Empowering the School IT infrastructures for the implementation of Sustainable Instructional Patterns Erasmus Project

Project Title

Empowering the School IT infrastructures for the implementation of Sustainable Instructional Patterns

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 2015

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

Background
Results emerging from multiple research projects have been showing promising possibilities for the inclusion of ICT in schools. However, the actual adoption of ICT in schools is much less successful. Although several factors might be at play, we believe that two important ones concern the need to foster knowledge in schools regarding:
– The connections between their existing technological infrastructure, its potential for teaching and the possibility of repurposing these technologies in accordance with concrete pedagogical goals.
– Ways to implement sustainable ICT policies, acknowledging digital technologies trends, novel pedagogical practices and empowering primary users and relevant stakeholders.

Objectives
The project promoted practices to help schools reach an e-mature level (as explained by the NCTE). More specifically, the project focused on the wise use of ICT in schools and to ensure that teachers, students and other stakeholders are able to:
– Exploit the benefits of the investments made in ICT infrastructure,
– Gather and document successful ideas on how to apply innovative uses of ICT infrastructures at schools and support the exchange of such practices,
– Reflect on and promote the adoption of novel educational models, ideas and experiences that link digital artefacts and learning.

The consortium
The project’s partners Departments from University Education of Weingarten (Germany), the Open University of Cyprus (Cyprus) and Linnaeus University (Sweden) have a long experience in: (i) teacher training, (ii) fostering the implementation of novel pedagogical practices in schools and (iii) leading research projects in education and ICT in schools. This experience also translates into close partnerships with schools at regional level as well as established relationships with educational organisations at national and international level.

Description of activities
The project run for three years. Initially, the ICT infrastructure as well as the e-maturity of the participating schools and the practices regarding the ICT infrastructure at schools were assessed and analysed in close cooperation with the school teachers. Corresponding information was analysed at different levels of abstraction, taking the form of scenarios and patterns, and collected in the eSIT4SIP inventory, which was complemented with OER resources from the web. Furthermore, the consortium designed and created a digital environment utilizing the eSIT4SIP knowledge base that facilitates the effective search and reflection on the analysis outputs created. The system contains a decision support component, allowing to search for technological alternatives with educationally equivalent functionality. All these together allow for an innovation process that enables stakeholders to reflect on their current practices, consider alternatives and design modifications.

Methodology
The initial analysis of the schools’ existing infrastructures was performed by the consortium through visits and interviews in close collaboration with the partner schools. Additional OER resources were discovered and integrated with a web-scraping approach. The development of the knowledge base contained the design and implementation of ontologies for learning and infrastructure, to provide for enhanced search mechanisms. The knowledge base was developed taking a design-based approach with a strong focus on usability issues, thus targeting to provide optimal support for users.

Results and impact
The activities referred to above generated the following:
– A knowledge-base (KB) collecting practices’ descriptions, allowing searching and browsing for ICT-related learning scenarios and instructional design patterns, available at www.esit4sip.eu.
– A dynamic and integrated inventory of learning scenarios and instructional design patterns, currently around 300 scenarios, drawn from participating schools and as OER from different sources in the web, provided to the public via the eSIT4SIP KB.
– An innovation process utilizing the KB and its inventory, including a general mechanism to identify alternative implementations of learning scenarios with the above listed types of technologies and tools, based on the invention of the concepts of micro-activities and learning tool affordances.
– The design of a recommender system, which suggests to teachers scenarios that could be implemented in their teaching given their didactic problems and opportunities and the infrastructure available.

Long term benefits
the project’s results can provide a set of tools that will enable schools to reflect on their current ICT strategies and pedagogical goals. In turn, such reflection will empower schools to refine their ICT strategic plans and be able to reach an e-maturity level. The more such a system is used the richer its knowledge base and the more relevant its recommendation become.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 249486 Eur

Project Coordinator

PAEDAGOGISCHE HOCHSCHULE WEINGARTEN & Country: DE

Project Partners

• LINNEUNIVERSITETET
• ANOIKTO PANEPISTIMIO KYPROU (OPEN UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS)