Educational eXplanations and Practices in Emergency Remote Teaching Erasmus Project

Project Title

Educational eXplanations and Practices in Emergency Remote Teaching

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: Gender equality / equal opportunities; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

During the pandemic, the impact of e-learning became particularly important. In the field of remote teaching (RT), there is a notable lack of high-quality, research-based learning material.
Slovenia has created advanced interactive i-Textbooks and a collection of video lectures in the style of Khan Academy. Unfortunately, both are limited to the national level due to the language barrier. The materials allow asynchronous use and are therefore useful for diverse learners, as economic and cognitive impairments can be reduced by teaching outside the real-time. We have chosen STEM subjects for EXPERT because it is internationally applicable and because we want to follow the principle of gender equality.

In EXPERT, we have set ourselves the following goals:
▪ upgrade and improve learning materials,
▪ translate these materials using advanced machine learning models to English (pivot language),
▪ include materials into the Learning management systems (LMS),
▪ to explore new models for use in classrooms in an international environment.

EXPERT comprises expert organizations from 5 countries (Slovenia, Finland, Germany, Spain, and Turkey). About 500 primary and secondary school students will be involved in the digital pilot of OER. The participation of about 150 teachers and researchers is expected, with developed OERs and MOOCs, we will additionally reach a much broader population.

We are also aware of the low acceptance of the technology by teachers, so we will prepare explicit Instructional Principles for distance teaching and learning in cyber-flipped classroom pedagogy and additional instructions for adapting the learning paths in the LMS to the needs of the students.

We will use different project methodologies, as four intellectual outputs are technical, and four are pedagogical. The pedagogical outputs design the pedagogy for technical improvements, integrate the OERs into the classroom settings, and evaluate their implementation. Specific methodologies will also be used, such as qualitative and quantitative social science methodologies for pedagogical research.

In EXPERT, several innovations will be designed:
▪ a machine learning model to be trained to efficiently and correctly translate i-textbooks first into English (as a pivot language) and later into other partner languages;
▪ Community-driven use and improvements of i-textbooks (similar to Wikipedia).
▪ Possibility to include some topics from interactive textbooks in LMS and to construct personalized learning paths;
▪ First taxonomy of video explanations;
▪ First research-based emergency distance learning guides with video explanations;
▪ Cyber-flipped LMS didactics for use in situations similar to COVID lockdown.

EXPERT will provide ALL teachers and ALL learners with several results. The taxonomy of video explanations will be designed to help teachers choose the appropriate video explanation for their students. Explicit guidance will be given on how to help better learners develop in-depth knowledge of distance learning STEM with OER. We will develop new innovative ways how to individualize the work with prepared materials within the LMS.

The results are highly transferable to other subjects in the school system (especially hierarchical subjects such as languages) and also outside the school system (e.g., the neural model of machine transcription and translation). We expect an impact on more profound understanding and knowledge through STEM, the effective use of ICT in teaching by teachers, and decision-makers’ encouragement to achieve a higher level of digital literacy of all stakeholders in the school system.

As the level of STEM competencies is in a positive relationship with the gross domestic product (GDP), we expect a potential long benefit in society’s technological and economic development. We see another benefit in raising the digital competencies of both teachers and researchers as well as students.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 258657 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU & Country: SI

Project Partners

• OLEMISEN BALANSSIA RY
• Posita (formal APS PLUS)
• OŠ BOJANA ILICHA
• Osmangazi Ilce Milli Egitim Mudurlugu
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA
• UNIVERSITAET BAYREUTH
• BonNouEdu SL