International e-learning projects in the experience of Politecnico di Milano

Introduction There are lots of international projects that give evidence of the effectiveness of e-learning and digital communication in supporting collaborative working. Especially in educational intercultural contexts, e-learning has the undeniable potential of overcome multicultural, linguistic and geographical differences and stimulate collaborative working. The focus of this paper consists in analyzing two international projects of Politecnico di Milano, as case studies on the use of e-learning and digital communication at extra-European level, in order to identify relevant models of application of these methodological approaches in intercultural educational contexts. Case studies: IAOL and DAIDO projects One of the priorities of Politecnico di Milano is improving intercontinental exchange. In particular two are the most interesting e-learning projects on this field that we would like to share: IAOL (Interior Architecture OnLine - http://eproject.metid.polimi.it/iaol), with China and DAIDO (http://131.175.10.208:8080/daido/client/client.html) with Japan. These projects were carried out with special attention to the valorisation of intercultural exchange dimension related to the involvement of several international subjects in the project. In this way the subjects involved in the project had the opportunity to give their own contribution in the field of internationalization of e-learning and digital communication, focusing in particular on best practices that can be used for further exploitation. The partnerships created included educational institutions and subjects belonging to different contexts: international companies, Institutes for Foreign Trade, international consulting groups, etc., to promote projects characterised by a high level of formative value (assured by universities and other traditional educational institutions), but also by a positive impact at entrepreneurial and economic level. The local identity is a concept based on the idea of the social and cultural value of the historical heritage. The urban historic environment represents one of the main long-term concrete expressions of the local identity. In China and even more than in the other Asian countries, a strong increase of the investments in building and urban development is driving the progressive loss of the local urban identity. These projects aimed to create the basis for an intercultural approach to the preservation of the traditional urban environment through the adoption of modern techniques and methodologies. They will allow to develop strategies of reuse of the traditional areas compliant with the local identities preservation and to create the conditions for the dissemination of the results achieved for fostering the real impact on the architecture and landscape policies. Conclusion The main added value of these actions is the intercultural approach based on the development of learning activities really integrated in the local contexts. The selected design themes applied to the local exigencies will be the basis for assuring a strong connection with the local situation by a deep comprehension of the local needs and the local administrations actions. These projects intend also to develop the relations among the involved countries through the online sharing of experiences and didactic material: being the contents and the tools available online, the community will be potentially open to the higher possible number of people also not directly involved in the project

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

D3.5 Report on ECO social network integration features

This document describes how integrations with social networks are being developed in ECO platforms. With these new features, participants will be able to share results and other contents through Facebook, Twitter, Google plus.ICT Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme (CIP) - grant number 62112

D3.1 Validation of technical specifications of ECO modules

The objective of this document is to list the most important technical specifications of each MOOC platform that will be integrated in the overall ECO architecture. The objective of this particular task is to carry out analysis of all the technical specifications of each of the modules/platforms that are to be integrated in the global ECO platform. Once integration will be done, an Open Data exposure solution will be implemented by means of integrating an Open Data Catalog platform such as CKAN.ICT Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme (CIP) - grant number 62112

D3.2b Integration Roadmap

The objective of this document is to expose the sequence of steps in time (roadmap) for the integration of the different elements that form the architecture of ECOICT Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation framework Programme (CIP) - grant number 62112