Teaching Technology Design for Collaborative Reflection Practices in Higher Education Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teaching Technology Design for Collaborative Reflection Practices in Higher Education

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Research and innovation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Collaboration is considered as one of the 21st century skills. However, collaboration is a very complex skill which involves coordination, cooperation and at its most advanced level, reflective communication. In a time of pandemics, where remote collaboration has become radically more important, the need for designing and developing technologies that efficiently support collaborative interaction has become an even higher priority. Based on previous work on the design of collaborative technologies by the project partners, this project aims to actively spread the knowledge gained in this work to students in higher education by developing teaching materials for designing technologies that support collaborative interaction mediated by technology (online and onsite, targeted at several different user groups). Designing technologies to mediate collaboration does not necessarily have to be limited to communication applications such as Skype, Zoom etc, but could also be applied to emergent technologies such as drones, games, collaborative writing and project management tools, online whiteboard applications for visual and creative collaboration, hybrid meeting technologies, and so on. The more detailed aim of the project is thus to iteratively design, develop, pilot test and implement teaching resources for teaching technology design approaches that address and consider effective forms of collaboration, such as found in Activity Theory, educational fields, psychology, design, and human-computer interaction.

The objectives of the project are to: a) analyse and study the current status of research, innovative and best practices on technology design for collaborative interaction, b) develop effective and innovative teaching and assessment materials and activities aimed at training students and practitioners in technology design for collaborative interaction, c) pilot the teaching and assessment resources with students at technology design programmes, d) make the teaching resources accessible to all by publishing them online as an OER, e) analyse transferability of results obtained from the pilot tests of the teaching resources in different cultural contexts, f) share the results of the project to a network of teachers at technology design programmes, and g) disseminate and share project results in sustainable ways.

Participants in this project will be both teachers (at least 10) and students (at least 500) at the involved partner organisations. Teachers will be involved in pilot testing the teaching resources developed as part of the project. The students will be indirectly involved in the project by receiving their education through the developed teaching and assessment materials and activities.

The main methodology applied will follow the steps of a design process, starting with an analysis of existing materials, examples, pedagogical and innovative methods. This first step will lead to a desk research report (O2), which may be published. Thereafter, a first version of the teaching and assessment materials and activities will be developed (O1), and these will be pilot tested in each organisation. This will lead to a report describing the pilot results (O3). Based on the outcomes of these pilot tests, the teaching and assessment materials and activities will be refined iteratively, and the resulting materials and activities will be made accessible online as an Open Educational Resource (OER) (04). Finally, a transferability and sustainability report will be written (O5) and a multiplier event will be hosted (E1) where teachers and other relevant stakeholders are involved in knowledge sharing and the exchange of ideas and good practices.

Teachers will benefit from the project by getting access to and knowledge of teaching materials and activities to teach the important topic of designing for collaborative interaction. Students will benefit from the new subject knowledge and pedagogical competencies acquired by their teachers and will be able to make grounded decisions in their design of collaborative technologies. The knowledge about the design of collaborative technologies will be not limited to certain specific technologies, but will be on a higher level to accommodate the translation to new technologies the students may encounter in their future careers.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 86505 Eur

Project Coordinator

GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET & Country: SE

Project Partners

• AARHUS UNIVERSITET
• TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT EINDHOVEN
• OZYEGIN UNIVERSITESI