Redesigning educational curricula and digitally-afforded collaborations to promote multimodal learning experiences Erasmus Project

Project Title

Redesigning educational curricula and digitally-afforded collaborations to promote multimodal learning experiences

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 higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

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

Project Summary

The ReDesign project built on the need for the internationalization of curricula at HE institutions, with the aim to promote digital collaborations, digital competence, immersive, and personalised learning environments that bring students and instructors in a novel endeavor to transform learning that transcended beyond traditional conceptualizations of intercultural telecollaboration. Faculty and students at different departments at the UCY, UH and UPB were given the opportunity to view lectures across academic institutions, explore the material and techniques used in teaching in different contexts, engage in collaborative tasks, interact with AR scenarios and a newly designed LMS, ReDesign. This novel LMS enacted affordances to engage in multimodal learning experiences by featuring multiple features of social networks such as FB. It also provided several features that were oriented towards delivering lectures, such as “Lectures, Assignments.” Intercultural exchanges and collaborative lectures, instructional material and activities were offered though these different newly created tools afforded by the ReDesign platform. Lectures could be accessed using QR codes and mobile devices – a feature that is not always available on other LMS. Students were given an opportunity to use a multiple tools and applications for learning, digital collaboration, and transnational exchanges.
The main objectives of the ReDesign project were to:

• Collaborate with IT professionals to create a collaborative platform, ReDesign, where instructors and students across academic institutions could collaborate, exchange instructional material, complete activities and tasks and engage in multimodal learning;
• Identify specific common grounds in the curricula across HE to promote novel learning and teaching practices and facilitate collaboration across academic institutions in Europe;
• Share expertise and exchange practices in designing collaborative activities and tasks based on various determining institutional factors and instructors’ and students’ teaching and learning needs;
• Design immersive, multimodal learning experiences to promote intercultural exchanges and learning among students in different disciplines;
• Use existing tools such as Dropbox to create collaborative activities and exchange expertise in using several tools and resources;
• Improve the features and functionality of the newly created interactive platform, as suggested by the participating instructors, students and consortium members;
• Compose a handbook related to the outputs, procedures and lessons learned from the project, such as the ReDesign platform, the task design, the need for internationalisation and digitalisation at academic institutions, and the outputs and future directions.

These objectives were achieved through a close collaboration among the three participating academic institutions, UCY, UH and UPB and three experienced organizations. Professionals, instructors and researchers in Applied Linguistics, Engineering, IT, educational technology and CALL redesigned the curricula to provide students with immersive, multimodal and collaborative learning experiences. Consortium partners exchanged views, expertise, knowledge and developed material and technologies that contributed to the needs of the project. Throughout the duration of the project, multiple activities were implemented to realize the project’s IOs:
(i) the development of a platform where multiple resources, lectures, tasks and activities were uploaded
(ii) the close examination of the curricula and the identification of common grounds across the participating academic institutions;
(iii) the design of tasks and activities that promoted intercultural telecollaboration and were related to the instructional material;
(iv) the alignment of tasks and activities with the course goals and objectives
(v) the design of three novel AR applications and their integration in the curricula
(vi) the completion of a handbook to promote the pedagogical, intercultural and linguistic value of the activities

The specific objectives of the ReDesign platform were:
(i) To add educational content, such as lectures, assignments, and instructional material among the faculties
(ii) To contribute to the internationalization of HE curricula
(iii) To promote transnational, intercultural collaboration among instructors and students.
(iv) To provide students with a multimodal learning experience in AR and QR codes.
(v) To promote technological familiarity among students by featuring several features and tools similar to the ones found in social networking sites (e.g., FB).
(vi) To extend students’ immersive learning experiences
(vii) To promote further telecollaborative initiatives among HE instructors.
The ReDesign platform also offered multiple other tools which can be accessed using the following link: http://beta.redesign-project.eu/
Login credentials: euevaluator@gmail.com
Password: 1234

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 220021,36 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF CYPRUS & Country: CY

Project Partners

• Alcyone, podjetje za informacijske sisteme in storitve, d. o. o.
• VEREIN OFFENES LERNEN
• UNIVERSITY OF HULL
• Technology Enhanced Lifelong Learning Consult
• UNIVERSITATEA POLITEHNICA DIN BUCURESTI