Active Digital Learning Environments in Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Active Digital Learning Environments in Schools

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 : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Traditional learning methodologies, based on the passive transmission of information, fail to develop important personal competences like critical, lateral and creative thinking, problem solving, collaboration, leadership and communication abilities. These passive methodologies also fail to motivate the “digital natives” students that want to be active in their learning through interaction, online information, and social networking with their peers. While developing the state of the art in the scope of the ADLES project, partners were able to confirm that these assumptions were still true and justified the project approach.

Therefore, schools and teachers are required to adopt new pedagogical methodologies, supported by information and communication technologies. They should move into active and collaborative learning processes whereby students engage in activities that promote higher order learning skills like analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Project and Problem-based learning (PBL) are active, learner-centred methodologies in which students develop their abilities by going through a problem solving process, usually based on real-life situations. Supporting active learning through ICT tools (serious games, interactive simulations, virtual communities’ platforms, etc.) creates Active Learning Environments (ALE) where the new technologically-savvy generation of students feels comfortable and is motivated to be active. These tools involve mental and physical stimulation and develop practical skills: players have to decide, to choose, to define priorities, to solve problems, etc.

Nevertheless, school managers need to know how to integrate these methodologies in their institutional vision and mission. Therefore the ADLES (Active Digital Learning in Schools) consortium prepared a set of documents to guide school managers on the systematic implementation of active learning methodologies. But teachers must also be confident in using and applying these new methodologies and the supporting ICT tools. So the ADLES consortium also worked with and prepared teachers to design, implement and validate active learning methodologies based on PBL (Project/Problem) scaffolded by a set of digital tools (games, simulations and communication) that allows students to experiment, collaborate and communicate in an extended and multinational learning community. The ADLES consortium created a gamified PBL platform available in all the consortium languages where teachers can create, edit and share problems that can be used in PBL implementations. The platform also supports the actual implementation of PBL (what we call a PBLEX) by organizing the process, storing all the generated documentation and allowing the communication between teacher and students. Furthermore, the platform functions as a support to an established virtual community of practice where teachers, researchers and managers can share experiences and results of their practice using active learning methodologies. The gamification components add motivation to the participants, reinforcing their will and enthusiasm and increasing the level of collaboration.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 263144 Eur

Project Coordinator

Hayme Ana Mesleki ve Teknik Anadolu Lisesi & Country: TR

Project Partners

• IKAROS FORMAZIONE – SOCIETA’ COOPERATIVA SOCIALE
• UNIVERSIDAD DE VIGO
• PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS
• VIRTUAL CAMPUS LDA
• TO GET PRO SOCIETA’ CONSORTILE A RESPONSABILITA’ LIMITATA
• UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE
• AALBORG UNIVERSITET