure). For the visible author, the groups did not differ on any of these measures. These findings provide evidence for the idea that making the author visible through audiovisual TV interviews can eliminate the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers

Author's address:

Can archives of audiovisual TV interviews be used to make authors more visible to students, and thereby reduce the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers in college classes? We examined students in a college course who learned about one scholar's ideas through watching an audiovisual TV interview (i.e., visible author format) and about another scholar's ideas through reading a formal text description (i.e., invisible author format). For the invisible author, native language speakers scored significantly higher than the non-native language speakers on a corresponding exam question (i.e., a cognitive measure), generated more words on the exam question (i.e., a motivational measure), and mentioned the author's name more often in answering the exam question (i.e., an affective measure). For the visible author, the groups did not differ on any of these measures. These findings provide evidence for the idea that making the author visible through audiovisual TV interviews can eliminate the learning gap between native and non-native language speakers. 3 Universities around the world serve students who are non-native speakers of th

Assay Guidance Manual:Quantitative Biology and Pharmacology in Preclinical Drug Discovery

The Assay Guidance Manual (AGM) is an eBook of best practices for the design, development, and implementation of robust assays for early drug discovery. Initiated by pharmaceutical company scientists, the manual provides guidance for designing a testing funnel of assays to identify genuine hits using high-throughput screening (HTS) and advancing them through preclinical development. Combined with a workshop/tutorial component, the overall goal of the AGM is to provide a valuable resource for training translational scientists