OPEN DATA AND OPEN ACCESS: WHICH KNOWLEDGE SHARING FOR DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION?

The significant value of Open Data and Open Access, both as transparency tools toward public opinion, and as valorization of the results achieved by the institutions, is growing on a daily basis, at global level. Even the world of university cooperation can now take the opportunity to confront with the latter. Regarding this topic, many are the questions upon which we would like to reflect together, especially looking at what we learned in the last few years. Which could be the advantages and disadvantages for university cooperation, originating from a more and more intense data and information sharing? Which are the tools and the most suitable channels? Which indicators or objective systems will have to be monitored as priority in the next years? Which will be, in the short run, the system of indicators that our institutions will need in order to address their policies and to make visible, within international contexts, the mainfold initiatives promoted in the local contexts? In May 2013 in Geneva, UNESCO launched at the world summit on the Information Society Forum its new initiative for Open Access. UNESCO is the first organization of the United Nations to make available to everyone, free of charge, its publications, with the possibility to readopt and redistribute them. Does it represent an interesting stimulus, even for universities involved in the field of cooperation? If we really were able to share methodologies, tools, approaches how much more and better could we do? In times of abundant resources, finding synergies among work groups and projects could be considered an interesting added value; now, in a phase of more and more scarce resources, the knowledge sharing commitment could turn out to be an essential operative modality to continue guaranteeing an effective presence of universities within the cooperation field. Starting from here, the panel proposes to delineate possible answers, confronting the point of view of the universities, national and international institutions and stimulating a cooperative reflection.

The use of competition and creativity as key-driver to promote scientific culture among students?

The pedagogical value of game generally speaking, has been extensively argued since the past by several studies of educational scientists (Fröbel, 1826; Decroly, 1921). This conception is based on the idea that young people owns great expressive and creative capabilities and that education, that often involved positive competitive interaction, is able to motivate young people to learn, involving them in knowledge process consistent with their interests and abilities. These kind of activities put at stake imagination and creativity and lead students to actively learn having fun together with their classmates. In this reality, competition, if proposed as further game element, could raise the quality participation of young people to didactical activities and enable collaborative learning processes in which everyone can give its personal contribution to the construction of knowledge seen as a great social game. Moreover, children and teens own several different languages and codes to express themselves that cannot be identified only with formal linguistic skills (oral and written) if we will not lose them (C. Edwards, L.Gandini, G. Forman, 1995)

The use of competition and creativity as key driver to promote scientific culture among students

The use of didactic games in order to promote scientific culture leads to innovative methodologies and technologies that can be very effective for the learning process of students or simply to make them more curious about critical disciplines

An extensive questionnaire about Metacognition during Emergency Remote Teaching involving more than 3000 engineering students

By 11 March 2020, the phrase “COVID-19” had officially entered everyday life across most of the word. Each level of education suddenly faced new changes and new challenges. Emergency remote teaching became widespread, and new methodologies to deliver classes and courses were adopted by educational institutions. In this paper, we focus on the impact of the remote learning experience of engineering students enrolled at the Politecnico di Milano. The subjects were recruited from all engineering courses from the first to the fifth year and were asked to complete a multidimensional survey. The survey featured 66 items regarding the participants’ perceptions of the challenges of emergency remote teaching compared with pre-COVID-19 in-person teaching. The questionnaire addressed six dimensions: the organization of emergency remote teaching, subjective well-being, metacognition, self-efficacy, identity, and socio-demographic information. In this paper, we describe the entire survey and discuss a preliminary analysis. Using Cronbach’s alpha test, a confirmatory factor analysis, and the t-test, we performed a more in-depth analysis concerning the outcomes of metacognition and self-efficacy. The data analysis suggested a small, unexpected change in the metacognition strategies. The students, in some regards, improved their learning strategies. Some other answers underlined their appreciation of the courses’ organization and the lack of relationships with their peers and teachers

An Italian large case study on Emergency Remote Teaching: factors and predictors which affect Higher Education students’ attitude

Research on concerns about Emergency Remote Teaching has focused on teaching and management strategies, with some studies considering learners’ satisfaction, reactions, learning and overall acceptance. The present large case study, based on a survey on 3,920 undergraduate and postgraduate learners, aimed at investigating Politecnico di Milano students’ self-reported experiences of the Emergency Remote Teaching after identifying the empirical factors characterising such experience and the predictors of the students’ responses. Participants’ evaluation was expressed based on a five-point Likert scale, whereby a score equal to 3 corresponded to neutrality. We validated the questionnaire empirically through factor analysis. This questionnaire consisted of 66 items across 6 sections and focused on different latent variables as well as socio-economic information about the students. Our findings highlighted both the students’ assessment of their overall online learning experience of Emergency Remote Teaching and the change in their metacognitive strategies and self-efficacy as a consequence of the new learning approach. These results did not appear to depend on the learners’ gender or their educational level of degree study, while the academic year of attendance seemed to influence their opinion on teaching. Moreover, the change in the learning approach that learners experienced in the passage from bachelor to master’s programmes was discovered to be a further predictor which might be more critical for females than males. Finally, implications for policy makers and higher education institutions for online learning in the post-pandemic scenario are discussed

Integrating MOOCs in physics preliminary undergraduate education: beyond large size lectures

In this paper, the authors discuss the effectiveness of MOOCs as part of a pedagogical strategy aimed at supporting Physics’ preliminary undergraduate students in large-size lectures. Our study is based on an experimental activity based on a blended course, which integrated a parallel MOOC delivered through the POK (PoliMi Open Knowledge, http://www.pok.polimi.it), the Politecnico di Milano’s MOOC portal. The blended model also delivered face-to-face activities that included intensive technology enhanced learning, like feedback based on clickers. Specifically, we introduce the several elements of the approach (the tutors’ pedagogy, the adoption of clickers, the diversity amongst learning groups) and its process of implementation. The findings in this study highlight that the integrated model is effective in terms’ of students’ learning both for small and large size lectures. More importantly, it was found that the students in large size lectures demonstrated similar or even better performance than students in a small size group. Moreover, the students in all sizes lectures showed higher satisfaction with the MOOCs’ against other factors adopted within the learning design

Promoting active learning in universities

Thematic peer group repor

MOOC, OER e l’approccio “flipped classroom”: due case study di transizione in ambito scolastico e aziendale

La portata innovativa dei MOOC non esaurisce la sua rilevanza nell’ambito dei processi di apprendimento che si svolgono in rete. Uno dei principali obiettivi che ha mosso grandi università quali Stanford o MIT ad impegnarsi prima nello sviluppo di OER (Open Educational Resources) e poi nei MOOC, è stato quello di trovare modalità che consentissero di migliorare la qualità didattica face-to-face riducendone i costi. In questa prospettiva i materiali didattici online stanno ora consentendo di sperimentare la metodologia delle “flipped classroom” in cui le dinamiche didattiche in aula sono basate su un’elevata interattività con i docenti e tra i pari. Nell’articolo si analizzano due progetti inseriti in differenti contesti, quello scolastico e quello aziendale, basati su un approccio “flipped”. I risultati in termini di efficacia appaiono confortanti, ma ancora più promettenti sono i riflessi sulla sostenibilità dei processi e sui livelli di motivazione di docenti e studenti