Stefania Bocconi

Towards a Mapping Framework of ICT-enabled Innovation for Learning

ICT is regarded as a key enabler of innovation and creativity in E&T and for learning at large. Based on desk research and on previous JRC-IPTS studies, this report provides a definition and classification of ICT-enabled innovation for learning that has significant scale and/or impact at system level, both within formal Education and Training and outside formal settings. A mapping framework is also proposed that can be used for an in-depth analysis of existing initiatives showing how ICT-enabled innovation is implemented on a large scale. Finally, the report provides a preliminary application of four diverse initiatives on the proposed mapping framework.

ICT-enabled Innovation for Learning in Europe and Asia: Exploring Conditions for Sustainability, Scalability and Impact at System Level

This report presents three cases of ICT-enabled innovation for learning from Europe (eTwinning, 1:1 Learning in Europe and Hellerup School in Denmark) and four cases from Asia (e-Learning Pilot Scheme in Hong Kong SAR, Knowledge Construction with Technology (CoREF) in Japan, Third Masterplan for ICT in Education (mp3) in Singapore and Digital Textbook project in South Korea), covering aspects such as the context, scale and nature of innovation, the intended learning outcomes, the role of technology, and implementation strategies. Based on desk research, case reports, consultation with education stakeholders from Europe and Asia, and in-depth expert interviews, the necessary conditions for sustainability, scalability and impact at system level are analysed. Thus, the report brings evidence to the debate about the mainstreaming of ICT-enabled innovation for learning in Europe and beyond, contributing to the Europe 2020 Strategy to modernize Education and Training across Europe.

Developing Computational Thinking in Compulsory Education - Implications for policy and practice

In the past decade, Computational Thinking (CT) and related concepts (e.g. coding, programing, algorithmic thinking) have received increasing attention in the educational field. This has given rise to a large amount of academic and grey literature, and also numerous public and private implementation initiatives. Despite this widespread interest, successful CT integration in compulsory education still faces unresolved issues and challenges. This report provides a comprehensive overview of CT skills for schoolchildren, encompassing recent research findings and initiatives at grassroots and policy levels. It also offers a better understanding of the core concepts and attributes of CT and its potential for compulsory education. The study adopts a mostly qualitative approach that comprises extensive desk research, a survey of Ministries of Education and semi-structured interviews, which provide insights from experts, practitioners and policy makers. The report discusses the most significant CT developments for compulsory education in Europe and provides a comprehensive synthesis of evidence, including implications for policy and practice.

Modelling blended solutions for higher education: teaching, learning and assessment in the network and mobile technology era

The article addresses the role of network and mobile technologies in enhancing blended solutions with a view to (a) enriching the teaching/learning processes, (b) exploiting the opportunities it offers for their observability, and hence for their monitoring and formative/summative assessment. It will also discuss how such potential can only be captured by solidly integrating the process of instructional design with that of monitoring and assessment. First, the article presents the proposed conception of blended solutions, giving examples. In the second part, the article discusses a possible breakdown of blended solutions into its various components and how these can enrich both the teaching/learning and the assessment processes. Finally, it addresses the question of how to combine and/or use singly the various components of blended solutions. To conclude, implications for the implementation of blended solutions are discussed, also in relation to emerging contexts such as Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs).

Challenging Current Ways of Evaluating and Documenting the Accessibility of Educational Digital Resources

The accessibility of digital educational resources is a key issue in order to provide “all†students with equal educational opportunities. Teachers and educators need adequate help and support to choose and adopt in their school practice those products that are fully accessible by “all†their students; this entails both that they should receive adequate training and that they may access reliable specific information (i.e., that the accessibility of digital educational resources is carefully assessed and documented and that related information is made available for them through appropriate documentation systems). This paper refers on how the authors, during a field experience, tackled the issue of evaluating, documenting and spreading information about the accessibility of educational digital resources. The methodological framework adopted for evaluating the accessibility of educational digital resources is outlined and a concrete example of how this was implemented in a nation-wide dedicated documentation system is described.

ICT and Universal Access to Education: Towards a Culture of Accessibility

This paper deals with the issue of evaluating, documenting and spreading information about the accessibility of ICT-based educational products and also provides an example of how this can be done. This mainly goes in the direction of concretely supporting e-inclusion and Universal Access to education. As a matter of fact, provided that the accessibility of digital educational resources is carefully assessed and documented, teachers and educators have the possibility to choose and adopt those products that are fully “accessible” by “all” their students. From a wider perspective, this approach also goes in the direction of spreading the “culture of accessibility” and represents a further step onwards to guarantee the inclusion of students with disabilities.

Resources and users in the tagging process: approaches and case studies

In this contribution we propose a comparison between two distinct approaches to the annotation of digital resources. The former, top-down, is rooted in the cathedral model and is based on an authoritative, centralized defnition of the adopted mark-up language; the latter, bottom-up, refers to the bazaar model and is based on the contributions of a community of users. These two approaches are analyzed taking into account both their descriptive potential and the constraints they impose on the reasoning process of recommender systems, with special reference to user profling. Three case studies are described, with reference to research projects that apply these approaches in the contexts of e-learning and knowledge management.

Developing a European Pioneer Teacher Community for School Innovation

ULEARN is a project that aims to create a stable community of ‘pioneer teachers’ in Europe through a system that supports teachers’ lifelong learning, knowledge sharing and cooperation. Herein we call ‘pioneer teachers’ those who are keen to use ICT in the classroom and who can be seen as the early adopters of ICT-based innovation in education, already having had some experience in this field. They play a key role in the diffusion of innovation since the majority of teachers learn about new ideas from peers via interpersonal channels. To achieve our aims, U-LEARN.IT has being developed — a system that can be thought of as a virtual lifelong learning system of excellence for European pioneer teachers adopting ICT in education. It is based on the different needs of educational systems in European countries and involves three main functions: lifelong learning on ICT in education, the sharing of knowledge, information and materials, and cooperation within this community. As far as the pedagogical approach is concerned, the project focuses on lifelong cooperative learning supported by a networked infrastructure. The key pedagogical idea is that learning is the result of social interaction within a community of practice. The learning process is mainly based on asynchronous communication within a computer conferencing environment. The same environment supports cooperation among teachers and the sharing of knowledge, information and materials.

Teacher education services based on the Semantic Web: the experience of the Share.tec project

This work describes some of the web services that have been developed within the Share.TEC project to foster access, sharing and reuse of Teacher Education digital resources at European level. The Share.TEC platform features personalized functions to help users search for and select educational material via a broad repository of metadata records. These describe educational resources from various European countries and draw on an ontology that captures concepts pertaining to teacher education and maps them across a variety of cultural and linguistic contexts. The article also presents Share.TEC’s adaptivity mechanisms, in particular the recommending functionality. This provides extra search support that reduces the need to explicitly specify all the query parameters. Finally, the article reports on the project’s impact on the European Teacher Education sector, and on future development directions.

Sharing of educational resources in teacher training

Presentation of the draft Community Share.TEC, to develop a multilingual system for sharing digital content-specific teacher training. This system integrates an ontological approach to top-down, taken to capture and share knowledge, to a bottom-up (folksonomies), adopted to capture and share experiences Ie user.