Maria Grazia Ierardi

Repositories of learning objects as learning environments for teachers

A number of proposals exist, aiming to discuss the needs of teachers who use a repository of learning objects in order to improve their activity. Very useful indications can be drawn from them. However, further attention should be paid to the analysis of the experience gained by a community of teachers when dealing with educational material. This experience, in fact, plays a critical role in the individual process of deciding on reuse. This observation leads to the idea of conceiving learning objects so to model the evolving nature of educational materials and the cooperative process that underlies the formation of its pedagogical meaning. To this aim, we discuss the pedagogical knowledge involved in the reuse process. We show how this knowledge can constitute an operative basis to realise repositories that act as learning environments for teachers. Thus, we suggest an approach to the development of communities of practice in the educational field.

A Pedagogical Approach to the Design of Learning Objects for Complex Domains

In this article we describe an appr oach to the design of learning objects (LOs) suitable to sup -port learning in complex domains. W e briesy discuss, from an educational point of view , the methodological choices underlying the design of LOs to be used as didactical materials in a distributed W eb-based envir onment, pr esently under development , devoted to robotics education at the university level. W e show how our pedagogical appr oach to knowledge acquisition and to the use of technological tools is realised by means of didactical units which can be imple -mented as LOs with various aims and corr espondingly differ ent structur es. W e also addr ess the issue of supporting studentsO learning in ways that differ accor ding to the requir ements of each situation and illustrate how such support can be implemented by means of our pedagogically oriented LOs.K eyw ords: e-learning; instructional m aterial; telelearning; technology enhanced learning

A general and flexible model for the pedagogical description of learning objects

We illustrate a pedagogical metadata model (IMATI-ITD pedagogical metadata model) that captures didactic features of LOs according to the view of the education world. This model allows to describe a variety of contexts and can be effectively instantiated in many specific educational situations, thus combining generality with flexibility features.

Guidelines towards Effectively Sharable LOs

LOs ask teachers to present didactical material in an objective form so to make them easily re- usable by their colleagues. This is a complex task which entails the development of a methodological approach apt to support producer-teachers’ work. For this sake, we present guidelines for the design of didactical modules. This proposal aims to help teachers 1) to reflect on how to make explicit their own pedagogical intentions; 2) to detect methods apt to help write sharable LOs, without adding constraints on the choice of the pedagogical approach. This can constitute a starting point to enrich LOs’ metadata with more effective pedagogical information, so to meet teachers’ needs and use a language familiar to them.

Promoting teachers' collaborative re-use of educational materials

In this paper we describe the main lines of a teacher preparation model aiming to promote a culture of sharing and re-use of educational resources. Our methodology is based on the analysis of conceptions of trainee teachers as concerns the production and re-use of educational modules and on the use of a collaborative environment, especially designed to support the construction and development of a community of practice of teachers working on Learning Objects. This approach is meant as a means to support in a collaborative way the construction and diffusion of pedagogical innovation.

Devising a typology of LOs based on pedagogical assumptions

In this paper, we outline the pedagogical assumptions that underlie the design of a distributed web-based environment, presently under development, devoted to robotics education at university level. We briefly discuss, from an educational point of view, the approach followed to implement these assumptions. In particular, we focus our attention on the methodological choices underlying the design of the Learning Objects (LOs) to be used as didactical materials in the environment. These have been conceived so as to meet the complex requirements of the learning subject considered, and to model the didactical proposal based on a constructive view of the learning process.

The Pedagogical Dimension of Metadata for Learning Resources: The POEM Model

This paper focuses on the pedagogical dimension of metadata for learning objects (LO). Devising a pedagogical metadata proposal suitable for different target users is still a hard challenge. In order to contribute towards this endeavour, we designed and evaluated an extensible model where alternative sets of metadata descriptors can be chosen, depending on the pedagogical role of the LO. We called it Pedagogy Oriented Educational Metadata (POEM) model. This paper presents the main lines of the POEM model, discussing the results of its latest validation with 120 pre-service teachers attending the Specialisation School for Upper Secondary School Teachers of the University of Genoa during the a. y. 2007-2008.

Endowing LOs with a social dimension

Repositories of learning objects have the potential to support teachers’ work and diffuse innovation in the school, nevertheless they did not arouse much interest from the teachers so far. We argue that this problem could be overcome by adding to repositories possibilities of focused interaction and collaboration among teachers, so as to foster reflection and value teachers’ experience. To this end, we modelled the re-use process as a constructive activity. We implemented this view by means of a collaborative environment explicitly oriented to work with learning objects. In this paper, we describe our pedagogical view of re-use and the environment we realized, highlighting the interplay between individual reflection and social dimension. We also summarise the outcomes of the first use of the environment in a teacher training course.

Preparing teachers to the use of LOs: an analysis of conceptions

Promoting the sharing and reuse of school resources is a complex issue which entails preparing teachers to adopt new ways of working. Due to the lack of a tradition in this sense, it is not easy to figure out what kind of teacher training can really prove successful to this end. This work describes an experience we carried out in a teacher training course on basic ICT, where we are trying to set up meaningful activities on the preparation and use of educational learning objects. In this paper we focus on a study devoted to explore the conceptions of trainee teachers as concerns the preparation and reuse of educational modules, which allowed us to spot points that require special attention and should be explicitly addressed in teacher training programs. We also outline some activities that we consider suitable to address the needs emerged from the mentioned study.

Sharing e-learning experiences: a personalised approach

A two-tier architecture is presented, based on hybrid peer-to-peer technology, aimed at providing personalized access to heterogeneous learning sources. The architecture deploys a conceptual model that is superimposed over logically and physically separated repositories. The model is based on the interactions between users and learning resources, described by means of coments. To support users to find out material satisfying their needs, mechanisms for ranking resources and for extracting personalized views of the learning space are provided.