Sloop2desc Book

Centro METID
Metodi E Tecnologie Innovative per la Didattica

www.sloop2desc.eu
Preparing the teachers
for a competence-based
education system
Editors: Giovanni Fulantelli
Lucian Oprea
Sloop2desc
Sharing learning objects in an open perspective
to develop European skills and competences
The SLOOP2DESC-Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective to Develop European
Skills and Competences-is a project funded by the European Commission under the
Lifelong Learning programme, Leonardo da Vinci sub-programme. This publication reflects the views
only of the authors and the European Commision cannot be held responsible for any use which
may be made of information contained therein. "
Project number: LLP-LDV/TOI/09/IT/0461CUP Code: G72F09000050006
Coordinator: Italian National Research Council Institute for Educational Technologies
Phone: +39 091 6809220 - Fax: +39 091 6809239
e-mail: giovanni.fulantelli@itd.cnr.it

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivs 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
ISBN: 978-606-8216-94-2

SLOOP2DESC Project - Sharing Learning Objects
in an Open Perspective to Develop European
Skills and Competences

THE SLOOP2DESC PROJECT
LLP-LDV/TOI/09/IT/0461

SLOOP2DESC - Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective to Develop European Skills
and Competences, is a project funded by the European Commission under the Lifelong Learning
programme, Leonardo da Vinci sub-programme.

SLOOP2DESC aims at supporting high-school teachers and trainers in Vocational Education and
Training (VET) to increase their knowledge and understanding of new educational systems that are
based on learning outcomes and competences.

Specifically, the project refers to the European Qualification Framework (EQF), the reference
framework adopted by the EU Parliament and Council in April 2008 to establish general criteria for
comparing qualification and competencies systems developed and/or adopted in EU countries.

Teachers and trainers in Italy, Romania and Slovenia have developed specific pedagogical
competencies to be applied in educational activities that take new evaluation systems into
consideration. This result has been achieved through effective e-learning strategies already tested in
a previous European funded project called Sloop: Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective,
aimed at promoting the practice of sharing and developing Open Educational Resources by
community of teachers.

Partners

Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Palermo, Italy
Associazione italiana per l'informatica ed il calcolo distribuito, Milano, Italy
Istituto Tecnico Statale Sperimentale ad Ordinamento Speciale Marie Curie, Cernusco sul
Naviglio, Milano, Italy
Centro METID Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Istituto Istruzione Secondaria Danilo Dolci, Partinico (PA), Italy
Consorzio Med Europe Export, Palermo, Italy
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
DEIS - Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland
Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, Romania
Slovenian Society INFORMATIKA, Ljubljana, Slovenia

About this book

The SLOOP2DESC project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This book represents SLOOP2DESC partners opinions on the results they got, its impact on their
own organisations and their points of view on the philosophy of the project. The Commission
cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Editors:
Giovanni Fulantelli
Lucian Oprea

SLOOP2DESC Project - Sharing Learning Objects
in an Open Perspective to Develop European
Skills and Competences

Europlus Publishing
Galati, ROMANIA
2 0 11

4

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FULANTELLI, GIOVANNI
Preparing the teachers for a competence-based education system / Giovanni
Fulantelli, Lucian Oprea. - Galai : Europlus, 2011
Bibliogr.
ISBN 978-606-8216-94-2
I. Oprea, Lucian
371

Copyright 2011
All rights for this book reserved by EUROPLUS PUBLISHING.

5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The SLOOP2DESC project ............................................................................................................. 7
G. Fulantelli, M. Gentile, D. Taibi, M. Allegra, V. Dal Grande, P. Denaro

Competence-based learning in Europe & the SLOOP2DESC model ........................................ 13
P. Ravotto

EUCIP and e-CF certification systems .......................................................................................... 17
R. Bellini, P. Ravotto, N. Schlanberger

Maritime certification system in compliance with IMO standards ............................................ 21
L. Oprea, D. Popa, D. Munteanu, A. Dumitriu, I. Ilie, S. Stan

Building and managing a community of practice ........................................................................ 25
A. Buzzi

The SLOOP2DESC course ............................................................................................................. 27
F. Berengo, M. Masseroni, L. Petruzziello, M. Terenghi, P. Ravotto

Fostering the dialogue amongst school teachers and companies: the role of "business
mentors" ........................................................................................................................................... 31
V. Dal Grande, D. Taibi, M. Gentile, D. Stabile, M. Allegra, G. Fulantelli

The experience of the SLOOP2DESC courses in Italy ................................................................ 35
M. Masseroni, F. Berengo, L. Petruzziello, M. Terenghi, P. Ravotto

The experience of the SLOOP2DESC courses in Romania ........................................................ 45
L. Oprea, I. Ilie, C. Rusu, S. Stan, D. Popa, D. Munteanu, A. Dumitriu, P. G. Sandu, C. Badalan

The experience of the SLOOP2DESC courses in Slovenia ......................................................... 49
M. Vrtanik, D. Dolniar, N. Schlamberger, . voljak

A lesson learned and recommendations for future actions in e-learning .................................. 59
M. Murray, M. Vrtacnik, D. Dolnicar, G. Fulantelli

6

SLOOP2DESC - Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective to Develop European Skills and Competences

7

THE SLOOP2DESC PROJECT

Giovanni Fulantelli, Manuel Gentile, Davide Taibi, Mario Allegra,
Valentina Dal Grande, Paola Denaro

Institute for Educational Technologies - National Research Council of Italy
Palermo, Italy

{giovanni.fulantelli, manuel.gentile, davide.taibi, mario.allegra,
valentina.dalgrande, paola.denaro}@itd.cnr.it

Abstract Sommario

The SLOOP2Desc project - Sharing Learning Objects in
an Open Perspective to Develop European Skills and
Competences has promoted the knowledge of European
qualification systems amongst teachers and academics,
through effective e-learning strategies already tested in a
previous European funded project called Sloop: Sharing
Learning Objects in an Open Perspective. In this paper
we present the rationale behind the project, its main
objectives and activities.

Il progetto SLOOP2Desc - Sharing Learning Objects in
an Open Perspective to Develop European Skills and
Competences ha promosso la conoscenza del sistema di
qualifiche europeo (European qualification systems) fra
insegnanti e docenti universitari, utilizzando le strategie di
e-learning gi testate durante il progetto Europeo Sloop:
Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective. In
questo articolo presentiamo le motivazioni alla base del
progetto, gli obiettivi e le principali attivit.

KEYWORDS: community of practice, social
networking, e-learning, Teachers' training, online
learning, competences, EQF, open educational resources.

KEYWORDS: comunit di pratica, social networking, e-
learning, formazione docenti, apprendimento online,
competenze, EQF, risorse educative aperte.

1. INTRODUCTION

SLOOP2DESC - Sharing Learning Objects in an
Open Perspective to Develop European Skills and
Competences, is a project funded by the European
Commission under the Lifelong Learning programme,
Leonardo da Vinci sub-programme (contract number is:
LLP-LDV/TOI/09/it/0461).
SLOOP2DESC aims at supporting high-school
teachers and trainers in Vocational Education and
Training (VET) to increase their knowledge and
understanding of new educational systems that are based
on learning outcomes and competences.
Specifically, the project refers to the European
Qualification Framework (EQF), the reference
framework adopted by the EU Parliament and Council in
April 2008 to establish general criteria for comparing
qualification and competencies systems developed and/or
adopted in EU countries.
Since EQF is a competencies-based system, there is
a crucial need for teachers and trainers to further their
understanding of the evaluation systems that companies
are using ever more frequently to select young people
when they complete their high school studies.
In SLOOP2DESC, teachers and trainers have
developed specific pedagogical competencies to be
applied in educational activities that take new evaluation
systems into consideration. This result has been achieved
through effective e-learning strategies already tested in a
previous European funded project called Sloop: Sharing
Learning Objects in an Open Perspective [1], aimed at
promoting the practice of sharing and developing Open
Educational Resources by community of teachers.
In addition, the project has promoted the dialogue
between the education field and the labour market, which
is central to the debate around the introduction of the
EQF-based evaluation approaches in the educational
methodologies.
The project ideas developed after an in-depth
analysis of the state of the art in the education and VET
sectors, with specific references to the skills and
competences of teachers and trainers.
In particular:
A. In the report "Delivering lifelong learning for
knowledge, creativity and innovation" the European
Commission states: "No other in-school aspect
influences student performance more than the
quality of teacher education [...] However, current
systems of teacher education and training often fail
to give teachers the training they need.. Teachers
need better professional preparation and continuing
development. This will improve education and
training outcomes" [2]

Giovanni FULANTELLI, Lucian OPREA

8

Fig. 1 The SLOOP2DESC portal homepage

B. The background analysis reported in the preparation
paper for the meeting OECD / CERI held on 29-30
October 2008 highlights in particular a shortage of
models of teacher training combined with a lack of
awareness about their skills on ICT and their use in
educational settings.
C. In the internal report on the progress of the
"Education and Training 2010" programme, the
development of the European Qualifications
Framework (EQF) is considered an essential tool in
achieving the objectives of the Lisbon strategy. This
report states that the framework is a common
reference to promote the acknowledgement and the
transfer of the qualifications and competences
across Europe.
D. The OCSE report titled Giving Knowledge for
Free: The Emergence of Open Educational
Resources (2007) highlights the strategic role of
sharing open educational resources for the
educational and training sectors.
In addition, the report points out that even if the
number of schools and universities sharing open
educational resources has increased, a related
political and institutional action in supporting these
activities is not adequate.
In the next section we will introduce the difficulties
related to the implementation of the EQF strategies;
following this, we will present the methodology adopted
in the SLOOP2DESC project to reduce these problems;
then, a general presentation of the project activities will
be presented, followed by some conclusions on the
results achieved. This chapter is not presenting the
activities in details, since this will be the subject of the
rest of the book.

2. IMPLEMENTATION OF EQF IN
SCHOOLS

The implementation of the European Qualification
Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF) is not an easy
task; it is made complicated by the presence of several
national systems and frameworks across Europe as well
as by the development of many sectorial certification
systems which are not linked to the national systems, and
which have been proposed and adopted by national and
international bodies (e.g. multinational companies) during
the last decade.
From the traditional educational systems
perspective (schools, colleges and universities in Europe

9
with centuries of history), EQF implementation requires a
great effort; in fact, the Framework officially introduces
the concept of Learning Outcome in the European
Educational policy: qualifications are defined and
described in terms of learning outcomes (what the learner
knows, understands and is able to do).
The shift to learning outcomes influences the
redefinition of curricula, teaching and assessment
practices, which requires an active involvement of
stakeholders, education and training practitioners.
The European Centre for the Development of
Vocational Training (Cedefop), in its 2009 study The
shift to learning outcomes. Policies and practices in
Europe highlights that more and more stakeholders
warn that the learning outcomes perspective can easily
be reduced to mere rhetoric having little effect on
education, training and learning practices [3].
Specifically to the National Qualification Frameworks
(NQFs - the main instruments to relate the national
qualification systems to the EQF in the member states),
Cedefop points out that their development has to be
planned as an active process that engages the main
stakeholders in continuous negotiation and, probably,
compromise at different levels in the system. An NQF that
is owned by an administration, and whose use is limited
largely to official publications, probably serves little
purpose. [3].
Therefore the implementation of the EFQ, through
the National Qualification Systems which should
reference to it, should be coordinated by central
institutions (ministries, governments, and so on), by
encouraging dialogue and consensus-building among
stakeholders, both from the education system and the
labour market (including social bodies). In fact,
academics, teachers, educational researchers, and
professionals in the training sector should develop
awareness that the access of students to the labour market
will depend increasingly on their ability to demonstrate
knowledge, skills and competences acquired during their
studies, and on the fact that the results of their studies is
comparable at European level on the basis of unique and
shared criteria (via the EQF). Similarly, since EQF-based
qualification systems will become a central issue for
companies in Europe that want to evaluate the skills
possessed by their staff but also to select the young
people after completing their higher studies, it is
important to involve representatives from the labour
market and the social bodies in the dialogue around the
qualification systems.

3. SLOOP2DESC AND OPEN
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

At the conclusion of the 2002 Forum on the Impact of
Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing
Countries, organized by UNESCO, the participants
expressed their wish to develop a universal educational
resource available for the whole of humanity, to be
referred to henceforth as Open Educational Resources
(OER).
The idea was to promote an open provision of
educational resources, enabled by information and
communication technologies, for consultation, use and
adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial
purposes.
Since then, a movement of thought that considers it
necessary to allow everyone free access to knowledge for
educational purposes has developed.
However, in 2007, following the publication of 3
important documents on this subject, the importance of
OER has become central to the political agenda of many
countries worldwide:
Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open
Educational Resources [4]
A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER)
Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New
Opportunities [5].
Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS
Roadmap 2012 [6].
The three reports agree that the success of initiatives
based on the Open Educational Resource concept is
threatened by many factors:
The lack of open practices of teaching and learning;
Technical difficulties in developing open digital
resources;
Lack of experience in supporting communities of
practice involved in the development of OER;
Scarcity of business models in OER
Following these publications, the Council of Europe
has specifically mentioned the strategic importance of
policies that promote the adoption and development of
OER in the school system, and even the United Nations
have highlighted the strategic value of OER .
OER that are produced directly by teachers
represent an important opportunity for schools. In order
to raise awareness of the potentials of OER amongst
teachers, and encourage their adoption in educational
practices, the SLOOP project launched the idea to have
digital contents produced directly by a community of
teachers. The original idea behind the project was that
teachers can build Learning Objects whilst software
specialists develop open software packages: each teacher
can contribute to the development phase, as well as
repurposing the Learning Objects to meet her/his specific
needs. The same approach is central to the
SLOOP2DESC project, and it has been further stressed
and amplified by the intense use of Web 2.0 tools: OER
are designed, developed and shared directly by the
community of teachers who will use them.

4. THE ACTIVITIES OF THE PROJECT

As already mentioned in the introduction of this
paper, the SLOOP2DESC project adopts effective e-
learning strategies already tested in the previous
European funded project Sloop, which are based on:
a model of training based on e-learning 2.0 solutions,
learning by doing methodology and participation of
teachers to a community of practice;

10

Fig. 2 The FreeLOms repository

a model of Open Educational Resources, designated
as Open Learning Object or OpenLO [7];
a set of Learning Objects, called MetaLOs,
developed by teachers and trainers of the project
partner institutions;
online courses, developed according to the training
model, where teachers in Italy, Ireland and Romania
have cooperatively designed e-learning paths, and
produced digital content for teaching according to a
logic drawn from the open / free software
movements. The MetaLOs have been used as
learning content for the online courses.
the FreeLOms (Free Learning Object Management
System) platform, an environment for the sharing
and reuse of digital educational resources, which
includes features that allow management of resources
developed according to SCORM standards, and the
editing of resource metadata according to the IEEE
LOM [8].
In the Sloop2desc project, the Sloop elearning
methodology and tools have been adopted in order to
promote awareness of competencies-based education
models amongst teachers and trainers. Specifically,
online training courses for around 600 teachers of
secondary schools in Italy, and 90 teachers and trainers in
Romania and Slovenia have been activated during the
two years of the project.
The objective of the training courses is the
acquisition of knowledge and skills related to:
the definition of elearning courses;
mentoring in a virtual environment,
the development of open digital resources using
Web 2.0 tools and systems for the production of
Learning Objects
the design and development of educational resources
on EQF and on European qualification systems.
Specifically for Italy and Slovenia, the EUCIP
system (European Certification of Informatics
Professionals promoted at European level by CEPIS)
has been be adopted as an example of qualification
systems. The IMO certification system in the
maritime field has been adopted in Romania.

Representative from companies has been involved
throughout the project, and in particular during the
cascade courses in Italy. Stakeholders in all the countries
of the partners have been invited in national workshops,
in order to inform them about the project objectives and
activities.

5. THE SLOOP2DESC PARTNERS

The partnership consists of a core composed of the
organizations participating in the project Sloop, some of
which have a history of collaboration in eLearning
projects dating from 1995. This is a well-established
partnership, including a mix of institutions (schools,
universities, colleges, research centres), all with a long
experience in the integration between online education
and traditional teaching.

11
Specifically:
National Research Council of Italy, Institute for
Educational Technologies, the coordinator, has ICT-
based learning methodologies and technologies as its
core research interest. It has contributed actively to
the SLOOP project, by defining the OpenLO model
and developing the FREELOMS platform;
ITSOS M. Curie, has a long experience in
elearning and its application in high-school contexts;
it has been coordinator of the SLOOP project;
University of Milan, Centro Metid, is a reference
point in elearning at European level;
DEIS, Cork Institute of Technology, expert in
design of innovative elearning processes, and
responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of
several national and international funded projects;
Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, experienced
in elearning and online training projects and
research;
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering,
University of Ljubljana, responsible for the training
of trainers in the chemical and informatics fields;

This core group has been joined by the following
institutions:
IS Dolci, a high-school in Sicily involved in the
management of several national and EU-funded
projects concerning innovative didactics;
AICA - Associazione italiana per l'informatica ed il
calcolo distribuito, an historical national institution
on Informatics, in charge of the promotion of EUCIP
in Italy; the coordinator of the SLOOP project is now
working for AICA;
Slovenian Society Informatika, a milestone in
Slovenia concerning Informatics, in charge of the
promotion of EUCIP in Slovenia
Both AICA and Slovenian Society Informatika are
members of CEPIS (Council of European
Professional Informatics Societies), the institution
promoting EUCIP at European level. The president
of Slovenian Society Informatika is also vice-
president of CEPIS.
MED EUROPE EXPORT, a multi sector consortium
that includes enterprises which can be distinguished
for their technological and innovative capabilities. It
has ensured the participation of tutors from
companies as well as the dialogue with social parties.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The SLOOP2DESC project is a Transfer of
Innovation project of the former EU funded project
SLOOP.
The results achieved in SLOOP enthused the
original partners enough to propose a new project that
would widen the scope of the original one. This new
project would take into consideration phenomena that had
occurred in the education sphere following the original
project:
1. The widespread diffusion of the Open Education
Resources (OER) concept. OER was a central idea in
the SLOOP project and has recently received
increasing attention in educational policies and
practices. This is partly due to the rapid appearance of
Web 2.0 tools, which have significantly reduced the
complexity of the production phase, thus raising the
number of people directly involved in the production
of online digital contents.
2. The increasing popularity of many Social Networks
have encouraged more and more people to go online
and connect with other people.
3. The spontaneous growth of communities of practice
made up of people sharing a common interest around
specific social objects.
4. As a consequence of the previous points, the
development of communities of teachers and trainers
aimed at collaboratively sharing and producing OER
5. The adoption, in 2008, of the European Qualification
Framework (EQF) by the EU Parliament and Council
in April 2008.
The combination of all these elements in the
SLOOP2DESC project has produced something which
goes far beyond a pure transfer of results from a previous
project.
In fact, SLOOP2DESC has promoted professional
development for almost 700 teachers and trainers in
Europe; it has supported improvements in quality and
innovation in vocational education and training systems,
institutions and practices; it has supported the
development of innovative ICT-based content, services,
pedagogies and practice for lifelong learning; it has
increased the cooperation between institutions providing
learning opportunities, enterprises, social partners; it has
developed the role of VET professionals in response to
systemic changes such as the shift to learning outcomes
and competence-based systems; it has strengthened the
liaison between VET professionals and working life
(enterprises, occupational sectors, etc.).
In other words, SLOOP2DESC has met different
European strategic priorities in the VET field, and the
results of the project provide important insights for future
actions in e-learning.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all
the partners who have greatly contributed to the success
of the project. We are also grateful to Direzione
Scolastica of Sicily and Direzione Scolastica of
Lombardia, which have supported the projects since its
initial proposal; the Ministry for Education for their
support in disseminating the project initiatives. The
coordinators gratefully acknowledge the support that
ISFOL, Leonardo da Vinci National Agency, has

12
provided since the very beginning of the project; a
particular thank to our tutor Stefano Pignatone.
Our gratitude is due to the European Commission
and the Directorate for Education and Culture, which has
made the SLOOP2DESC project possible.
Acknowledgments are due to all the people who
have registered themselves in the project portal and to
those who have enrolled the online course, which have
made SLOOP2DESC a special project.
Finally, a special thank to: Piera, Carlo, Giovanni,
Paola, Giulio, Claudio, Nives, Maria, Marinella, Lolita,
Maria, Giovanna, Franco, Piera, Antonino, Riccardo,
Daniela, Angela, Rosangela, Elisabetta, Enzo.

REFERENCES

[1] P. Ravotto, G. Fulantelli , The SLOOP idea: Sharing free/open
learning objects, in ISBN 978-88-903115-0-5, (2007)

[2] European Commission. Joint progress report of the Council and
the Commission on the implementation of the Education and Training
2010 work programme - Delivering lifelong learning for knowledge,
creativity and innovation.http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex
UriServ.do?uri= CELEX: 52008XG0405%2801%29:EN:NOT], (2008)

[3] Cedefop. The shift to learning outcomes Policies and practices in
Europe. Available from http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/
publications/12900.aspx (2009)

[4] OECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (2007).
Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational
Resources, SourceOECD Education & Skills, Vol. 2007, No. 3.

[5] D. Atkins, J. Brown & A. Hammond, A Review of the Open
Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges,
and New Opportunities. Report to The William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation, (2007).

[6] G. Geser, Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS
Roadmap 2012. Salzburg Research, EduMedia Group.
http://www.olcos.org/english/roadmap/, (2007)

[7] G.Fulantelli, M.Gentile, D.Taibi, M.Allegra, "The Open Learning
Object model for the effective reuse of digital educational resources", in
Proc. of the OpenLearn 2007 Conference: Researching open content in
education, Milton Keynes, UK, October 30-31, (2007)

[8] M. Gentile, D. Taibi, M. Allegra and G. Fulantelli, "FreeLOms:
supporting the collaborative evolution of "open learning objects"", in
Proc. of the 3rd WSEAS/IASME International Conference on
ENGINEERING EDUCATION, Vouliagmeni, Greece, Edited by
WSEAS, a cura di N.Bardi et alt, ISSN:1790-5117, ISBN: 960:8457-47-
5, July, 2006, pp. 239-244, (2006)


13

COMPETENCE-BASED LEARNING IN EUROPE
& THE SLOOP2DESC MODEL

Pierfranco Ravotto

AICA, Milan, Italy

p.ravotto@aicanet.it

Abstract Sommario

This paper deals with the issue of competence-based
learning starting from the definitions provided in the
European Qualifications and e-CF Frameworks and
suggests that it is necessary to consider the three
elements of knowledge, skills and attitudes separately,
and to act on them as a whole by placing students in
concrete situations in which to produce results.
The experience of the SLOOP2DESC courses shows how
this is achievable in a virtual classroom eLearning
course.

L'articolo affronta il tema della didattica delle
competenze a partire dalle definizioni fornite nei
documenti europei EQF ed e-CF e suggerisce che
occorra sia prendere in considerazione separatamente i
tre elementi conoscenze, abilit e attitudini, sia agire su
di essi complessivamente ponendo gli studenti in
situazioni concrete in cui produrre risultati.
Successivamente, a partire dallesperienza dei corsi
SLOOP2DESC, indica come sia possibile farlo in un
contesto di corso eLearning in classe virtuale.

KEYWORDS: Competences, Knowledge, Skills,
Attitudes, Abilities, EQF, e-CF.

KEYWORDS: Competenze, Conoscenze, Abilit,
Attitudini, Capacit, EQF, e-CF.

1. INTRODUCTION

"2desc", added to the name of the previous project
SLOOP, indicates the scope of the transfer of innovation:
the SLOOP model of online education and open
educational resources has been transferred to the field of
competence-based learning and, in particular, informatics
competences. "2desc" stands for "to develop European
skills and competences".
For some time the European Commission, training
experts and national and local authorities have been
insisting, with regard to education, on two themes:
competence-based education and the use of ICT to
support education and training. These are two issues
generally addressed in a distinct way. SLOOP2DESC
has had the merit of joining them: is it possible to provide
competence-based teaching through the use of ICT?
The courses offered to teachers, are a concrete
example of online competence-based learning: a model
that has provided an affirmative answer to that question
and that can be transferred from the informatics context
to other and from teachers' training to students' training.

This article presents the SLOOP2DESC model of
competence-based learning, as it has emerged during the
project and the training activities involving more than
600 teachers as students in three European countries.
The article is divided into two parts: competence-based
learning and the SLOOP2DESC experience of online
competence-based activities.

2. COMPETENCE-BASED LEARNING

In 2006 the European Commission for Education
and Training set up a list of eight recommended key
competences which should be incorporated in all new
school curricula. Digital competence and learning to learn
are listed among those eight key competences. Even more
at the professional level, there is attention to the issue of
competence and therefore the request to schools and
universities to become engaged in competence-based
learning.
Competence-based learning incorporated into
education at all levels indicates two major changes:

a shift from content of teaching and training
paths to the "learning outcomes" which are
likely to be achieved and which can be used
either in the further education path or in the
world of work and in any other social context;
enables transferability of competences from one
subject area to another.
But what do we mean by competences? The
European Qualification Framework, EQF, and the
European e-Competences Framework, e-CF, provide very
similar definition of competence.
From EQF we read: Competence means the proven
ability to use knowledge, skills and personal, social
and/or methodological abilities, in work or study
situations and in professional and personal development
[1].

14
e-CF defines competence as follows: Competence
is a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge, skills and
attitudes to achieving observable results [2] [3].

From this definition three major dimensions or
building blocks of competences emerged:
Knowledge,
Skills,
Personal, social and/or methodological abilities
or Attitudes.
But a competence is not a simple sum of them: it is
the proven ability to use them in a context achieving
results!
What recommendations can be given to teachers at all
levels and authorities responsible for preparing new
educational programs? Essentially the following two
main concepts:
all three dimensions - knowledge, skills and
attitudes (or "personal, social and/or
methodological abilities") - must be taken into
account when preparing educational programs or
individual teaching lessons;
it is not enough to ensure the acquisition of
knowledge and skills, or the development of
specific view points; it is also necessary to
promote their application in controlled situations
in order to glean observable results.

Let us first consider the three issues separately.

2.1 Knowledge

EQF defines Knowledge as the outcome of the
assimilation of information through learning. Knowledge
is constituted by a set of facts, principles, theories and
practices related to a field of work or study.
E-CF defines it as the set of know-what (e.g.
programming languages, design tools...) and can be
described by operational descriptions.
Very often schools and individual teachers only
transmit knowledge, the programs are often a list of
content that the teacher should explain and that the
student must study. The necessary criticism of such a
model, however, has resulted, at times, in an
underestimation of the importance of acquiring
knowledge. As Calvani writes Today the school has
significantly reduced its attention to the cognitive
dimension in favour of "other". It has given space to
other dimensions, in itself also important (the socio-
affective, or awareness of the great problems of the
world, etc.); the risk is to assume that these other
dimensions are in themselves sufficient to form the
competences that future citizens will need" [4].
Knowledge is one of the bases of competences and
therefore must be acquired. If it is desirable that the
school activity is not limited to a simple transmission of
content, and if it is not at all certain that transmission is
the most appropriate methodology for the acquisition of
content, should however be noted that it is necessary to
check carefully that students have acquired the collection
of facts, terminology, principles, theories, procedures, ...
that support the competences to be achieved.

2.2 Skills

EQF defines Skills as the ability to apply
knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve
problems. E-CF defines them as the ability to carry out
managerial or technical tasks.
The school for everyone was born to help people
acquire skills: the famous mastery of literacy and
numeracy. In language and mathematical teaching, as
well as in design and technical subjects, the skills, know-
how, has always been the centre of teaching activities.
But it is not always so: often the "know how" is
considered a "result, almost automatic, of knowledge or
something to be put off to the work environment.
Knowledge and skills are indeed intertwined, but if
skills can generally originate from knowledge, it is also
true that doing can stimulate the acquisition of
knowledge. In addition to this, the acquisition of skills is
more likely to be self-checked by the student with a
positive effect on her/his involvement in the achievement
of learning goals and on her/his motivation to learn.
The importance of skills and knowledge should be
emphasized by a careful verification of their acquisition
by students.

2.3 Attitudes

I use the term attitudes, proposed in e-CF because it
is more concise, but I consider it, at least in a first
approximation, as the equivalent capacity of personal,
social and/or methodology abilities to which EQF do not
add specifications.
e-CF defines Attitude as a cognitive and relational
capacity (e.g. analysis capacity, synthesis capacity,
flexibility, pragmatism,...). It specifies: It is close to
the concepts of manner and demeanour, it is the
French savoir tre. e-CF also contains the following
concepts: If skills and knowledge are the components,
attitudes are the glue, which keeps them together.

The discourse on attitudes is certainly more complex
than that of knowledge and skills as this item implies
abilities of very different types. Leaving for another
occasion the objective to classify them, we limit
ourselves here to a list including personal capabilities,
methodological and social abilities (according to EQF)
and/or cognitive and social capacities (according to e-
CF):
storage capacity, interpretation, extrapolation,
link analysis, synthesis and evaluation;
autonomy, responsibility, target
orientation/results, ability to organize, ability to
concentrate and focus;
awareness, flexibility, ability to orientate
themselves;
ability to pose and solve problems;
ability to listen and communicate;

15
ability to work in groups, to accept different
points of view, to support his own point of view,
to coordinate and agree to co-ordination;
Surely these are the skills to which teachers are
greatly concerned and which affect, in important ways,
educational attainment. Often the assessment made by
teachers brings together knowledge and specific skills
and cognitive abilities (and often social abilities) but
without offering the student a clear description of its
deficiencies and of related improvement targets.
Above all the risk is to consider attitudes a personal
characteristic, something determined by genes and/or
social conditions, something on which the primary school
may take action, while university and perhaps even the
secondary school cant intervene or influence considering
that those attitudes are already acquired (or not acquired)
at the time of the individual meeting those organisations.
So the "glue", that holds together knowledge and
skills and which is an essential component of
competence, is often left out of the training, or, anyway,
there is not a conscious, explicit and "organized"
intervention.

2.4 Competences

Competences can be seen to be more then a
combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes: the
successful application of these in practical situations.
Given this definition, schools must facilitate students in
the practical application of knowledge, skills and
attitudes by placing them in situations that will allow
them to operate and interact, producing observable
results.
Even if not generalised, experiences of this type
already exist. They are substantially of two types: work-
based experiences and project-work activities. Work-
based learning, by definition offers a work context with
its own dynamics and products. Work-project activities
focus on the results to be achieved, individually or in-
group, and generally go beyond the mere disciplinary
context.
What suggestions can be given to promote
competence-based teaching? In my opinion the following
ones may help:

clearly define the competences to be achieved as
a basis of the educational contract with students,
precisely define the knowledge and skills on
which those competences are based and provide
"objective" evaluation tests,
make the necessary attitudes explicit and help
students self-evaluate and improve in respect to
them,
propose collaborative project activities suitable
to make students consolidate and reinforce
knowledge and skills, and in which they could
measure and develop their attitudes (personal,
social, methodological abilities),
organize experiences to be carried out outside
school/university where, again, they could
measure and enhance knowledge, skills and
attitudes.
3. ONLINE COMPETENCE-BASED
LEARNING IN THE SLOOP2DESC
EXPERIENCE

The course, which will be described in a next
chapter as The SLOOP2DESC course, intended to help
participants acquire competences both in the use of
eLearning and Web 2.0 tools, and in competence-based
learning. To achieve this it worked both on the grounds of
the acquisition of individual knowledge and skills, and on
the development of attitudes, placing the participants in a
concrete context in which to produce usable results
(teaching materials to use with students).
First it is worth clarifying that the online learning
model we adopted is the virtual classroom in the Moodle
environment:
the participants are organized into classes (30-40
people with two tutors), each of them in their
own "course",
activities are scheduled so that the students carry
out them at the same time,
a strong interaction is required between the
students and between students and tutors (in
forums and using e-mails, chats,
videoconferences), sometimes as debates and
exchanges of ideas, some other times as
cooperation in carrying out activities (also using
tools such as wikis, googledoc, mindmap, ... ).

The course expected the acquisition of a set of
knowledge, for example, concerning the Creative
Commons licenses, the European documents on key
competences, EQF, e-CF, the EUCIP syllabus, ... To
provide such knowledge either links to existing
presentations and to the original documents have been
included or slides with audio, or videos or SCORM
objects have been developed.
To consolidate this knowledge, activities like
"reading, listening, " have been accompanied by a
request to discuss it in forums starting from inputs
provided by the tutors. For example: "What Creative
Commons license do you think is more suitable for
teaching materials?".

There are many skills that the SLOOP2DESC course
intended to capture: open a Moodle course, include
resources, monitor activities of students, produce a
learning resource with eXeLearning, create a slideshow
with audio and make it available on SlideShare,
communicate via Skype, collaborate on a wiki, use
GoogleDoc, put a resource to be shared in FreeLOms,
To promote the acquisition of these skills the course
proposes existing, or ad hoc developed, tutorials, often in
the form of videos on YouTube (or Vimeo) or SlideShare
presentations, work proposals, sometimes individual,
sometimes in groups. So, for example, for the use of
Moodle a "trial course" has been created where
participants could practice including resources and
activities.


16
All the modules include a discussion forum and,
therefore, discussion among peers and between peers and
tutors is one of the main features of the course. In
Modules 2 and 3 collaborative activities are planned.
Collaborative activity in Module 2 is essentially
functional, in order to learn how to use tools like Skype,
GoogleDoc and the wiki. In Module 5 collaborative work
aims to produce resources to be used with students.
Discussions and collaborative activities help develop
a set of attitudes related to exchanges of ideas,
acceptance of different points of view, assumptions of
responsibility and, where appropriate, leadership.
The environment in which to exercise these
attitudes, namely the net, was in many respects new for
teachers who were used to work in a face-to-face
environment. And I think that this news has allowed each
individual to self-assess her/his strengths and weaknesses
and personal growth. This is an important element in the
role of online tutors, either in the training of teachers (the
tutors of the cascade courses have been selected among
the participants of the pilot courses) or with their
students.
So the course SLOOP2DESC has dealt with all
three elements: knowledge, skills and attitudes/capacities.
It has not acted independently on these different aspects,
but has set a context in which to operate: the one of
producing, in a collaborative way, open educational
resources to use with their students.
So the trainees have been provided with a context
where they had to work together to produce observable
results, applying and developing the knowledge and skills
they were acquiring and using their attitude to online
collaboration to solidify their experiences.

4. CONCLUSIONS

The term e-learning, unfortunately, does not
distinguish between two very different models: one based
primarily on self-learning, the other - that which we have
used in the project - based on interactions and
collaboration in a virtual classroom.
In the first model the teaching resources transmit
knowledge and in the presence of simulations, may also
facilitate the acquisition of skills; and if there is a tutor,
its function is to resolve any technical problems or, at
most, to support motivation for learning.
The second model - the virtual classroom - is
instead focused on the interactions between people, as
well as it happens in a face-to-face dimension. It also
enables development of attitudes, in particular the
relational ones, and above all, enables carrying out
collaborative activities within a concrete situation.

REFERENCES

[1] European Commission Education & Culture, EQF, European
Qualification Framework
[2] CEN, E-CF, European e-Competence Framework version 2.0,
[3] CEN, E-CF, European e-Competence Framework version 2.0, Users
Guidelines
[4] Calvani A., Teorie dellistruzione e carico cognitivo. Modelli per
una scuola efficace, Erickson.


17

EUCIP AND E-CF CERTIFICATION SYSTEMS

Roberto Bellini
1
, Pierfranco Ravotto
1
, Niko Schlanberger
2

1
AICA, Milan, Italy
2
S. D. Informatika, Ljubljana, Slovenia

1
r.bellini@aicanet.it, p.ravotto@aicanet.it
2
niko.schlamberger@gmail.com

Abstract Sommario

The article describes the two competence-based systems
used in the Italian and Slovenian courses: EUCIP and e-
CF.

Larticolo illustra i due sistemi di competenze utilizzati nei
corsi italiano e sloveno: EUCIP ed e-CF.

KEYWORDS: Competences, EUCIP, e-CF.

KEYWORDS: Competenze, EUCIP, e-CF.

The SLOOP2DESC courses in Italy and Slovenia
had, as a specific target, teachers of computer science. A
number of teachers from other disciplines were also
enrolled in the Italian courses. One of the goals was to
familiarise them with EUCIP and e-CF, two competence
frameworks related to informatics, which are getting
more and more well known.

The EUCIP system has been preferred to e-CF as a
reference framework for the production of educational
resources for students, as, in 2008, it was the better
known and the more detailed as far as the description of
knowledge, skills and competences is concerned.

1. EUCIP FRAMEWORK

EUCIP [1], European Certification of Informatics
Professionals, is the competence framework defined by
CEPIS [2] - Council of European Professional
Informatics Societies and run in Italy by AICA: a
system of certifications and services for individuals and
businesses. The heart of the system is the syllabus which
is divided into three areas: Plan, Operate and Build, and
in 18 macro-categories of competences.

A. Plan: Use and Management of Information
Systems
A.1 Organisations and their Use of IT
A.2 Management of IT
A.3 Measuring the Value of IT
A.4 The Global Networked Economy
A.5 Project Management
A.6 Presentation and Communication Techniques
A.7 Legal and Ethical Issues

B. Build: Development and implementation of
Information Systems
B.1 Systems Development Process and Methods
B.1 Systems Development Process and Methods
B.2 Data Management and Databases
B.3 Programming
B.4 User Interface and Web Design

C. Operate Knowledge Area: Operation and
Support of Information Systems
C.1 Computing Components and Architecture
C.2 Operating Systems
C.3 Communications and Networks
C.4 Network Services
C.5 Wireless and Mobile Computing
C.6 Network Management
C.7 Service Delivery and Support

Each macro-category is then further declined in the
categories for a total of 156 categories for each of which
are given knowledge and skills up to a total of about
3,000 elementary units of knowledge.
As shown in the image given below, EUCIP
framework identifies 21 Elective profiles characterized
by a common set of skills, EUCIP core, and a twenty-
second figure, the IT Administrator.
For each profile it is indicated at what level (deep
and incisive), the 156 categories of competences should
be possessed.

Such a structured syllabus is a powerful tool that
allows to:
design training,
define assessment tests for knowledge and skills,
assessment and self-assessment leading to the
identification of the 'profile of proximity compared
with 22 figures and related training gaps,
qualify employees and suppliers,
define a common language between business and
particularly between those of supply and demand of
ICTs.

18
It is just this last element that has led CNIPA (now
DigitPA) to indicate the EUCIP profiles as a reference for
ICT contracts of the Italian Public Administration.

1.1 IT Administrator Certification
The IT Administrator is the administrator of
computer systems in small companies or branch offices
of larger organizations, where one person is required to
have a broad spectrum of operational ICT infrastructure.
At an initial level, there is the IT Administrator
Fundamentals certification which can be acquired
through an automated examination by an authorized
competence centre; it is to ascertain the ownership of
essential knowledge and skills for an IT Administrator.

The assessment of knowledge and skills of a high-
level IT Administrator is made by 5 tests consisting of a
theory test (automated test, available in Italian or English)
and a practical test (configuration and practical activities
on systems):
Hardware (theory test only).
Operating systems (either Windows or Linux).
Network services (in either a Windows or Linux
environment).
Expert use of networks (heterogeneous
environment).
Safety (heterogeneous environment).

The complete IT Administrator certification requires
the overcoming of the 5 exams, but each provides,
however, a specific certification.

1.2 EUCIP core Certification
Unlike the IT Administrator, the other 21 professional
profiles require, as a prerequisite, the EUCIP-Core
certification, obtained by means of 3 exams consisting of
automated testing and done in authorized centres -
currently only in English - and for the following three
areas:

Plan
Build,
Operate.

The certification guarantees the possession of a core
set of essential knowledge for all computer professionals.

A.1.3 Elective profiles Certification
The competence assessment for one of the 21
professional certifications is based on two steps:

A. The presentation of a portfolio by the candidate:
the school training path,
EUCIP-Core certification,
certifications acquired in the ICT sector, both
independent and vendors (e.g. ITIL, Cisco,
Microsoft, ...),
professional experience.

B. An interview (oral examination) in which examiners
- in principle a manager AICA-EUCIP, a
representative of the university and a representative
of the corporate world - note the candidate's
communication skills, check the contents of her/his
portfolio and, if necessary, get further information
as far as the candidate's competences are concerned.

Admission to the oral examination of the portfolio
is conditional, based on a set of criteria/scores which are
aimed at verifying whether the candidate can provide
evidence both of owning the knowledge and skills
required (those defined by the syllabus for the
professional profile of interest) and of having actually
played the professional role in question for a certain
number of months/years (depending on the different
profile). So the certification of 'knowing how to act in
situations' is guaranteed from having acted in the
situation; in this way what is declared in the portfolio is
assessed during the interview.

2. E-COMPETENCE FRAMEWORK

The European e-Competence Framework [3], or
e-CF, has been developed within CEN Workshop on ICT
Skills [4] and under the encouragement of the European
Commission, with the aim of providing a framework of
ICT competences that can be used and understood by
European companies both in ICT supply and demand
areas, ICT professionals, managers and HR departments,
government, key stakeholders from education and social
partners.
Version 1.0 was published in 2008, shortly before
the beginning of the SLOOP2DESC project. Version 2.0
is 2010.

The e-Competence Framework is structured in four
dimensions. Dimension 1 identifies 5 areas of e-
Competences, derived from the ICT business processes:
Plan, Build, Run, Enable and Manage.


19
Dimension 2 identifies 36 competences, each
assigned to one of the 5 areas:

PLAN
A.1 IS and Business Strategy Alignment
A.2. Service Level Management
A.3. Business Plan Development
A.4. Product or Project Planning
A.5. Architecture Design
A.6. Application Design
A.7 Technology Watching
A.8. Sustainable Development

BUILD
B.1. Design and Development
B.2. Systems Integration
B.3. Testing
B.4. Solution Development
B.5. Documentation Production

RUN
C.1. User Support
C.2. Change Support
C.3. Service Delivery
C.4. Problem Management

ENABLE
D.1. Information Security Strategy Development
D.2. ICT Quality Strategy Development
D.3. Education and Training Provision
D.4. Purchasing
D.5. Sales Proposal Development
D.6. Channel management
D.7. Sales Management
D.8. Contract Management
D.9 Personnel Development
Information and Knowledge Management

MANAGE
E.1. Forecast Development
E.2. Project and Portfolio Management
E.3. Risk Management
E.4. Relationship Management
E.5 Process Improvement
E.6. ICT Quality Management
E.7. Business Change Management
E.8. Information Security Management
E.9. IT Governance

Dimension 3 ranks the competences in 5
competence levels - e-1, e-2, e-5 - related to the EQF
levels from 3 to 8

Dimension 4 provides examples of knowledge and
skills related to the various competences. Note that while
the definitions of competences are explicitly assigned to
dimension 2 and 3 and examples of knowledge and skill
are present in dimension 4 of the framework, attitudes are
included in all three dimensions.
3. EUCIP TOWARDS e-CF

EUCIP provides for the definition and measurement
of ICT skills and is currently used as the basis for the
provision of certification and services in seven countries
across Europe (Croatia, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Norway,
Poland, Romania, Spain). The EUCIP certification
programme is a professional certification and competency
development scheme, aimed at informatics professionals
and practitioners. EUCIP is promoted by CEPIS across
Europe and nationally in participating countries,
including AICA in Italy.

The EUCIP certification offerings include EUCIP
Core, EUCIP Professional and EUCIP IT Administrator.
In addition several business services have been developed
to manage competence analysis and development.
The European e-Competence Framework (e-CF) is a
reference framework of 36 ICT competences that can be
used and understood by ICT user and supply companies,
the public sector, educational and social partners across
Europe. The development and promotion of the e-CF has
been carried out through CEN, the European Committee
for Standardization, and CENELEC, the European
Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization, within
their standards work in the domain of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT), and specifically
through a series of CEN ICT Skills Workshop projects

20
(supported by European Commission DG Enterprise and
Industry).
CEPIS, the promoter of EUCIP, as well as CEPIS
members, including AICA, are participating in the CEN
ICT Skills Workshop and its projects where e-CF
versions 1 and 2 have been developed and version 3,
which will also include professional profiles (largely
corresponding to the EUCIP profiles, which cross
reference the e-CF), is under construction. CEPIS
supports the dissemination of the e-CF and is committed
to accomplish the transition of EUCIP certification and
HR Management Services towards the e-CF framework.
The SLOOP2DESC project is one of the first
presentations, at European level, of e-CF to hundreds of
computer science teachers.
The open educational resources, designed with
reference to the EUCIP syllabus, can be easily adapted to
the e-CF framework but, above all, the spread - sponsored
by SLOOP2DESC of the culture of competence-based
learning and the reference to an external competence
framework, has created a conducive climate for the
diffusion of e-CF in informatics schools.

REFERENCES

[1] www.eucip.org, http://www.cepis.org/index.jsp?p=640&n=1116

[2] http://www.cepis.org

[3] http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/CENWorkshopAgree
ments /Pages/ICT-Skills.aspx;http://www.ecompetences.eu/
[4] http://www.cen.eu/CEN/sectors/sectors/isss/activity/Pages/wsict-
skills.spx

21

MARITIME CERTIFICATION SYSTEM
IN COMPLIANCE WITH IMO STANDARDS

Lucian Oprea
1
, Dorel Popa
2
, Doina Munteanu
2
,
Alina Dumitriu
2
, Iulian Ilie
1
, Steluta Stan
1

1
Dunarea de Jos University of Galati, Romania
2
Romanian Maritime Training Centre (CERONAV), Constanta, Romania

lucian.oprea@ugal.ro, dorelpopa@ceronav.ro, doinamunteanu@ceronav.ro,
alinaoprea@ceronav.ro, iulian.ilie@ugal.ro, steluta.stan@ugal.ro,

Abstract Rezumat

The paper focuses on the description of a certification
system of competencies in compliance with IMO
(International Maritime Organization) standards. For
maritime training institutes worldwide, IMO has
developed a series of model courses which provide
suggested syllabi, course timetables and learning
objectives to assist instructors in developing training
programmes to comply with the STCW Convention
standards for seafarers.

In lucrare se face o caracterizare a unui sistem de
certificare a competentelor in corelatie cu standardele
IMO (International Maritime Organization). Pentru
instituiile de formare profesionala in domeniul maritim,
IMO a dezvoltat cursuri model care, prin continutul lor,
asigura indeplinirea obiectivelor de invatare,
reprezentand un real ajutor pentru expertii din domeniu.

KEYWORDS: IMO (International Maritime
Organization) standards, IMO Basic, IMO for Officers,
modules, requirements

CUVINTE CHEIE: Standarde IMO (Oranizatia
Maritima Internationala), IMO basic, IMO pentru ofiteri,
module, cerinte

In Romania, the maritime certification system in
compliance with IMO standards has been preferred to
EUCIP (European Certification for Informatics
Professionals) as a special reference framework with
international recognition. In this case, the target group of
the SLOOP2DESC courses consisted of experts teachers
in shipping.

1. IMO FRAMEWORK

Today, we live in a society supported by a global
economy which simply could not function if it were not
for shipping. Shipping is perhaps the most international
of the worlds industries, serving more than 90 per cent of
the global trade by carrying huge quantities of cargo cost
effectively, cleanly and safely.
The Convention establishing the International
Maritime Organization (IMO) was adopted in Geneva in
1948 and IMO first met in 1959. IMOs main task has
been to develop and maintain a comprehensive regulatory
framework for shipping and its remit today includes
safety, environmental concerns, legal matters, technical
co-operation, maritime security and shipping efficiency.
IMO plays a key role in ensuring that lives at sea
are not put at risk and that the marine environment is not
polluted by shipping - as summed up in IMOs mission
statement: Safe, Secure and Efficient Shipping on Clean
Oceans.

The International Convention on Standards of
Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers
(STCW), 1978, sets the standards of competence for
seafarers internationally. One key STCW Convention
provision requires parties to provide information to allow
others to check the validity and authenticity of seafarers
certificates of competency. This is important as
unqualified seafarers holding fraudulent certificates of
competency are a clear danger to themselves, others on
board and the marine environment.
In order to assist with uniform interpretation of the
STCW Convention, IMO has agreed a number of
clarifications of the Conventions provisions and has also
developed further guidance to assist parties to meet their
Convention obligations. For maritime training institutes
worldwide, IMO has also developed a series of model
courses which provide suggested syllabi, course
timetables and learning objectives to assist instructors
developing training programmes.

2. ABOUT CERONAV

Having a 35 year experience, the Romanian
Maritime Training Centre (CERONAV) is a public
institution under the subordination of the Ministry of
Transports and Infrastructure, designated as the national
body for the training of maritime, river and port
personnel (Fig. 1).

22
CERONAV currently organizes about 2,000
training, specialization and qualification courses in 80
different specialties, for approximately 32,000 trainees
per year. The fact that over 90% of the graduates are
employed by international shipping companies certifies
the high level of training provided at highest applicable
international standards.
CERONAV is ISO 9001:2008 certified and also
holds Marlins and ECDL certificates.

Fig. 1 - CERONAV headquarters in Constanta

The high training standards are supported by
CERONAVs affiliation to the following international
professional organisations and associations:
International Association for Safety and Survival
Training
International Association of Ports and Harbours
International Maritime Lecturers Association
BIMCO
Intelligent Transport Systems
Romanian Intermodal Association
Nautical Institute
EDINNA Education in Inland Navigation
Association of IWT Education and Training Institutions

3. IMO SYSTEM FOR CERTIFICATION OF
COMPETENCIES

The model training courses programme developed
following the adoption of the International Convention on
Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for
Seafarers, (STCW), 1978. Assisted by contributions from
various Governments, IMO has designed the series of courses
to help implement this Convention and to facilitate access to
the knowledge and skills demanded by increasingly
sophisticated maritime technology.
The courses are flexible in application: maritime
institutes and their teaching staff can use them in organizing
and introducing new courses or in enhancing, updating or
supplementing existing training material. Each model course
includes a course framework detailing the scope, objective,
entry standards, and other information about the course, a
course outline (timetable), a detailed teaching syllabus
(including the learning objectives that should have been
achieved when the course has been completed by students),
guidance notes for the instructor and a summary of how
students should be evaluated. Many courses include
background information for students in a compendium.
At present, CERONAV runs the following courses, in
compliance with IMO standards:
- courses in maritime safety, mandatory for issuance of
STCW Certificates of Competency for ratings and auxiliary
personnel (IMO BASIC);
- courses in maritime safety, mandatory for issuance of
STCW Certificates of Competency for certified maritime
navigating personnel (IMO FOR OFFICERS).

A. IMO BASIC

As shown in Fig. 2 below, IMO BASIC identifies two
elective groups (Ratings/Uncertified personnel and Auxiliary
personnel).

Fig. 2 - IMO BASIC Courses (Level 1)

Having a mandatory character, the programme
offered by CERONAV addresses both aspiring marine
officers and navigating personnel with a certificate in sea
port activities or a competency certificate, or uncertified
personnel. For the last category, the programme is to be
taken every five years, for knowledge update. The
programme comprises the four STCW basic safety
courses (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 - IMO BASIC evaluation and certification

Course duration: 10 days (80 hours)
Content: 4 modules
Module 1: Personal Survival Techniques
Objective: acquiring knowledge of actions to be taken by
each person in view of own protection in case of emergency
(boat evacuation, use of escape boats and lifejackets).
Module 2: Fire Prevention and Fire Fighting
Objective: become familiar with prevention methods,
conducting fire risk assessment, initiation and fire fighting.
Module 3: Elementary First Aid
Objective: becoming familiar with basic requirements
concerning first aid in case of accidents or disease on
board ships.
23
Module 4: Personal Safety and Social
Responsabilities
Objective: becoming familiar with work protection
practices, and operational or accidental marine
pollution, with special focus on aspects regarding
social responsibilities on board ships.
Table 1 below presents the range of jobs for
uncertified and and auxiliary personnel.

RATINGS/ UNCERTIFIED
PERSONNEL
AUXILIARY
PERSONNEL
Seaman Cook
Motorman Housemaid
Electrician Waiter
Maritime helmsman Barman
Motorboat coxswain Receptionist
Artist
Hotel manager

A list of minimum participation requirements is
given below.
For uncertified personnel:
Competency Certificate
Studies:
- bachelors degree in other different fields
(EQF 6)
- highschool baccalaureate diploma (EQF 4)
- vocational school graduation diploma
(EQF 3, 5)
- gymnasium certificate (EQF 2)
Certificate recognition by:
- IMO Member States
- National authorities
- Shipowners
- Shipcompanies
NO ECTS
For auxiliary personnel:
qualification certificate;
lower secondary school capacity certificate.

B. IMO FOR OFFICERS

The information below concerns the safety courses
offered by CERONAV to certified navigating personnel,
mandatory for issuance of STCW Certificates of
Competency (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 - IMO FOR OFFICERS courses (Level 2)
Course duration: 10 days (58 hours)
Content: 10 modules
Module 1: Global Maritime Distress and
Safety System (GMDSS) - General
Operators Certificate (18 days)
Intended for beginners and designed for personnel
operating in all GMDSS sea areas, its objectives are:
efficient operation of GMDSS equipment, awareness of
the responsibility and correct use of alerting facilities in
case of distress incidents.
Module 2: Radar Navigation, Radar Plotting
and Use of ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting
Aid) (5 days)
The Certificate issued qualifies the trainee to operate
RADAR equipments as an officer of the watch (OOW)
(Fig. 5) .

Fig. 5 - Radar navigation

Module 3: Maritime English (4 days)
Objective: acquiring necessary language skills for
communication with members of a multinational crew in
case of ship manoeuvring or emergency.
Module 4: Prevention of Polution of the
Marine Environment - MARPOL 73/78 (4
days)
Objectives: become familiar with IMO policy regarding
the prevention of pollution of the marine environment by
ships from operational or accidental causes, with
polluting agents included in the list appended to the
MARPOL 73/78 Convention (International Convention
for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, 1973, as
modified by the Protocol of 1978), of the equipment and
facilities existing on a ship and of the way the evidence of
operations with polluting agents is kept.
Module 5: Proficiency in Personal Survival
Techniques (2 days)
Objective: familiarization with actions for self protection
in case of emergency and training for correct use of
escape boats and lifejackets.
Module 6: Proficiency in Survival Craft and
Rescue Boats other than Fast Rescue Boats
(4 days)

Fig. 6 - Escape boat launching

24
Objective: training for the launching and manoeuvring of
escape boats, correct use of survival equipment, and
specific actions for survival of self and others (Fig. 6).
Module 7: Personal Safety and Social
Responsabilities (4 days)
Objective: familiarization with basic work protection
practices and effects of marine environment operational
or accidental pollution, with special focus on
responsibilities on board ship.
Module 8: Transport and Handling of
Dangerous Hazardous and Harmful Cargoes
(4 days)
Objective: acquiring knowledge of how to prepare and
act for safe sea transportation of hazardous goods and
marine pollutants; become familiar with the legal
implications and the correct application of new
provisions and regulations in the domain.
Module 9: Medical Care (6 days)
Objective: become familiar with medical knowledge for
medical care in case of illness or accident on board.
Module 10: Advanced Fire Fighting (7 days)
Objective: acquiring knowledge of the entire set of
measures to be taken for fire risk minimization on board
and fire fighting (Fig. 7).
.

Fig. 7 - Fire fighting drill

The sea safety programme is to be taken every
five years, for knowledge update (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8 - IMO FOR OFFICERS evaluation and certification
Table 2 below presents the range of jobs for
certified personnel.

DECK CREW ENGINE CREW
Master Mechanic maritime officer
Deck maritime officer
Electrician maritime officer
Master Chief maritime engineer

Chief maritime electrician

A list of minimum participation requirements is given
below:
Studies:
bachelor degree in maritime fields or others
(EQF 6)
Certificate recognition by:
- IMO Member States
- National authorities
- Shipowners
- Shipcompanies
NO ECTS

4. CONCLUSIONS

The maritime certification system in compliance with
IMO standards has as a specific target: experts and/or
teachers in the shipping field.
CERONAV staff members are highly interested in
familiarizing themselves and improving the new
pedagogical technologies, including the online courses.
For maritime training purposes, a series of model courses
are developed with a view to provide suggested syllabi,
course timetables and e-learning objectives intended to
assist instructors develop training programmes and
courses in compliance with the standards for seafarers.
The instructors and the trainees need to improve
their ability to comply with international rules and
standards relating to maritime safety and the prevention
and control of maritime pollution, giving priority to
technical assistance programmes focussing on the
development of human resources and institutional
capacity building.

REFERENCES

[1] Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective, European
Commision, Project number: I/05/B/F/PP-154194, ISBN 979-88-
903115-0-5, 2007;

[2]. http://www.ceronav.ro

[3]. http://www.imo.org


25

BUILDING AND MANAGING A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

Augusto Buzzi
1

1
METID, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

augusto.buzzi@polimi.it

Abstract Sommario
This paper describes how the SLOOP2DESC Community of
Practice has been first conceived, planned and built, then
managed from its launch (November 2010) to today. It also
reports what actually happened with the people involved and
provides some statistics about its size. Finally it anticipates
the settings we can expect and the possible moves to be
planned for the last stage (self-government), which is starting
on September 2011.

Larticolo descrive come la comunit di pratica di
SLOOP2DESC stata dapprima ideata, pianificata e
costruita, quindi gestita dal suo lancio (novembre 2010) a
oggi. Riferisce inoltre cosa accaduto con gli utenti coinvolti
e fornisce alcune statistiche sulle sue dimensioni. Infine
anticipa gli scenari attesi e le possibili mosse da
programmare per lultima fase (autogestione), che avr
inizio a settembre 2011.

KEYWORDS: community of practice, social networking, e-
learning, forum, tutors, enterprises, EUCIP, web 2.0.

KEYWORDS: comunit di pratica, social networking, e-
learning, forum, tutor, imprese, EUCIP, web 2.0.

1. WHAT IS A CoP?

Ever since the term was first coined in 1990 [1], the
Communities of Practice (CoP) have been arousing more
and more interest, applications and study cases. They have
been and are used in different fields and for different
purposes: to give two well-known examples, just think of their
educational and commercial forms. However, although they
are much talked about (and too much, maybe), few people
seem to actually know what they are and what purpose they
serve. What is a CoP, finally? Here is one of the briefest and
most forceful definitions you can find on the web:
Communities of practice are formed by people who
engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain
of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of
artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers
working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their
identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel
techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each
other cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups
of people who share a concern or a passion for something they
do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly [2].
So we can rightly call CoP a real or virtual
environment where people who have something in common
share information and experiences and solve problems, and by
doing this not only learn from each other and achieve both
personal and professional growth, but also build a joint
knowledge. Gaining knowledge (know-what and know-how,
notions and competences) related to ones own field is the
veritable goal of a CoP, indeed. With regard to the method of
doing this, we could define a CoP as a collaborative network
where every member takes part voluntarily and interacts with
and amongst equals (except for the obvious distinctions in
role).

2. BULDING THE CoP: STAGE 0

There are two models of CoP: the informal one,
referring to communities which come to life spontaneously
and are characterised by collective self-management, so that
the members themselves propose, provide and share content;
and the formal model, namely communities created from
nothing, established ad hoc and managed by an external
committee which is in charge of providing incentives and
content in order to involve the members and make them
interact. So, when we started to plan a community for
SLOOP2DESC we knew that it would stand in the middle of
the two models: the users already knew each other because
they had previously shared the experience of the pilot and/or
cascade courses. Whats more, they had a common
background, a personal as well as professional affinity: they
were all teachers (mainly teaching computer science)
interested in e-learning, with a good ICT literacy and a high
level of motivation and willingness to interact; they shared the
same work context, the same aims, the same educational
vision. We also had different kinds of actors, i.e. the enterprise
representatives, who had good reason to take part in the
community as well. Thats why we didnt start from nothing:
the requirements for a CoP were fully satisfied. Due to the
aims of the project, the CoP addressed just the Italian tutors
and trainees: this option made the people homogeneous and
automatically removed the technical, and not the only,
problem of building a multilingual online forum.
Proceeding from this clear and well-disposed target, we
then designed the guidelines and features of the future
community. It should have been an online environment for
discussing and sharing knowledge and ideas. So firstly, we
chose two strong topics dear to the project and which the
partners where skilled at: the EUCIP certification system
(AICA) and web 2.0 (METID & ITSOS). Looking at self-
management as a final aim, tutors would launch and animate
the rising community by acting like supervisors, motivators
and moderators. The members would interact using a forum,
pursuing peer (thematic) discussions and a many-to-many
communication flow; moreover they would share content and
resources by linking or uploading them in attachments to their
posts.
Finally, after focusing our needs and goals, the CNR
engaged in seeking, setting up and customising a web
environment suitable for hosting the community, and Joomla
Community Builder was the selected tool. It provided us with
everything we needed: most of all, a forum all the rest isnt
relevant in this place where everybody, as well as the
possible outsiders, could register, sign in, complete their own
profile, access the discussion and join the community. Of
course we had to promote the CoP too, not only with the
tutors and trainees already involved in the project but

26
wherever it was worthwhile and here all the Italian partners
concurred to spread the word in trade magazines and websites
devoted to our topics.

3. MANAGING THE CoP: STAGE 1

The CoP was officially launched in November 2010.
Since the very beginning, when the team was still conceiving
it, self-government was considered as the final goal: we
wanted it in a perspective of sustainability to last beyond
the end of the project and to become independent, able to
survive and evolve without the aegis of the project partners.
The CoP was unlikely to grow by itself, so we had to plan an
operation intended to attend to it throughout at least the first
months of its life. So the partners, the enterprise
representatives and also the former trainees (the tutors of the
cascade courses) stimulated the discussion by posting
incentives, questions and calls for sharing ideas, information
and experiences: it took some time but, although the process
was quite slow, the members responded favourably and never
failed to reply and have their say.
Later on, of course, the problem was keeping the
participation alive, and the leaders did it by posting new
replies, subtopics and cues. In other words we could say that a
kind of community-watch committee was raised, with
specialised roles and divided areas of intervention according
to the topics and the skills of each tutor (or supertutor), and
the process turned out to work well. After all, apart from the
steady monitoring and supervising, the effort by the
watchers didnt have to be such a big task, thanks to the
active attitude and spontaneous response of the members.
Moreover they were allowed to create new discussions, which
fuelled the debate. In addition to the core guiding topics
mentioned above (EUCIP certification system and web 2.0),
thus, the conversation flowed free and natural, going along
with the members wishes. Most of all, if we put aside the
technical thread related to FreeLOms (comments and
suggestions about the tool), the users talked about the use of e-
learning in the high school and the links among computer
competences, schools and enterprises. To go deeper into the
content, two problems aroused a special interest and were
agreed on: on the one hand the gap between the Italian school
education and the job market, since the school wouldnt share
neither the logic nor the aims the job market asks for; on the
other hand, the school and university system would be
strongly theory-oriented and fail in providing professional,
managing and practical competences usable at work. So
everyone brought their own experience, some study cases
were illustrated and proposals for plugging the gap were
forwarded such as certificating the competencies
systematically and simulating (or even importing) the job
markets needs and task at school.

4. WHAT HAPPENED: THE CoP IN
NUMBERS
1

Unfortunately we have few statistics related to the CoP
alone, because the tool adopted to register them (Google
Analytics) automatically aggregates the data about the whole
website which hosts the CoP (sloop2desc.eu). Thus, for
instance, we know that to date the community totals 807
registered users, but we do not know how many of them
actually joined the community forums and took part in its
social exchange.
Nevertheless, we have exact knowledge of the numbers
concerning the topics and posts published overall. 4 forums
were opened in the out-and-out CoP, with a total of 73 topics
and 394 posts. So it wouldnt be wrong to include two more

1
The data presented here date back to July 7
th
2011.
forums in our computation, the cascade tutors private forum
(which the trainees couldnt access) and the one intended to
allow the communication between the enterprise
representatives and the cascade courses tutors: if we do so the
topics go up to 170, and the posts go to 1326 (fig. 1)!

Fig.1. SLOOP2DESC CoP Forum (July 7
th
2011)

5. TOWARD SELF-GOVERNMENT: STAGE 2

As specified above, the final aim is self-government: so,
in what we anticipated as stage 2, the CoP should become
self-sufficient, able to keep on growing and evolving without
the support of the project partners who have been facilitating
and encouraging it until now. It may be that these partners
need to make themselves available as advisors/counsellors in
order to help the CoP become autonomous.
We have at least two settings, two options, between
which the members (especially the tutors of the cascade
courses) have to choose. Those are: Which do you prefer,
trying to make it on your own or planning/managing the
changeover along with us? So in the first case we would be
pure observers, while in the second one we would actively
guide the CoP to find its way, that is (in brief): finding out and
negotiating the community aims, according to the interests
and needs of the members (survey/consultation); assisting the
members in composing a new (internal) managing committee
and agreement about the respective roles and commitments
during the transitional phase.
After being trained in the pilot courses, the tutors of the
cascade courses demonstrated that they highly capable of
posing problems and negotiating solutions through
consultation with each other. With this in mind, they may
well handle the changeover of the CoP independently and to a
high degree of efficiency. This would be the umpteenth
positive outcome of a project that has already yielded many.

REFERENCES
[1] Lave, J., Wenger, E., Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991; first published in
1990 as Institute for Research on Learning report 90-0013.
[2] Wenger, E., Communities of practice: a brief introduction,
http://www.ewenger.com/theory/index.htm, 2006

27

THE SLOOP2DESC COURSE

Francesca Berengo
1
, Mara Masseroni
1
, Luigi Petruzziello
1
, Monica Terenghi
1
,
Pierfranco Ravotto
2

1
ITSOS Marie Curie, Cernusco sul Naviglio
2
AICA, Milano

francesca.berengo@tes.mi.it, masseroni.mara@gmail.com,
luigi.petruzziello@tes.mi.it, monica.terenghi@tes.mi.it
p.ravotto@aicanet.it

Abstract Sommario

This paper deals with This paper describes the online
training course for teachers that has been designed and
tested within the project SLOOP2DESC and is now
available in open format - so everyone can freely use,
modify and distribute it - in 4 languages: Italian,
English, Slovenian and Romanian.

L'articolo presenta il corso di formazione in rete per
docenti che stato progettato e sperimentato nellambito
del progetto SLOOP e che adesso disponibile in formato
aperto dunque liberamente utilizzabile, modificabile e
distribuibile in 4 lingue: italiano, inglese, sloveno e
rumeno.

KEYWORDS: Teachers training, Competences,
Online learning, Open educational resources, Moodle,
Web 2.0, Collaborative tools, Creative Commons,
training course, EQF, EUCIP, e-CF.

KEYWORDS: Formazione docenti, Competenze,
Didattica in rete, Risorse educative aperte, Moodle, Web
2.0, Strumenti collaborativi, CreativeCommons, EQF,
EUCIP, e-CF.

1. INTRODUCTION

At European level, the Bologna Process and the
Lisbon Declaration stressed the importance of
reorganising the education policies in the view of a
community sense, adopting an approach based on
learning outcomes and certification of competences
attained. In 2008 the European Parliament and the
European Council adopted a common reference
framework of qualifications for lifelong learning (EQF-
European Qualification Framework) with the aim to
establish general criteria for comparing competence
certification systems adopted in different European
countries [1].
As more and more companies have been adopting
the systems of competence certification based on the EQF
for the selection of their staff, it is essential that teachers
in schools and training operators mature awareness that
access to the labour market of their students will
increasingly depend on their ability to demonstrate the
competences acquired during their schooling, and the fact
that these competences are comparable at European level
on the basis of unique and shared criteria.
It is therefore crucial to adopt teaching strategies
that achieve the goal of providing students with
competences that can be certified and recognized at
European level.
One of the objectives of the SLOOP2DESC project
was precisely to increase teachers' knowledge on the new
systems based on learning outcomes and competences
acquired, providing them at the same time, the necessary
technical and pedagogical tools to design/manage
materials and online educational courses that employ
multi-media and the full potential of Web 2.0.
In order to achieve this objective, the SLOOP2DESC
project has devised online training for teachers in Italy,
Romania and Slovenia. Two issues, closely intertwined,
characterise the course:
- the use of online learning to complement face-to-
face training to increase the effectiveness and
attractiveness of training and the sharing of open
digital resources to make the use of online
education sustainable,
- the focus on competence-based learning,
according to EQF, in particular in the informatics
sector with reference to the EUCIP framework.

2. DESIGN AND TESTING OF THE
COURSE

The SLOOP2DESC course has been designed
starting from a successfully course experienced within the
previous SLOOP project in Italy [2], Slovenia [3],
Romania [4] and Spain [5]. And it has been similarly
implemented on a Moodle platform. A first version of the
course was tested in two pilot courses, one attended
mainly by Sicilian teachers and the other one by Lombard
teachers, both of them tutored by components of the
project team. These pilot courses have helped, on the one
hand, identify strengths and weaknesses of the course, on
the other one find tutors for the following cascade in
Italy.
Based on the results obtained during the pilot
courses and feedback from participants, the course has
been partially modified producing the final version that

28
has been used for 11 cascade courses in Italy and
translated into Romanian and Slovenian for the two
courses in these countries.
Finally, the course has been translated into English
and then the 4 versions, released under CC license
Attribution-Share Alike represent the main product that
the SLOOP2DESC project provides the community of
teachers with.

3. COURSE STRUCTURE

First it is necessary to clarify that the model of online
training adopted is the virtual classroom in Moodle. The
trainees are online, organized into classes (30-40 people
with two tutors), which of them represent a separate
"course".
Activities are scheduled in a way that all trainees deal
them at the same time. A strong interaction among
students and between students and tutors (in forums and
other tools such as email, chat, videoconference) is
required, sometimes as a discussion and exchange of
ideas, other times as a collaboration in carrying out
activities (also in this case using tools such as wikis,
GoogleDoc, MindMap, ...).
The table below shows the structure of the course,
which is organised in 5 modules, and its duration of 16
weeks.

Modules Length Units At the end of each module the trainee will be able to:
1. Using Moodle as
trainee
1. use Moodle as a trainee:
- how to register oneself, fill in ones own profile,
insert ones own photo
- how to exchange messages with other registered
trainees;
- how to enrol on a course and monitor ones own
activities;
- how to take part in a forum;
1
Using MOODLE as a
trainee and as a
teacher

3 weeks
2. Using Moodle as
trainer
2. perform tutoring activities (as a teacher not as an
editor):
- how to monitor trainees or groups of trainees
activities;
3. create or modify a course (as a teacher/editor):
- how to add resources to a course: label, link, text
page, web page, folder;
- how to insert activities in a course: forum, online
task, lesson, quiz, hot potatoes quiz, SCORMs,
wiki, register;
- how to insert an embed code in a label or in a
web page to reproduce resources existing in other
sites such as Slide Share, YouTube, Scribd, ...;
4. create a course:
- how to open ex-novo a new course or starting
from a pre-existing course;
- how to assign and modify roles.
1. The online tutor 1. To indicate the main characteristics of the role of
the online tutor.
2. To create, organize
and share resources on
the Net

2. To search and organize knowledge sources through
the web 2.0 tools:
- list of references on the Web,
- social bookmarking (Delicious, ...);
2
Being an online tutor
and using web 2.0
tools

3 weeks
3. E-cooperation 3. to cooperate online in synchronous and
asynchronous way, through Web tools such as:
- Skype, Forum;
4. To use tools for collaborative knowledge
production, such as:
- Googledoc, wiki;
5. to promote role playing and simulations.
1. Sharing and
reusability philosophy
1. provide definitions of open educational resources
or open learning objects;
2. describe the several Creative Commons licences;
3
Using and developing
open educational
resources for an
eLearning
environment
3 weeks
2. Web 2.0 tools for
sharing
3. share resources in web 2.0 environments (such as
Slide Share, YouTube, Scribd, ) tagging them to
make search easier;

29
Modules Length Units At the end of each module the trainee will be able to:
3. The SCORM model
and tools for the
production of SCORM
compliant LOs
4. describe the SCORM model;
5. describe the IEEE LOM metadata system;
6. develop a SCORM by using software like
eXeLearning
4. FreeLOms 7. search for educational resources within a repository
1. EQF 1. describe the 8 key competences for lifelong
learning;
2. 8 key competences 2. describe the aim of 'European Qualification
Framework for Lifelong Learning - EQF and its
level-based structure;
3a. Users digital
competences and
EUCIP syllabuses
3. describe the ECDL system and list the ECDL
certifications;
4. identify in the ECDL syllabuses the competences
that can be of reference for their school or
discipline.
3b. Informatics
professionals
competences, e-CF and
EUCIP
3. describe the aim and the structure of European e-
Competence Framework, e-CF;
4. describe the EUCIP model of informatics
competences and professional profiles;
5. list EUCIP certifications and related certification
procedures;
6. identify, within the EUCIP Syllabus, the
competence units required for a specific
professional profile;
7. use EccoEucip tool to outline ones own proximity
profile and analyse it.
4
European
Qualification
Framework (EQF), e-
Competence
Framework (e-CF)
and EUCIP standard

2 weeks
3c. Common European
Framework of
Reference for
Languages
3. describe the Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages;
4. describe the CEFR six levels;
5. identify the linguistic competence levels relevant to
their ownf school.
1. Choosing the theme
and defining work-
groups
2. Planning and
implementing digital
resources and courses
5
Collaborative
development of
educational resources
based on a
competences
standard

6 weeks
3. Sharing resources
and courses ensuring
they are really open
1. plan open educational resources;
2. develop open educational resources using a wide
range of tools;
3. make the educational resources open providing
them with a suitable licence, source accessibility,
instructions how to use or modify them;
4. upload the resources in FreeLOms;
5. cooperate in planning and developing a course on
Moodle;
6. upload the course in Moodle ensuring it is really
open.

The modules are characterized by a common
structure:
- a description of the module and its purpose (video
or presentation),
- the definition of the learning outcomes,
- a discussion forum with some threads created by
tutors and others opened up by trainees step by
step,
- the several units constituting the course,
- a competence self-assessment questionnaire that
asks participants to indicate if and at which level,
they believe to have achieved the expected results,
- a satisfaction questionnaire by the trainees
concerning the proposed activities, instructional
materials and tutoring provided.
For each of the units the following elements are provided:
- the list of activities to be carried out, sometimes
individually, sometimes in groups,
- a learning resources area with learning materials
in a variety of forms: video, presentations, PDFs,
web pages, SCORM objects. These are materials
in many cases already existing on the net or
specifically developed for the course,
- an area of in-depth resources not listed as
mandatory but optional,

30
- a link to a working environment (a trial course
where to exercise Moodle, a wiki where to work
collaboratively, the FreeLOms, Moodle courses to
be implemented for their students).
Beyond an accurate illustration of the type of
resources made available in the course, we want to
emphasize that the choice of this material has been
consciously implemented in the light of the cultural
context of reference of the entire project, namely the
notion of use, reuse, change and adaptability of resources
[6]. Therefore there are various types of resources in the
course: some fully developed from scratch, others found
in the net and inserted into the course directly, others
built, modified, adapted to the learning context.
This is also in the view of transferability of the
course in different linguistic contexts; various resources
(such as tutorials, demonstrations, ) did not in fact need
any translation because similar resources exist in the web
into various languages, thus requiring an adaptation only
in terms of description of activities and related tasks.

4. TEACHING METHODOLOGY

The methodology of the course is learning by doing.
The trainees learn to become online teachers attending an
online course and get familiar with competence-based
education attending a course based on competence-based
learning (see, for this the previous chapter 2).
But, more importantly, they learn by designing and
building materials, open educational resources for their
students. The heart of the course is Module 5, one
dedicated precisely to the production of resources, where
by this term we mean both single objects - a presentation,
a video, a quiz, ... - and an entire Moodle course. No
coincidence that this is the longest module: 6 weeks. The
other modules are somewhat preliminary.
Module 1 is focused on learning how to use
Moodle. In Module 2, the trainees experience the Web
2.0 tools for collaboration - such GoogleDoc, Skype,
Delicious, ... - tools to be used in Module 5
collaboratively to produce the resources, but also to use
in the future with students.
Module 3 focuses on the production and sharing of
open educational resources: therefore, firstly, the focus is
on the concept of sharing, on the legal characteristics
(license) and techniques (e.g. access to the source) that a
resource must have to be open, on the sharing
environments (such as Slideshare, YouTube, Scribd ...)
and finally on the tools to produce resources
(eXeLearning, HotPotatoes, ...) and last but not least on
repositories where to share the resources developed,
specifically on FreeLOms, a repository developed first in
the Sloop project and revamped in Slop2desc.
Module 4 is detached from the former three
modules as it addresses the issue of competences. In the
most recent version of the course this module is
structured in three teaching units. The first concerns the
EQF framework, the second the 8 core competences of
citizenship while the third deals with 4 different
competence frameworks meeting the teachers' specific
professional fields:
- digital competences and ECDL syllabus (for those
who must teach the use of computers);
- IT professionals competences and EUCIP and e-
CF frameworks (for teachers of computer
science);
- language competences and the framework of the
European languages (for foreign language
teachers),
- competences in the maritime sector and the IMO
system (only in Romanian for teachers in that
sector).
A strong value of the course lies in the constant
presence of a collaborative dimension achieved through
the forums created for each module, through the
collaborative use of tools for producing and sharing
content and through collaborative opportunities of
synchronous and asynchronous communication.

5. CONCLUSIONS

No serious reform of educational policies can be
successful without the direct involvement of teachers. To
quote Pajer [6] "any school reform, before being re-
touching of structures or updating of programs or
replacing of methods, is essentially a reform of
teachers, i.e. conversion or reconfiguration of their
professional profile, reorganization and expansion of
their powers, enhancement of their social role ... " [7].
The increasing difficulties of adapting education to
a society in continual and rapid change require a major
effort of updating by teachers. It is not only a matter of
acquiring specific skills, but also of starting a process of
collaborative reflection on the current meaning of the
teaching profession.
With this course we intended to provide teachers
both with "technical" tools to reprogram their teaching
and an environment that could promote discussion and
stimulate collaborative activities.

REFERENCES

[1] European Commission Education & Training, EQF, European
Qualification Framework for Lifelong Learning.
[2] Ravotto P., Berengo F., Masseroni. M. & others, Learning
environment and learning objects: a successful synergy, in Sharing
Learning Objects in an open perspective,, ISBN 978-88-903115-0-5,
pag. 85.
[3] Vrtacnick M. e Cemazar R., e-learning in Chemistry: to use it or
not to use it?, in Sharing Learning Objects in an open perspective,,
ISBN 978-88-903115-0-5, pag. 94.
[4] Oprea L., Rusu C. & others, Sloop project impact on Dunarea de
Jos University virtual community, in Sharing Learning Objects in an
open perspective,, ISBN 978-88-903115-0-5, pag. 69.
[5] Fernandez P., Sangr A., Gurdia L., Learning how to create
learning objects: an opportunity for the teaching community, in Sharing
Learning Objects in an open perspective,, ISBN 978-88-903115-0-5,
pag. 112.
[6] Ravotto P., Masseroni M. & others, Principi ecologici per
leLearning, Atti Didamatica, 2009.
[7] Pajer F., La formazione degli insegnanti, Convegno internazionale
di studi - Le Universit di tendenza per l'Europa, 2004.

31

FOSTERING THE DIALOGUE AMONGST SCHOOL TEACHERS AND
COMPANIES: THE ROLE OF "BUSINESS MENTORS"

Valentina Dal Grande
1,
Davide Taibi
1
, Manuel Gentile
1
, Dario Stabile
2
, Mario Allegra
1

and Giovanni Fulantelli
1

1
Institute for Educational Technologies - National Research Council of Italy, Palermo
2
E-learning expert

giovanni.fulantelli@itd.cnr.it; valentina.dalgrande@itd.cnr.it; dario.stabile@gmail.com

Abstract Abstract

This paper describes the cooperation experience
between economic operators and trainers to design and
develop new open educational resources aimed at
integrating the learning curriculum with the needs of the
labour market.

L'articolo racconta lesperienza di cooperazione tra
formatori e operatori economici per la progettazione di
nuove risorse educative aperte finalizzate ad integrare i
programmi di studio con le esigenze del mondo del
lavoro.

KEYWORDS:. Schools and enterprises relationships,
business mentor, labour market.

KEYWORDS: Rapporti tra scuola e imprese, business
mentor, mondo del lavoro.

1. INTRODUCTION

The European economic and financial crisis has
emphasised the need for flexible, high quality education
and training systems, which respond to the changing
requirements of the labour market of today and
tomorrow. Integrating changing labour market needs into
VET provision in the long term requires a better
understanding of emerging sectors and skills, and of
changes to existing occupations
2
. This means closer
collaboration between stakeholders active in skills
anticipation including representatives of professional
sectors, social partners, relevant civil society
organisations, and education and training providers. We
need to adapt VET content, infrastructure and methods
regularly in order to keep pace with shifts to new
production technologies and work organization.
According to ET 2020, European VET systems
should be more attractive, relevant, innovative, accessible
and flexible than in 2010, and should contribute to
excellence and equity in lifelong learning. To achieve this
objective, the European policies underline that we need
highly qualified teachers and trainers, innovative learning
methods, high-quality infrastructure and facilities, high
labour market relevance, and pathways to further
education and training.
The Bruges Communiqu outlines that the labour
market relevance of VET should be enhanced through
various measures:
Authorities in the participating countries () should
create opportunities for enhanced cooperation
between schools and enterprises in order to improve

2
The Bruges Communiqu on enhanced European Cooperation in
Vocational Education and Training for the period 2011-2020.
teachers' knowledge of work practices on the one
hand and trainers' general pedagogical skills and
competences on the other;
Participating countries should promote partnerships
between social partners, enterprises, education and
training providers, employment services, public
authorities, research organisations and other
relevant stakeholders, in order to ensure a better
transfer of information on labour market needs and
to provide a better match between those needs and
the development of knowledge, skills and
competences. Employers and social partners should
endeavour to clearly define which competences and
qualifications they need in both the short and the
long term, and within as well as across sectors. The
development of a common language
3
aimed at
bridging the world of education and training on the
one hand, and the world of work on the other hand,
should be continued and should be consistent with
other EU instruments, such as the EQF;
VET curricula should be outcome-oriented and more
responsive to labour market needs. Cooperation
models with companies or professional branch
organisations should address this issue and provide
VET institutions with feedback on both the
employability and employment rates of VET
graduates;
The Leonardo da Vinci Programme, attested on its
debut in 2006 [1] that small and medium-sized
enterprises play an important role in the European
economy and consequently called for greater involvement
in training initiatives. In particular, calls for better quality

3
In 2010 this bridging language is the objective of the project
Taxonomy of European Skills, Competencies and
Occupations (ESCO).

32
and an increase in the volume of cooperation between
institutions or organizations providing learning
opportunities, enterprises, social partners and other
relevant bodies throughout Europe.
According to Life Long Learning Programme
strategy (Leonardo da Vinci Programme - Transfer of
Innovation Action)
4
with the priorities identified and
announced by the Italian National ISFOL (Institute for
the Development of Vocational Training and Labor,
Italy), SLOOP2DESC project awarded to members of the
business and social partners, the important role of
transferring the project expectations and needs of the
labor market.

2. THE BUSINESS MENTOR

The "Business Mentor" represents the needs and
expectations of the world of work within the project
SLOOP2DESC. The "Business Mentor" role in the
project is to provide feedback from the ICT enterprises
perspective on the trainers of the SLOOP2DESC courses.
The role of Business Mentor (BM) was covered by
entrepreneurs (6 BMs were selected for the 13 Italian
online classes: 2 classes during the pilot phase, and 11
classes during the cascade course) who had the ability to
identify companies needs and expectations towards the
new professional human resources and to define new
educational strategies on the basis of companies needs
and teachers skills and expertises.
The Business Mentors supported project activities
giving their contribution in :
participating, as an observer, in all the activities of
the project providing feedback to the project partners
taking into consideration the point of view of the
enterprise.
Being present in trasnational meetings to describe, to
international partners the business viewpoint of
the SLOOP2DESC project activity;
taking part in the technical meetings of the project in
order to select the EUICIP topics to transfer,
participating in and promoting the SLOOP2DESC
CoP general forum discussions. For example, the
post school-enterprise relationship that attracted
many course participants, being school teachers
themselves. Animating this forum subject
contributed to give the teachers a better
understanding of the needs and expectations of an
ICT enterprise. The general discussion produced
some interesting ideas on realistic approaches to
involve enterprises in the post-primary educational
path, and also highlighted best practices on
successful experiences made by some of the course
participants.
promoting and coordinating the module 5 forum
(entitled: collaborative development of educational

4
Life Long Learning Programme, Leonardo da Vinci-Transfer of
innovation; Leo-oPoBJ2 -2: cooperation amongst VET operators and
representatives of the labour market and stakeholders in general is one
of the main objectives of the project, in order to improve the quality of
VET systems. LEO-TraInno-3: the project aims at improving the
knowledge and competencies of teachers and trainers, and specifically
to strengthen the links amongst them and the labour market.
resources based on a competences standard).
Hereafter with "module 5 forum" we indicate the
discussion forum activated within the Module 5 of
the SLOOP2DESC online course. The topic of this
module is connected to the development of Open
Educational Resources according to a competence-
based education approach. The BMs provided
support on identifying the learning objects contents,
and provided feedback on the actual learning objects
implemented by the trainees.
The Business Mentors have been involved both in
the pilot courses (first phase: from 23 February to 27 June
2010) and in the following cascade course (second phase:
between November 2010 and May 2011).
The BM activity during the pilot course, was limited
because of the small number of participants and the
course was focused on the definition of educational
content of the cascade courses. For this reason this paper
deals mainly with the results obtained in the second stage
of the course, during the cascade course.

3. THE ROLE OF BM TO SUPPORT THE
DEVELOPMENT OF OER

The Business Mentor (BM) role in supporting the
trainees during module 5 was to help students and
collaborate with them to transfer and share the business
viewpoint.
These activities were carried out through the
following steps:
Mapping of the classes: this was carried out through
an in-depth analysis of the classes (by reading all
forum discussions) and cooperation with the classes
tutors, in order to identify the skills of the groups in
each class that have been formed to develop OERs
(Module 5)
Assignment of a BM to each group: taking into
account the technical skills and expertise of each
BM, tutors were assigned to class or group of
teachers to assist in development of OERs.
Setting up of forum discussions: the BMs opened a
forum topic for each group of trainees (in the
"Production of educational resources and expertise
forum of the project portal) to encourage the
discussion on the production of educational resources
in the field selected by the group. The forum topics
were set up in the area of the portal aimed at
promoting the SLOOP2DESC Community of
Practice (CoP) for two reasons: firstly, because the
topics dealt during module 5 could be of general
interest for the community at large; in addition,
because this was a methodological choice to
encourage the trainees to join the CoP.
Stimulating participation of trainees in the CoP:
BMs encouraged all the trainees of the various
groups to participate in the open discussions on the
SLOOP2DESC CoP.
Amongst the difficulties met by the BMs was that
this activity was hampered by the fact that trainees
were used to participating in the forums of the e-
learning platform (Moodle), and they didnt migrate
easily to a new platform. This was perceived as a

33
further work task. For this reason, sometimes the
BMs entered into the Moodle platform to further
stimulate communication with the trainees.
Monitoring: each BM has monitored and promoted
the discussions with trainees, giving some
suggestions to help production of educational
resources. The BM also carried out constant
monitoring of teaching resources published to the
SLOOP2DESC learning object repository
(FREELOMS), offering suggestions based on the
companies point of view. The proposed ideas were
developed and expanded, producing high-quality
teaching materials that went beyond the suggestions.

4. THE ROLE OF BM IN SUPPORTING
THE CoP

The SLOOP2DESC CoP has been developed around the
discussion forum activated in the SLOOP2DESC
platform. For this reason to provide a general description
of the BM support to the CoP we analyzed their
participation in the project forum. Firstly, the forum has
been divided into three categories : General, Module 5
and Service.
- General: these forum have been set up to discuss on
topics of general interest (still related to the topics of the
project)
- Module 5 (collaborative development of educational
resources based on a competences standard): these
forums were explicitly started in order to facilitate a
discussion on the resources to be produced during the
module 5 of the course between business mentors and
online course students.
- Service: these forums have been started to allow
partners and online course students to discuss issues
specific to the course
Then we considered the hits of each discussion topics
in order to highlight the topics that have collected more
interest in the community.
The results of this analysis is shown in the table
below. In particular the table lists the 25 most popular
topics of the SLOOP2DESC portal forums (between
1566 topics).

Subject Hits Type
LIM for learning
3746 General
Falcone-FAL02 Ecdl
3060 Module 5 (*)
Informatics competences and
enterprises
2474 General
E-learning experiences at school
2321 General
Informatics competences and
school
1796 General
Digital Native (them) and digital
immigrants (us)
1042 General
Problems in inserting learning
resources
1035 Service
Login and registration
1006 Service
Knowledge, abilities,
competences
893 General
Course reports
848 Service
SLOOP2DESC course
experience
840 General
Subject Hits Type
Technologies for software
development area
761 General
FreeLOms
646 Service
FreeLOms User Manual
611 Service
Networking Area
564 General
Learning design with
competences
556 General
Didamatica 2011
540 General
Video meeting proposal
497 Service
Using excel for didactic use
492 General
Graphic and engineering area
465 General
Falcone-FAL01 Linux
427 Module 5
Tools web 2.0
372 General
Self-assessment EUCIP and
proximity profile
361 General
Montinaro- Boole Algebra
359 Module 5
FreeLOms
348 Service

Subjects in italic are the ones in which the Business
Mentors made a contribution.
(*) This forum received a surprisingly high number of
hits, especially compared to other similar forums
(Module 5 forums). A possible explanation is that the
forum is catalogued by the main search engines under
ECDL related searches; indeed Google lists the forum
in its first page of results.
According to this data, we observed:
Areas of the forum that have been setup to discuss
topics of particular interest to companies are ranked
highly in terms of popularity (Computer skills and
business; Subject Area: Technologies for software
development; Networking Area; graphic area
engineering). This shows that these topics received
great attention from the community and from the
public at large, which mainly consists of school
teachers.
The Business Mentors also participated actively in
two forums dealing with topics mainly oriented to
school teachers: Interactive Whiteboard and
education; Digital natives (students) and digital
immigrants (teachers), thus proving an interest in the
education system as a whole, and a positive attitude
towards communicating with teachers.
The chart below shows the percentage of posts by the
Business Mentors (BM) in the project forums. In this
graph General forums percentage include also service
forums.


34
5. CONCLUSIONS

The strategic choice of the SLOOP2DESC project
to focus the transfer of innovation activities on
competences systems that enterprises use more and more
often to evaluate and select young people when they
approaching labour market, involving representatives of
the business world has produced good results.
SLOOP2DESC CoP allows trainees and
representatives from enterprises to share their perspective
(point of view) in an informal environment.
The relationship between trainees and BMs,
established during the project, has increased mutual
understanding of the two environments, facilitating the
development of a common language and breaking down
the barriers that often exist between these two worlds.
At the end of the SLOOP2DESC course, the
teachers will be able to get useful indications to develop
pedagogical competencies which can be applied in
educational activities that take into consideration the
evaluation systems, but also they have contributed to
improve the links between education and training
professionals and the world of work. The quality of
published educational resources is absolutely remarkable.
At this stage of the project we have not collected enough
data to sustain that collaborations between trainees and
BMs influenced properly the quality of the OER
produced in the SLOOP2DESC courses. However, a
preliminary qualitative analysis of the discussions in the
project forums allow us to affirm that the participation of
the BMs has a positive influence in the OER produced.

REFERENCES

[1] DECISIONE N. 1720/2006/CE DEL
PARLAMENTO EUROPEO E DEL CONSIGLIO del 15
novembre 2006 che istituisce un programma d'azione nel
campo dell'apprendimento permanente.


35

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE SLOOP2DESC COURSES IN ITALY

Mara Masseroni
1
, Francesca Berengo
1
, Luigi Petruzziello
1
, Monica Terenghi
1
,
Pierfranco Ravotto
2

1
ITSOS Marie Curie, Cernusco sul Naviglio
2
AICA, Milano

masseroni.mara@gmail.com, francesca.berengo@tes.mi.it, luigi.petruzziello@tes.mi.it,
monica.terenghi@tes.mi.it, p.ravotto@aicanet.it

Abstract Sommario

The article presents the experience of the SLOOP2DESC
courses in Italy, courses that involved over 600 teachers,
mostly in the computer science field. The data show that
the courses have been strongly characterized by
interactions among people and collaboration for the
production of open educational resources to use with
students.

L'articolo presenta l'esperienza dei corsi SLOOP2DESC
in Italia, corsi che hanno coinvolto oltre 600 insegnanti,
in maggioranza di informatica. I dati forniti evidenziano
come si sia trattato di corsi fortemente caratterizzati dalle
interazioni fra persone e collaborazione la produzione di
risorse didattiche aperte da usare con gli studenti.

KEYWORDS: Teachers' training, Online learning,
Virtual classroom, Tutor, Open educational resources,
Competences, EQF, EUCIP, e-CF.

KEYWORDS: Formazione docenti, Formazione in rete,
Classe virtuale, Tutor, Risorse didattiche aperte,
Competenze, EQF, EUCIP, e-CF.

1. THE ITALIAN CONTEXT

Too often, the Italian school is perched on the old
model of transmission of teaching: the lecture still has the
lion's share of teaching, the student has the role of
listener-performer only to explain procedures in detail,
but rarely is asked to participate in building his/her own
knowledge.
A first element that hinders educational innovation
is to be found in some "laziness" of teacher's category,
which not being stimulated by economic or social
recognition, it hardly keeps up the onerous commitment
to change their way of teaching, both through the 'use of
new technologies, both through the overturning of the old
model "teacher-centered".
The second factor hindering change is the lack of
training courses that are truly effective in helping
teachers to "reprogram" the way they teach. In particular:
we have repeatedly stated the importance of a
competence-based didactics, but how can you actually do
it?
Finally, as regards the integration of online
education and face-to-face learning, there remains the
problem of teaching resources. Although the network is
an almost inexhaustible source of materials, and perhaps
for this reason, it is difficult for the teacher and the
student to navigate through the sea of educational
proposals, which are almost never actually reusable,
missing the opportunity to change and adapt them to
specific school contexts.
The SLOOP2DESC project has tried to give an
initial response to these needs intertwining several
themes: the use of online learning to complement face-to-
face training, the sharing of open digital resources and
competence-based learning.

2. COURSES AND TRAINEES

As envisaged in the original plan, the transfer action
of the project has had its focus in Italy. The courses in
Slovenia and Romania have had the role of testing the
transnational effectiveness of the approach chosen, but it
is in Italy that the goal was the training of a large number
of trainees.
The training was implemented in two phases [1]:
pilot courses: from 23 February to 27 June 2010,
cascade courses: between November 2010 and May
2011.
The pilot courses have been advertised through
notices in schools in Sicily and Lombardy, with the
support of the Educational Committees of these two
regions, and through the network. The proposal primarily
addressed teachers of computer science, but all those who
applied to participate were received, among them a small
number of people outside the two regions and some non-
computer persons engaged in University or private
training. In total the trainees enrolled in the pilot course
were about 60.
The cascade courses - where tutoring was supported
by a group of trainees selected from the pilot course -
were advertised over the network at national level and
were supported with communications to schools by the
two regional Educational Committees. The goal was to

36
reach 400 teachers (primarily computer science teachers).
The applicants were more than 1,700: teachers from
secondary schools (but not only) of all disciplines,
demonstrating a strong interest in the themes of the
course and a great need of training even though in the
absence of incentives or formal recognition. All the
applications of computer science teachers and
mathematics teachers, in some way involved in teaching
computer science, were accepted: to them teachers of
other disciplines were also added to reach the total of 547
trainees.
Ten classes - with the names of victims of the
Mafia, as a tribute to them and the tenacious will to
remember: Paolo Borsellino, Agostino Catalano, Eddie
Walter Cosina, Dicillo Rocco, Giovanni Falcone,
Vincenzo LiMuli Emanuela Loi, Antonio Montinaro,
Vito Schifani, Claudia Traina - were each assigned two
tutors, selected from participants in the pilot courses. 6
classes were composed mainly of computer science and
electronics teachers, 3 of mathematics teachers and 1 of
Italian and foreign languages teachers.
An eleventh class was then added to them: Peppino
Impastato, consisting of teachers of business
administration, for possible connections with an
experiment in progress by three Commercial Technical
Institutes (programmers specializations): Romanazzi in
Bari, Baffi in Rome and Fermi in Pontedera.
Such course comes out of the consideration that the
syllabus of this specialization mainly covers the EUCIP
core syllabus and therefore the proposal is to make the
students acquire such certification at the end of a three-
year course. Business teachers are responsible, under that
logic, for the training related to the Plan area. It seemed
therefore interesting to support this experiment involving
a large group of teachers of Business in the training path
related to EUCIP core. This eleventh class had a small
number of trainees (about half of the others) and was
entrusted to a single tutor.

3. THE PILOT COURSE

The two pilot courses started with a meeting in
presence and had another two additional face-to-face
meetings: an interim and a final one. Here you find the
analysis of data concerning the course in Lombardy, but
what is reported is also valid for the Sicilian course.

3.1 Participation and dropouts

The trainees were over 40, but some of them did not
take part even in the face-to-face meeting and others,
after this meeting, have never entered the online
environment. We therefore refer only to the 33 students
who entered at least once in the platform.
Of these, seven have never gone beyond Module 1 and, in
general, have only started it (five under two hours and a
half, one four hours and another six hours): a trainee has
entered Module 2, but with a total connection time of
of an hour. Two have been present throughout the course
but, again, one for a total of of an hour and the other
for a total of 3 hours. A total of 10 students, almost 30%,
have just looked out to the course but have not actually
taken part in it.
All this is shown in the figure below, where the
columns indicate the connection time for each of the 33
students for each module.

Fig. 1. Connection Time of 33 trainees.
We therefore limit our analysis to the remaining 23
participants (Figure 2). They all have arrived at the
conclusion of the course even though four have not
participated in the creation of OERs. Thus, the 70% who
decided to take the course after seeing what it was like,
100% has arrived at the end and 82% has completed it as
required (57% compared to 33 who have started).
How can we evaluate this data? The dropouts
concentrated in the very first stage of the course: people
who rated the course as not relevant to their interest or
too difficult or too challenging. Those who considered the
course of interest did not generally change their minds
along the way but remained until the end even though, in
some limited cases, without accepting the collaborative
involvement in the production of OERs.
The merit of such constant presence - for a long
time - in our opinion is due to the pleasant climate of
interaction and the feeling, made explicit by many

37
participants, to be actually learning something useful for
their professional practice.
Many trainees often apologized that they couldn't
devote to the course as much time as they wanted, and
they thought necessary, because of work and family
commitments. A working time of at least 2-3 hours a
week, then between 32 and 48 hours for the 16-week
course had been indicated. Sixteen students have
exceeded 40 hours, three of those who also participated in
the production of OER were under 32. Eight spent over
70 hours online (i.e over 5 hours per week). But these
figures show only the connection time in Moodle, do not
include the work in the production of materials or
contacts among trainees in other settings, sometimes - for
students of the same school or in the same city - even in
the presence.

Fig. 2. Time connection of the 23 active trainees.

3.2 Interactions

The data relating to posts in the Forum provides
only a partial measure of the interactions occurred. In the
two collaborative phases of Module 2 and Module 5, the
trainees were, in fact, called to interact via email, phone,
Skype and Web 2.0 environments. But the interactions
occurred with other instruments are not measurable, so
we give only the data related to the forum, which,
however, show how the expected level of interaction has
been achieved.
The table on the right shows the number of open
discussions and the total number of messages. A very
large number, reflecting the fact that a course based on
strong relationships between tutors and students and
within their peer group has succeeded.
Figure 3 is the result of an analysis performed on
the flow of communication in the first three modules. In
this sociogram, each node represents a participant; if two
nodes are connected by an orange line that means that
one of the two students has commented, at least once, a
post written by the other trainee. If the line is blue, it
means that the interaction occurred in both directions.
The analysis of this graph also allows you to identify the
role of individual trainees in the virtual classroom
(community).

N discussions N posts
General Forum 42 347
Coffee Area 15 108
Mod 1 Forum 17 348
Mod 2 Forum 10 439
N discussions N posts
Mod 3 Forum 13 381
Mod 4 Forum 8 118
Mod 5 Forum (1) 17 133
Mod 5 Forum (2) 17 370
Total 139 2.244
(Forum 5 had two forums, one for group discussion, one for general
discussion).
According to J. Nielsen [2], user participation in
most online communities more or less follows a 90-9-1
rule: 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but
don't contribute), 9% of users contribute from time to
time, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
An analysis in this direction was made in the first
two months of the course. Figure 3 shows the graph of
the messages sent by each participant. If the chart
followed the law of 09/01/90 it should be fairly flat (at
around ten messages).
Indeed, even if there are two peaks on the left
(corresponding to two hyperactive trainees) the graph is
not flat but rather almost triangular. This distribution is
evidence that we are in the presence of what we might
call a 'community effect': the trainees intervene not
because they are obliged to but because they are willing
to.
This trend was confirmed in the subsequent months
of the course.

38

Fig. 3. Pattern of relations (in the first three modules).

As you can see most of the students have interacted
with many other participants in the forum. Only a few
nodes are isolated, which not necessarily indicate people
who have been on the edge of the course: it is because
someone has used more direct means of communication
other than the forum, and because some trainees, who
were especially engaged in the first module in individual
study and observation of the dynamics, got also engaged
in collaborating with others in Module 5 where they were
expected to develop resources.

4. CASCADE COURSES

Fig. 4. The distribution of trainees in Italy.

The 11 cascade courses have involved 547
participants selected from among more than 1,700 who
had applied for participation. The picture below - with the
right colours to celebrate 150th anniversary of the
unification of Italy - indicates their origin from various
parts of the country.

Fig. 5. The distribution of trainees by gender.

The prevalence of trainees from the South is
probably due to the location of the promoter, the ITD-
CNR, Palermo, and a strong involvement of the
Educational Committees of those regions in promoting
the initiativeRegarding the distribution of trainees by
gender, it follows closely that of upper secondary
teachers (of which 59.3% are women - a source Eurostat
2002). The high prevalence of some disciplines derives
from the selection criteria described above.

Fig. 6. The distribution of trainees by discipline

4.1 The tutoring in the cascade courses

The tutors in the cascade courses have been, as
mentioned, some of the participants of the pilot course.
To support them in their work and to maintain the
tutoring of 11 classes as homogeneous as possible, the
tutors of the pilot courses have played a role of super-
mentors. These have interacted with the tutors of the
cascade courses in two ways: with a few meetings in
Skype, before and during the coyrse, and through a
dedicated forum on the project website. Again some
numbers provide evidence of a strong and continuous
interaction, 91 discussions initiated (sometimes by the
super-mentors, tutors sometimes) with a total of 1,012
posts!
Unlike the pilot courses, the geographic distribution
of trainees has not allowed to start the course with a face-
to-face meeting, or to hold in-progress meetings, which
are generally important for the creation of harmony and
team spirit among the trainees and tutors, to ensure both
the sharing of the course objectives and methodology of
work. Some tutors have partly compensated that
promoting 'virtual' meetings using Skype or other tools.

4.2 Participation and dropouts

The chart below shows the percentage of
participants per module (as distinct from IT and teachers
of other subjects). The "never" item collects the
percentage of those who, while enrolled in the course,
have never connected to the platform.

Fig. 7. Participation.

39
Unlike what occurred in the pilot course, here there
has been a constant rate of dropouts passing from Module
1 to Module 2 and from Module 2 Module 3; this rate
decreases from Module 4 to and Module 5. We see this in
detail:
only 5% of computer teachers enrolled in the class has
not entered the course, against 16% among non-
computer teachers; ie: 95% of the computer teachers
have entered the first module, while only 84% of the
non-computer teachers have entered Module 1.
73% of the computer teachers and 61% of non-
computer teachers have arrived at the second module;
49% vs. 51% has arrived at the third Module;
39% vs. 44% has arrived at the fourth Module;
finally, 31% versus 39% has arrived at the fifth
Module
Interesting is the reversal that occurs between the
computer teachers and the non-computer teachers: for
non-computer the dropout rate decreases: 64% of those
who entered Module 2 has also entered Module 5. In
contrast, only 43% of the computer teachers who have
entered Module 2 have arrived at Module 5. One can
perhaps speculate that many non-computer teachers, after
having registered, got scared, may be either due to
EUCIP reference, or because the first modules equired a
certain expertise in the use of computer and the web:
elements rather reassuring for computer teachers. Instead,
those non-computer teachers that have passed the initial
difficulties (perhaps because already experts in the use of
the network) have shown more interest for the modules
with a higher reference to teaching innovation: Module 4
on competence-based learning and Module 5 on course
design and development of teaching resources.

4.3 Connection Time

From the data collected in different virtual
classrooms, a mixed picture emerges as for the
connection time linked to the activities proposed in the
Module, but also, perhaps, linked to expectations, the
difficulties arising from the issues addressed, previous
experiences, motivation, etc., of each participant.
As a first example see the graph below concerning
Module 1, which compares the total connection time in
hours (y-axis) in eight virtual classrooms (x-axis).

Fig. 8. Connection Time in Module 1.

It is obvious that except for a classroom (Schifani)
which recorded activities for about 2500 total hours, in
the other classes the connection times is much lower: less
than 500 hours.
In the next graph we show the connection time, in
hours, of each participant in the classroom 'Catalan' for
Module 1. The difference in participants' connection
times is obvious: it goes from a minimum of several
minutes to peaks of 17 hours.

Fig. 9. Connection time of individual trainees of one class
in Module 1.

The analysis of the total connection time for each
module within the same classroom is used to confirm the
heterogeneity, but also to trace the activity of the module
that led to a greater number of working hours on the
network. In the chart below concerning the classroom
'Catalano' we see the peak of connections in relation to
the activities of Module 2, while in Module 5 there is a
fall in the time spent online.

Fig. 10. Connection time in a classroom for each Module.

In the classroom 'Loi' the peak of connections in
relation to the activities of Module 2 is confirmed, but the
minimum number of hours of online activity is found in
the activities related to Module 4.

Fig. 11. Connection Time of another class for each
Module.

The very nature of the topics covered in Module 2,
'Being an online tutor and using Web 2.0 tools', in part
provides a justification for the increased online activity of
the participants.

40
If the data on the activities of Module 1 of the
classroom 'Schifani' are compared to a value close to that
of the other classrooms (500 hours total connection), you
get a further confirmation that Module 2 has seen a
commitment in the virtual classroom greater than that
present in the other modules.
In the graph the percentage of online work develops
as follows: Module 1 (20%), Module 2 (29%), Module 3
(19%), Module 4 (12%), Module 5 (20%).

Fig. 12. Connection time in the several Modules.

It should be noted that data on the total connection
time of one or more classes per module do not indicate, in
itself, the object of the connection: it is possible, for
example, that during the period, formally dedicated to a
Module, some participants were still working on the
previous module. In addition, the comparison between the
time devoted to a Module or the other does not take into
account the dropout rate: the time spent on a module
depends not only on individual time, but also on the
number of trainees.
Here (Fig 13) are, for example, some data from a
single class, "Impastato", a small class composed of
teachers of Business Administration (with only one
tutor). Of the 21 members only 16 have entered at least
once the platform and they are the ones on whom we
have carried out the analysis. Four of these, however,
have only just entered the platform, while twelve are
those who have actually attended the course. So in short:
23% were registered but did enter the course, another
19% were limited to a transient stay, for a total of 42%. A
consistent data with what had been recored in the pilot
course and similar to what has happened in the other 10
cascade courses.
One thing to think about and which refers to the
'learning compact' agreed on at the time of enrolment in
an online course. It seems obvious that the gratuity has
led many to enrol without assessing if they would have
time to participate effectively and without considering
subscribing to deprive others the opportunity to
participate (in fact, ton the basis of the experience of the
pilot course, we have accepted 40 % registrations more
than 400 expected).
The dropout rate must therefore be calculated on
those who have actually started the course, 12 in the case
of this class. Of these, only 2, 16%, - for personal reasons
and overlapping of commitments - have not completed
the course. The others have all arrived at the fifth
Module, although only 8 (64%) have concluded with the
production of educational resources.

Fig. 13. Trainees' Connection time per Module (one class).

The graph of Figure 14 confirms that, for this class,
the greater commitment of time was the time spent on
Module 2.

Fig. 14. Total time per Module of the class"Impastato"
4.4. Interactions

As the pilot courses also cascade courses have been
characterised by strong interactions based on
collaborative activities. Here too, we assume two classes
as an example. The class Schifani was 'atypical', as
composed of teachers of Italian and foreign languages.
And it is just this classwhich had significantly a higher
total time of connection. Here are the number of threads
and posts to forums.

Forum N. discussions N. posts
General 15 102
Coffee Area 13 64
Module 1 10 71
Module 2 31 203

41
+ 9 group forums 63 336
Module 3 15 178
Module 4 13 221
Module 5
+ group forum
12
4
108
450
Total 176 1633
The class Li Muli was instead a class of computer
teachers.
General 3 54
Coffee Area 12 87
Module 1 4 132
Module 2 22 451
Module 3 9 176
Module 4 7 166
Module 5
+ group forum
6
14
60
389
Total 77 1505

5. THE PRODUCTION OF OERs

In Module 5 trainees are asked to cooperate to
produce Moodle courses (and individual resources to be
included in them) to use with their students. This request
is functional to place students in situations as a way of
promoting competence development (see Chapter 2), but
also to create conditions for achieving effective transfer
of innovation. The goal was to have, at the end of the
course, teachers prepared to plan and run online
competence-based teaching paths and develop
educational resources available for that activity.
When we refer to educational resources we mean
open educational resources, thus:
released with a copy-left license, leaving freedom of
use, modification and diffusion,
edited, with access to any source and then into an
editable format (possibly open format),
easy to find (and just in the view of sharing resources
the FreeLOms repository has been created).
Thus it is important to analyse whether and how
such a result has been reached.

5.1 OERs developed in the pilot course

In the two pilot courses, the trainees have developed
the following materials:
15 SCORM packages related to Informatics content,
5 videos related to Informatics content;
various learning resources for other subjects (in
SCORM, doc, pdf and other formats);
4 courses on the Moodle platform;
a course for IT Administrator, Module 1, Hardware
(almost complete);
a course on the topic Network layer, item 4.5 of
Module 4, Expert use of the networks, of IT
Administrator;
a course on databases, the Build area of EUCIP Core,
item B2;
a course on Educational uses of the Web 2.0 tools.

5.2 Informatics OERs developed in the
cascade courses

Proper terminology would ask to distinguish
between informatics teaching and teaching of computer
science and application programs. But the boundaries are
not always so clear and, in particular, the teaching
programs of the different disciplines of the reformed two-
years course: "Informatics", "Mathematics with
Computer", "Information Technology", "Information and
Communication "," Computer and laboratory "- often
show a mix of informatics competences. So we will
catalogue here 'informatics resources' both of the first
and the second type.

A high number of resources have been developed.
Referring only to Moodle courses, they are as follows:
3 ECDL courses: two on spreadsheet and one on
OpenOffice;
3 courses related to the area of Plan core: project
management, business plans, types of organizations
and their structures;
2 courses related to EUCIP Core: Information
Technology and Computer Architecture;
3 courses related to IT Administrator: Modules 1, 2
and 4;
3 courses in programming;
5 courses on databases;
5 courses on the design and production of web pages;
1 course on Linux;
2 courses in electronics: operational amplifiers and
power supplies and switching regulators.
To these many other single LOs, used as components
of those courses, must be added.
FreeLOms currently contains 75 informatics resources
and 27 computer use resources (also including the
resources produced in the pilot course or in the previous
project Sloop). A simple glance at the tag indicates the
spectrum of topics, sufficiently different to be considered
as the achievement of one of the aims of the project: to
have available a wealth of materials to which you can
access for designing online courses. The core ECDL
syllabus is well covered, but also many points of EUCIP
core and IT Administrator syllabuses are covered (the
tags are partly in Italian and partly in English because
they have been entered like that by the trainees).

Fig. 15. Tags of Informatics resources.


42
The rationale behind SLOOP is that of sharing
resources so that every teacher should not start from
scratch but can reuse and change what has been done by a
colleague. So no matter if many of the courses are still
incomplete products, no matter even if some, in the
present state, are not yet ready to be used with students.
What matters is that it has been forming a
community that is sharing resources and which may, in
the coming years, improving and enriching a community
where other teachers will join. And it is in this
perspective that we can analyse strengths and weaknesses
(thus need for improvement) of the resources produced.
We can analyse them in the view of these characteristics:
openness and reusability,
multimedia,
interactivity,
stimulus to relations and cooperation.

With regard to the concept of openness and
reusability the courses have been released under Creative
Commons license (by-sa and by-nc-sa) and have been
uploaded into the repository FreeLOms, providing them
with full accessibility. In many cases, the file inserted in
the FreeLOms is the one to be used to make changes: for
Moodle courses it is needed, of course, to import the zip
file (created as a back-up) in a Moodle platform. When
there is a file distinct from the source files to use, for
example in the case of products with quizzes or
HotPotatoes eXeLearning IT products, the source has
been uploaded with its related resource.
With regard to multimedia it must be said that the
trainees have not used it much. The materials produced
are mainly composed of texts accompanied by pictures.
The video-tutorial courses are generally inserted into
objects already existing on the network, and this responds
to the philosophy of reuse. When the trainees had to
develop something new they generally relied on simple
texts, may be because it was the fastest way to prepare
them, may be because they believed they had sufficient
skills in the use of audio and video or, may be, they didn't
reflect enough on the pedagogical use of different media.
Similarly with regard to interactivity. This is
essentially limited to simple tests both with simple
feedback like "right" and "wrong" and corrective
feedback.
Concerning the relational and collaborative
dimension all courses have at least one forum, but it is
not generally described as it should be used, which
stimuli for discussions and which proposals for
collaborative work students should be provided with.
Little has been planned to exploit the potential provided
by the wiki. In some cases the proposed activities do not
expect students to work directly on platform, but on the
contrary they refer to a face-to-face dimension.
An analysis of they way how the resources have
been developed would seem to suggest that teachers are
more focused on content rather than on the relational
dimension offered by the platform; the learning resources
are online, but the educational dialogue continues to be
largely confined to the teacher-student relationship that is
established in the classroom.

5.3 Mathematics OERs in the cascade courses

In the classes formed with mathematics teachers,
five Moodle courses have been developed, all issued
under a Creative Commons license (by-sa and by-nc-sa)
Conics (class Loi),
The number systems (class Borsellino),
From propositional logic to Boolean algebra (class
Montinaro),
Today ... conics (class Traina),
Statistics (Class Loi).

The table below shows the topics covered.

Units
Conics 1. History of conics
2. Parables
3. Circumferences
4. Ellipsis
5. Hyperbole
6. Applications to algebra (equations
and inequalities)
7. Applications on economics (problems of
choice)
8. Polarity
The number
systems
1. Introduction
2. The numbering systems in the human
history
3. The positional numbering systems
4. The operations with numbering systems
5. The binary system
6. The Logic Circuits
7. Evaluation and self-assessment
From
propositional
logic to Boolean
algebra
1. Elements of set theory
2. Communication, natural language
and mathematical language
3. Propositional logic
4. The logic: in-depth paths
5. The logical networks
6. Models of communication
7. The Boolean algebra in Geogebra
Today...conics! 1.Conics and physics
2. Conics and the economy
3. Conics and matrices
4. Conics and the arts
5. Conics and architecture
6. I see ...conics! (WebQuest)
Statistics and
probability
1. Probability
2. Descriptive Statistics
3. Combinatorics


43
In general, the courses, except for the one on
statistics and probability (which contains materials but
the course has just been sketched), consist of the
following items:

Presentation of the course.
List of learning units.
Learning objectives (course and / or teaching unit).
Learning resources for each teaching unit (SCORM,
texts, web pages, links, presentations, videos).
Evaluation and Self-evaluation tests (at the end of the
course and / or at the end of each unit).

Four of the courses offered are complete with a
well-defined structure, sometimes with a precise
schedule, ready to be used as they are, or they can be
modified, since all have been made available in
FreeLOms.
The tools that the trainees have used are mainly
links to videos, video lessons and Web sites, from the
perspective of reuse, but there was also a massive
production of materials made from scratch: many texts
and presentations, interactive tests, self-satisfaction
questionnaires, videos, interactive charts produced with
GeoGebra, for a total of 36 SCORMs.
The teachers, as course authors, have given greater
importance to education than to technology, providing
clear objectives, materials relevant to the learning
objectives, activities to be carried out by students either
online or with paper and pen. Interesting in this respect
the web quest "Today conics" which implies
collaborative learning.
The interactivity is quite high in the two courses on
conics thanks to the forum and interactive tests (also
present in the other two courses); interactivity is also
promoted by GeoGebra dynamic graphs that students can
manipulate to verify certain properties, or that they can r
create themselves (for example, it is required to build a
plant of the dome by Guarini of the Holy Shroud).

5.4 Foreign languages OERs produced in the
cascade courses

The class named Schifani, composed of teachers of
Languages: L2 Italian, French, English, German and
Spanish, has developed educational resources and courses
in the light of the European Framework for Languages,
choosing among the different levels of competences and
developing useful learning resources to achieve them.
Inside the course 4 working groups were formed and each
group has developed a Moodle course where the all
resources have been collected.
Each course is described by a plan highlighting
themes, goals, objectives, time, expected results in terms
of knowledge, skills and competences, the course
structure and the license under which the course is to be
released and the learning resources developed. Here is a
summary of the themes and resources developed by the 4
groups.

The group Schifani SP 5-1 Anjin has created a
Module for students of English level A2 of the CEFR,
supplied with resources, activities and tests.
The title is "What mood are you in ...?" and the
argument involves the 4 skills of speaking, writing,
listening and reading. The focus is on the use of
adjectives to describe personalities.

The group Schifani SP 5-2 Plurilingualism has
created a path to learn the art of writing a story beginning
with a well-known fairy tale, 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
The languages involved are: French, Spanish, German
and Italian. From a simple structure / narrative tale the
course leads to the creation of a narrative text.

The group Schifani SP 5-3 Italian L2 has
developed a learning path to make student familiar with
the different text genres and styles of communication in
various media.
The resource offers an example of an activity of
rewriting and transcoding.


44

The group Schifani 5-4 SP - Plurilingualism
proposes a course of comparative culture and civilization
in English and French. Starting from simple "prize de
notes", you'll learn how to tell a journey, a past event.
The course is divided into four units:
Let's discover London.
Les mdias en France.
Un voyage travers la chanson.
Bon apptit en France.
Even these educational resources can be assessed by
at least three main indicators: capability, relevance of
instruments used for educational purposes, guidelines for
their use.
The functionality from the purely technological
point of view is present in almost all of the resources
developed and this is a proof of the mastery of the various
tools / software proposed in the course.
For some resources, on the contrary the mix of
instruments used does not provide a clear identification of
how to follow the learning path, creating some confusion
in terms of tasks / activities.
In short we can say that the aims of the course,
especially those related to the knowledge of the various
Web 2.0 tools, have been met more than satisfactory, but
some resources still need to be accompanied by some
methodological guidelines before being made available to
students.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The SLOOP2DESC course objectives were manifold:
to propose a model of integration between face-to-
face learning and based-competence learning,
to make teachers able to use software for the
production of digital material and virtual
environment,
to induce reflection on the validity, effectiveness and
attractiveness of digital resources and online courses,
to encourage teachers to contribute to the creation of a
repository of materials used and modified freely
according to the philosophy of sharing and reuse.

We can say that these objectives have been
achieved, although not always in a complete.
The integration of face-to-face and and online
learning is not just a matter of preparing digital material
made accessible to students from home or in the
laboratory. What's more, these materials cannot be just
texts and images in digital format rather than paper.
Online teaching should provide something that the
classroom can not provide, such as the ability to
manipulate / create objects (whether graphics, text,
pictures, ...), the ability to intervene with conjectures and
proposed solutions, the ability to search online for ideas
and topics, the ability to employ a discovery-approach.
And this is what, in most of the materials produced
by the trainees is missing: was it matter of the short time
available or underestimation of this aspect? In proposing
the course SLOOP2DESC we will devote more attention
to this issue.
With regard to competence-based didactics, as we
expected, the teachers of computer science and the
language teachers have based their courses on European
standards, this is due to the fact that for their disciplines
there are recognized competence frameworks. The others
found more difficult to transpose the standards to their
teaching subjects.
Finally, as regards the issue of sharing and reuse we
can be satisfied with the amount and quality of resources
produced and made available. In particular we note that
currently in our repository there are 35 full courses, as
well as hundreds of individual LO freely usable and
modifiable.
We believe we have given with this course, a small
but significant contribution to the growth of a community
of teachers able to discuss the issues and teaching
methodologies, to share resources and collaborate on
developing educational paths, a "community where
individual competences can become a collective wealth
"[3].

REFERENCES

[1] Masseroni M., Gentile M., Taibi D., Sloop2desc: uniniziativa di
formazione degli insegnanti su eLearning e didattica delle competenze,
in Bricks, numero zero, March 2011.
[2] J. Nielsen, Partecipation inequality:Encouraging More Users to
Contribute, in Alertbox, october 9, 2006,
[3] Berengo F., L'uso delle tecnologie nella didattica della
matematica: l'esperienza dell'ITSOS "Marie Curie", in Form@re, N.
38, October 2005.


45

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE SLOOP2DESC COURSES IN ROMANIA

Lucian Oprea
1
, Iulian Ilie
1
, Carmen Rusu
1
, Steluta Stan
1
,
Dorel Popa
2
, Doina Munteanu
2
, Alina Dumitriu
2
,
Petronela Georgiana Sandu
1
, Corina Badalan
1

1
Dunarea de Jos University of Galati
2
Romanian Maritime Training Centre (CERONAV), Constanta, Romania

lucian.oprea@ugal.ro, iulian.ilie@ugal.ro, carmen.rusu@ugal.ro, steluta.stan@ugal.ro,
dorelpopa@ceronav.ro, doinamunteanu@ceronav.ro, alinaoprea@ceronav.ro
georgiana_nutu@yahoo.com, bulgari_corina@yahoo.com

Rezumat Abstract

In lucrare sunt prezentate aspecte privind desfasurarea
cursului de formarea a formatorilor la CERONAV
Constanta. La curs s-au inscris 75 de cursanti,
majoritaea experti si formatori in domeniul naval,
implicati in special in certificarea IMO. Rezultatele
obtinute au aratat o buna interactiune intre cursanti si
tutori, fapt ce a permis realizare a 26 de materiale
pedagogice (resurse educationale deschise).

The paper presents the experience of the Sloop2desc
courses in Romania, involving 75 participants, mostly
experts and professionals in the shipping field, especially
IMO certification. The data show that the courses have
been characterized by collaborative interaction between
trainees and tutors, resulting in the production of 26 open
educational resources for student use.

CUVINTE CHEIE: Formarea formatorilor, Invatamant
online, Clasa virtuala, Cursuri IMO, Resurse
Educationale Deschise (RED)

KEYWORDS: Teacher training, Online learning, Virtual
classroom, International Maritime Organisation (IMO)
Courses, Open Educational Resources (OER).

1. THE ROMANIAN CONTEXT

In Romania, the same as all over Europe or in other
parts of the world, the changes undergone by the higher
education system have been varied, radical and continual.
Starting the early 90s, the first private universities were
established and, in the same time, the number of public
universities, faculties or study programs increased
rapidly.
After signing the Bologna Declaration in 1999,
Romania has become a member of the European Higher
Education Area and committed itself to one of the main
objectives of the Bologna Process, the assurance of
academic quality.
Recent developments in information and
communication technologies effected essential changes
related both to the necessity to acquire knowledge and the
capacity to use it, and to the manner in which study
programs are offered by educational institutions. The
most relevant of these changes concerns the student
centered educational offer and the technological
integration of educational resources.
Using the Web-based educational technologies (e-
learning), the study programs are made more accessible,
and the communication between the system staff
(administrators, trainees, discipline coordinators and
tutors), much more efficient. From this point of view,
online learning focuses more on the how than on the
where the student studies. The rapid evolution of
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), in
direct relationship with the development of the Internet
and of the corresponding media, has led to their deeper
and deeper involvement in education at all levels, and
more so in online education.
Online education allows for the provision of
supplementary study resources, more varied and more
adapted to the particular needs of every student.
Nevertheless, the use of these technologies involves
competences and abilities concerning both the elaboration
of online educational resources, and the efficient use of
communication technologies associated with the Internet.

2. COURSES AND TRAINEES

The general objective of the courses was to adapt
the Sloop model and tools for transfer in Romania. In
this respect, the Romanian partner (Dunarea de Jos
University of Galati) developed the following specific
activities and tasks:
translation and cultural adaptation of the educational
resources produced within the framework of the
Sloop Project and redesigned by Sloop2desc;
translation and cultural adaptation of the educational
resources on EQF into En and Ro;
selection of specific systems for certification of
competences in a professional sector in Romania;
selection and organization of educational materials
on the chosen system of certification.

46
As a specific certification system we chose IMO
certificate, with international recognition. IMO Courses
are provided only by the two CERONAV (Romanian
Maritime Training Centre) centers in Constanta and
Galati (Fig. 1).

Fig.1 CERONAV locations in Constanta and Galati

We identified a strong interest to improve new
pedagogical technologies, including online courses. For
maritime training purposes, the CERONAV experts want
to develop a series of model courses providing suggested
syllabi, timetables and e-learning objectives in order to
assist instructors in developing training programmes and
courses according to the standards for seafarers.
The instructors and the students need to improve
their ability to comply with international rules and
standards relating to maritime safety and the prevention
and control of maritime pollution, giving priority to
technical assistance programmes that focus on human
resources development and institutional capacity-
building.

Justification of the recruitment
Geographical point of view;
-Danube River;
-Black Sea;
Traning organisations and Universities;
-Naval Architecture Faculty in Galati ;
-Maritime University and the Maritime
Academy in Constanta;
The existence of 2 important CERONAV
training centers in Galati and Constanta;
Important demand of Maritime personnel.

2.1. Participation and dropouts

The training was conducted between November 19,
2010 and May 4, 2011. Its main objective, to enroll 40
trainees in the IMO course (primarily experts in
shipping), was reached as, finally, the number rose to 75
(58 from CERONAV Constanta and 17 from CERONAV
Galati, Fig. 2).
Fig. 2 - The distribution of trainees by locations
77,33%
22,67%
Constanta Galati

The course started with two face-to-face meetings
in Constanta and Galati. During the 5.and a half months
of the course, all the activities were organised only
online. The proposal primarily addressed IMO experts,
but all of those who applied were received, including
professionals, administrative personnel and staff (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 -The distribution of trainees by positions
20,00%
50,67%
29,33%
managers IMO experts others

Unfortunatelly, of the 75 enrolled trainees, 13
(17.33%) did not take part even in the face-to-face
meeting and never accessed the platform, and 10
(13.33%) accessed it only once. We therefore refer only
to the 52 students (69.33 %) who finalized all the five
course modules (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4- Course participation
69,33%
17,33%
13,33%
Certif ied Dropout (zero activities) Dropout af ter Module 1

Regarding the distribution of trainees by gender,
57.33 % were men and 42,67 % were women (Fig. 5).

47
Fig. 5 - The distribution of trainees by gender
42,67%
57,33%
women men

2.2. Interactions

Over the December 2010-May 2011 period, a
variable number of visualizations of or logins to the
electronic platform of the project was registered. The
interest of the students was very high at the beginning
and at the end of the course. Only in April, the number of
logins rose to 11639.
The trend was similar for the two tutors who,
naturally, mostly accessed the platform before the end of
the course (770 logins in April and 887 in May). All of
this is shown in Fig. 6 below, where the lines indicate the
number of students and tutors logins for each month.

Fig. 6 - The participants views
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May
N
u
m
b
e
r

o
f

v
i
e
w
s
Trainees Tutor/Teacher

The data relating to the posts on the Forum provide
only a partial measure of the interactions occurred,
showing however, how the expected level of interaction
has been achieved (Table 1).

Table 1 - Students and tutors interactions
Category No. of messages
General Forum 47
Mod 1 Forum 123
Mod 2 Forum 49
Mod 3 Forum 33
Mod 4 Forum 45
Mod 5 Forum 36
Total 333

The table shows the number of messages. A large
number (333), reflecting the fact that a course based on
strong relationships between tutors and students and
within their peer group has succeeded.
Most of the students have interacted with many
other participants in the forum. Most of the messages
were posted in Module 1. Strangely enough, in Module 5
(where the trainees were expected to develop resources),
a smaller number of messages was posted, partly due to
the fact that the trainees were professionals working in
the domain and did not need supplimentary information.
On an average, each student accessed at least once the
forum of the Moodle electronic platform.
After registration, many of the teachers unfamiliar
with the computer, got scared, maybe due to the Moodle
platform, maybe because the first modules required a
certain expertise in the use of the computer and the web.
Nevertheless, those of them who surpassed the initial
difficulties showed great interest for the modules with
higher reference to teaching innovation: Module 4, on
competence-based learning and Module 5, on course
design and development of teaching resources.

3. PRODUCTION OF OER

The trainees were asked to cooperate to produce
Moodle courses for their students. The goal was to have,
at the end of the course, teachers prepared to plan and run
online competence-based teaching paths and develop
educational resources.
When we refer to educational resources we mean
open educational resources
released with a copy-left license, free for use,
modification and diffusion;
edited, with access to any source and then into an
editable format (possibly open format).
The trainees were free to choose any topic,
irrespective of their specialization. Nevertheless, they
were recommended the following Learning Object (LO)
structure, according to the model developed by Sloop:
Presentation of the course;
List of learning units;
Learning objectives;
Learning resources for each teaching unit (SCORM,
texts, web pages, links, presentations, videos);

48
Evaluation and Self-evaluation tests (at the end of the
course and /or at the end of each unit).
In Module 5, the trainees developed the following
materials:
1. The Vienna Danube;
2. Cruise Boats (1);
3. Cruise Boats (2);
4. German idioms recommended in inland water navigation;
5. Diagnosis of human resources strategies;
6. Regulation of navigation on the Danube;
7. Sea pollution: causes and effects;
8. Safety at Sea (Project);
9. Flaw detection in electronic equipment;
10. Medical first aid;
11. Galati events;
12. Ceronav trainees workbook;
13. Text processing using Microsoft Word;
14. Maritime English;
15. NELI Project;
16. The Danube Delta;
17. Technical writing. Elaboration of scientific and technical
materials;
18. Pollution;
19. Meteo;
20. Community law;
21. Marketing policies;
22. Logistics;
23. Workplace safety law;
24. Service strategy;
26. Marketing plan elaboration.
26 resources have been developed. Referring only to
Moodle courses, they are as follows:
14 courses related to IMO disciplines;
4 courses related to the Danube and the Danube Delta;
8 courses related to project management, business plans,
human resources, etc.
Generally, the courses created do not have a well-
defined structure, and the tools that the trainees used in
creating them are mainly links to videos, video lessons and
Web sites. Being involved at present only in traditional, face-
to-face teaching, the trainees do not have enough experience
in the elaboration of electronic educational resources. For
some of the resources, the mix of instruments used does not
provide a clear identification of how to follow the learning
path, creating some confusion in terms of tasks and/or
activities. Nevertheless, we can say that the objectives of the
course, especially those related to the knowledge of the
various IMO disciplines, have been reached in a satisfying
manner, although some resources still need to be accompanied
by methodological guidelines before being made available to
students.

4. CONCLUSIONS

The main objectives of the course were:
to make teachers able to use the software for the
production of digital material and virtual environment;
to encourage teachers to contribute to the creation of
pedagogical materials used and modified freely according
to the philosophy of sharing and reuse.
We identified a high interest in improving new
pedagogical technologies, including online courses. We can
say that these objectives have been achieved, although not
always in a complete manner (fig. 7, 8).

Fig.7 Local seminar at CERONAV Constanta

Fig. 8 Interactions between trainees

Regarding competence-based didactics, as expected, the
IMO experts/teachers based their courses on international
standards, the disciplines they teach being related to recognized
competence frameworks. The others found it more difficult to
transpose the standards to their teaching subjects.
The analysis of the trainee activities and of the results
identified the following strong and weak points:
Strong points
flexible coordination by CNR;
excellent partnership;
platform facilities;
CERONAV experts and managers enthusiastic and highly
interested in blended learning;
Italian partners experience;
good templates (M1, M2, M3, M4, EQF, EUCIP).
Weak points
limited ICT skills/competences of some of the participants;
some technical problems at the start of the course;
mixture of Italian, English and Romanian content (due to
fund shortage for translations);
lack of experience in online teaching for some of the
CERONAV experts.

REFERENCES

[1] Rusu, C.C., Mistodie L.R., The Development of Course Contents Used in
Engineering Distance Education, Proceedings of the 13th International
Conference - Modern Technologies, Quality and Innovation, MODTECH,
ISSN: 2066-3919, pp. 559-562, 2009.
[2] Taibi, D., Gentile, M., Fulantelli, G., Allegra, M., An Ontology to Model
e-portfolio and Social Relationship in Web 2.0 Informal Learning
Environments, International Journal of Computers Communications & Control,
ISSN: 1841-9836, Vol. 5, Iss. 4, pp. 578-585, 2010.
[3] Vrtacnik, M., Jurisevic, M., Savec, VF., Motivational Profiles of
Slovenian High School Students and Their Academic Performance Outcomes,
Acta Chimica Slovenica, ISSN: 1318-0207, Vol. 57, Iss. 3, pp. 733-740, 2010.
[4] Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective, European
Commision, Project number: I/05/B/F/PP-154194, ISBN 979-88-903115-0-5,
2007.
[5] www. sloopproject.eu


49

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE SLOOP2DESC
COURSES IN SLOVENIA

Margareta Vrtanik
1
, Danica Dolniar
1

Niko Schlamberger
2
, pela voljak
3

1
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
2
Slovenian Society INFORMATIKA
3
IPMIT, Slovenia

metka.vrtacnik@guest.arnes.si

Abstract Izvleek
In this paper we present our experience and results
related to the design and management of the online
course Developing e-learning teaching and learning
resources based on the EUCIP certificate, which
was organised under the auspices of the international
Leonardo da Vinci project SLOOP2DESC. The course
was intended primarily for teachers of Informatics.
From the 64 participants who applied for the course,
slightly less than 50 % reached the last module, and
the numbers had further reduced by the end of the
course. In line with other research results, our
experience also shows that in order to minimise
participants drop-off, constant tutor guidance and
participant orientations are necessary. We expect that
participants who successfully finished the online
course will become ambassadors for the EUCIP
certificate that we hope to introduce in Slovenia.

V prispevku poroamo o prvih izkunjah in rezultatih
online teaja Zasnova in priprava spletnih unih gradiv,
osnovanih na certifikatu EUCIP, ki smo ga izvedli v sklopu
mednarodnega projekta SLOOP2DESC sklada Leonardo
da Vinci. Teaj je bil namenjen predvsem izobraevalcem
poklicev v informatiki. Nanj se je prijavilo 64 udeleencev,
od teh najve uiteljev informatike in raunalnitva v
osnovnih in srednjih olah. Slaba polovica udeleencev je
uspela priti do zadnjega modula teaja. Pokazalo se je, da
je za uspeh online teajev kljuna nenehna komunikacija
med udeleenci teaja in tutorji ter podajanje natannih in
konkretnih navodil za izdelavo nalog. Teajniki, ki so
uspeno konali teaj, bodo lahko postali ambasadorji
sistema certificiranja EUCIP, za katerega upamo, da ga
bomo uspeli uvesti tudi v Sloveniji.

KEYWORDS: EQF, EUCIP, skills, competences,
online course in Slovenia

KEYWORDS: EQF, EUCIP, spretnosti, kompetence,
online teaj v Sloveniji

1. RATIONALE EUCIP IN SLOVENIA

The need for trained and experienced Informatics
professionals in Slovenia is considerable, but for
various reasons (e.g. low interest of students for the
study of demanding disciplines), the national education
system does not deliver enough qualified professionals.
The result of this disproportion is that there are many
self-declared professionals who cannot produce any
kind of certificate to prove their alleged experience in
information technology. There are, however, various
industry and company certification schemes and
certificates available, but mostly in large multinational
companies. There are several disadvantages of such
schemes, but a major weakness of industry certificates
is that in most cases they are not supported by any
national or international standard and, consequently are
not commonly and publicly recognised as generally
valid certificates.
The Slovenian society INFORMATIKA (SSI) has
seen EUCIP as providing a possibility to introduce a
recognised training and certification program for those
who work in information technology but have no formal
qualification. Moreover, as SSI has successfully introduced
ECDL, it was confident that EUCIP - although much more
demanding in this respect than ECDL - could be established
in Slovenia as a scheme desirable both by those with no
formal qualification and by employers alike. The first
attempt in this direction was made in 2005, when SSI, two
faculties and some commercial companies agreed that they
would collaborate in a project which would lead to the
availability of EUCIP training and certification. Also a
study has been carried out which has shown that the project
was viable, but for various reasons it did not take off at that
time. However, the idea has not been forgotten and the
SLOOP2DESC project has been perceived as a welcome
opportunity to revisit the idea and to develop it further.
Therefore, the decision was made to introduce the EUCIP
certification scheme to Slovenian teachers of Informatics
through an online course Developing e-learning teaching
and learning resources based on the EUCIP standard,
adapted from an Italian pilot course.


50
2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Innovations in e-learning technologies point
toward a revolution in education, allowing learning to
be individualised (adaptive learning), enhancing
learners' interactions with other students (collaborative
learning), and transforming the role of the teacher
(Ruiz, Mintzer & Leipzig, 2006). This claim was
supported by reviewing the growth of scientific
literature in the field of e-learning on Web of Science,
since a great increase in the number of publications
was detected in the recent years (from 2005 to 2011),
Figure 1.
Ranking the records published in the last years
(2005 - 2011) by subject area further reveals that e-
learning approaches are well established in a series of
disciplines: Education (33.6 % of records), Computer
Science (28.8 % of records), Engineering (8.8 % of
records), Health Care (6.0 % of records), Information
Science & Library Science (3.4 % of records), and
Operation and Management Science (3.2 % of records).

0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
N
o
.

o
f

p
u
b
l
i
c
a
t
i
o
n
s
2005 - 2011 2004 - 1999 1998 - 1993 1992 - 1987

Fig. 1: Growth of scientific literature on e-learning

Learning Management Systems (LMS) -
support administrative tasks such as
registration, scheduling, and learner tracking
Managed Learning Environment (MLE) -
includes the whole range of information
systems and processes that contribute
directly or indirectly to learning and learning
management
Learning Content Management Systems
(LCMS) - allow developers to store, manage
and provide access to pieces of content used
in e-learning
Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) - the
components in which learners and tutors
participate in several online interactions,
including online learning. (p. 401, Costa &
Silva, 2010).
E-learning technological systems differ in the
level and quality of interactions and orientations
between students and tutors (teachers) during the
learning process from low level (LMS) to high-level
online interactions for VLE. The research work of
Chen and Huang (2010) has indicated that the lack of
orientation and interactions as well as formative
assessment leads to higher dropout rates, since from the
perspective of students these elements of the system
generate criticism and suggestions that guide them
toward ultimate learning goals and improve their rates of
sustainability. The authors have suggested blending the
web-based learning platform with external and human-
involved interactions and assessment.
From the educators perspective the most important
aspect of e-learning is its impact on academic
achievements, competencies and attitudes. A content
analysis of studies in the field of cognition in e-learning that
were published in five Social Sciences Citation Index
journals from 2001 to 2005, made by Shih, Feng & Tsai
(2008), revealed 444 studies as being related to the
specified field. Instructional approaches, learning
environment and metacognition were recognised as the
most popular research orientations, but the analysis of the
citation counts suggested that the studies related to
instructional approaches, information processing and
motivation might have a greater impact on subsequent
research.
The research findings of Harteis, Gruber & Hertramph
(2010), who studied practices of e-learning among 256
employees of various hierarchical status and working in
companies of different sizes, indicated that the individual
understanding of the nature of knowledge and the creation
of knowledge had a more significant impact on the quality
of knowledge increase than did the amount of professional
e-learning. Their conclusions offer new impulses for the
study of knowledge management. De-Marcos, Hilera,
Barchino et al. (2010) have presented a new tool designed
to reinforce students knowledge by means of self-
assessment. The evaluation of the tool by three different
experimental groups of students aged from 14 to 21 years
has shown that this kind of tool improved student
achievements, especially amongst younger learners, while
the impact of current teaching activities and methodology
used was rather low.
A study by Choudhury, Gouldsborough & Gabriel
(2010) revealed that a combination of interactive sessions
with e-learning modules for students of a functional
anatomy course, which was introduced during the first year
of their studies contributed to a significant increase in the
mean examination score as compared to scores, achieved by
students in previous years. The positive impact of e-
learning system quality and readiness on e-learners'
competency and learning outcomes was also revealed in the
study by Ho, Kuo & Lin (2010). In addition, teaching with
evidence-based practice elements blended with e-learning
activities proved to be a challenge for further activities for
medical and professional development, as indicated in the
study by Potomkova, Mihal & Zapletalova J et al. (2010).
Hildrum (2010), in his case study of e-learning in
Cisco's Network of System Integrator Partner Firms,
challenged the widespread argument that ICT-mediated
communication is inadequate for the sharing of tacit
knowledge. However, he found that advanced e-learning
systems - remote laboratories in particular - make possible
efficient sharing of tacit knowledge between internationally
dispersed technicians. A study by Orvis, Fisher &
Wasserman (2009), in which a sample of 274
undergraduates completed an e-learning program, either
with or without interactive learner control tools, suggested
that both training satisfaction and off-task attention
predicted subsequent learning.

51
The findings of Mutula, Kalusopa, Moahi &
Wamukoya (2006) have revealed that an online mode
of information literacy could improve students'
competencies perhaps even more than the face-to-face
instruction approach. Furthermore, respondents
preferred a blended instruction approach to a single
learning mode.
Engelbrecht (2005) in his study reported the
evaluation of the implementation of an e-learning
Masters Program in Taxation in South Africa, based on
the feedback from students. Students reacted positively
to the use of technology but expressed concern about
the lack of interaction among students, and between
students and teachers. He concluded that getting
students to take responsibility for their own learning
was a bigger challenge than improving their computer
and information technology skills. The research
findings of Kian-Sam & Lee (2008) pointed to the need
for the e-learning facilitator to encourage students not
only to be active in seeking knowledge, but to also
engage in giving and sharing opinions among their
peers outside the classroom. Results suggested that
there were blended learning benefits for these students,
as they were given improved opportunities to learn
outside the classroom.
Kramarski B, Michalsky T (2009), who examined
the impact of the learning environment of pre-service
teachers on their pedagogical knowledge, cognition and
motivation, found that apart from the learning
environment (e-learning or face-to face), the
metacognitive self-questioning method IMPROVE
contributed to better study outcomes and motivation.
Byman A, Jarvela S, Hakkinen P (2005) stressed
that, due to the rapidly growing applications of e-
learning and web-based courses in education, there is a
need to analyse the issue of reciprocal understanding in
web-based learning in order to develop more profound
pedagogical models. The results of their research show
that during the web-based course there was a reciprocal
discussion between the participants. The participants
had mutual negotiations and they discussed issues from
a variety of different viewpoints. Seven different ideas
were found for the mechanisms of reciprocal
understanding. They concluded that this information is
useful for developing a new pedagogical model for
web-based learning and enhancing the quality of virtual
interaction.

3. THE SLOVENE ONLINE COURSE
ADAPTATIONS

Based on the research findings and their
recommendations, we adapted the original Italian pilot
course Developing e-learning teaching and learning
resources based on the EUCIP standard in order to
obtain a good rate of sustainability and motivation of
participants throughout the course duration. The goals
and the framework of the course remained as originally
planned and the course timeline was not substantially
changed. The course remained structured in five
modules: Module 1 Using Moodle as a trainee and as
a teacher, Module 2 Being an online tutor and using
Web 2.0 tools, Module 3 Designing and sharing
learning objects in an open perspective, Module 4
European Qualification Framework (EQF), e-Competence
Framework (e-CF) and the EUCIP standard, Module 5 -
Collaborative development of educational resources based
on the EUCIP standard. The first module was dedicated to
the introduction of the Moodle learning management
system from the viewpoint of students and teachers. Instead
of videos, demonstrations made with Wink software were
used for content presentation. In addition to assignments
requiring forum participation, we introduced a series of
specific tasks. Participants had to prepare a lesson, a quiz
and optionally a book and questionnaire in Moodle in order
to gain a wider notion of the learning environments
capabilities. For maintaining participants interest it was
extremely important that their assignments were regularly
evaluated by tutors and the feedback on improvements was
given to them through e-mail contact or discussion forums.
The majority of students took tutors recommendations
seriously and they improved their products. The second
module, Being an online tutor and using Web 2.0 tools,
introduced the role of the tutor in the e-learning
environment to the participants and presented a series of
Web 2.0 tools particularly useful in computer-supported
collaborative learning. Students were assigned some
individual tasks, but the most important were the
collaborative assignments for which they were divided into
six groups of 10-11. Each group had to prepare a
presentation of a selected Web 2.0 tool, using Google Docs.
In another task they had to design a list of Web 2.0 tools
with a short presentation of each tool, using a pre-prepared
Wiki. The main addition to the third module, Designing
and sharing learning object in an open perspective, was an
assignment to prepare an interactive learning resource in
SCORM format and publish it in the trial area of the course.
For this task they were given detailed guidelines including
the topic selection and didactical approach in designing
learning materials. A model SCORM resource, prepared by
a third year student of Chemistry and Biology, was added to
the module. The tutors also added a Moodle quiz on
Creative Commons licences for participants knowledge
assessment. Participants work needed to be permanently
monitored and stimulated in order to sustain motivation for
completing assignments. Module 4 was adapted as well.
Since we expected students to experience difficulties in
correlating the module content to their daily school practice,
two Moodle quizzes were added to assess their knowledge,
first on the European Qualification Framework (EQF) and
its relation to the e-Competence Framework and the second
on the EUCIP certification system. Monitoring of students
activities revealed that some students started entering the
quizzes before having carefully studied the available
learning resources. However on their second or third try
they managed to improve their knowledge and achieve
higher scores. The most important participants task of this
module was to select three favourite topics and/or modules
from the EUCIP Core and IT Administrator syllabi and rank
their selection by preference. These preferences were used
in order to divide participants into groups for their final task
- collaborative design of an online course - in Module 5.
The following groups were set up: A7 Legal and Ethical
Issues (six participants), B2 Data Management and
Databases (six participants), B4 User Interface and Web
Design (seven participants), M1 PC Hardware (six
participants), M2 - Operating systems (six participants).

52
4. PARTICIPANTS AND DROPOUT
RATE

The recruitment of teachers for the online course
was not an easy task. Unresponsiveness/indifference to
our invitations was observed especially among the
authorities in charge of technical and vocational
schools for computer and Informatics technicians, as
well as faculties producing secondary school
Informatics teachers. Several e-mails with kind
invitations and appeals for cooperation remained
unanswered. From this unpleasant experience we
learned that only the school headmasters had the power
to delegate teachers to in-service training. Once again
personal contact proved to be a guarantee of success.
0 10 20 30 40 50
Middle school
High school
SMEs
University
Ministry
Undefined
No. of participants registered

Fig. 2: Participants of the online course by place of
employment

With the support of the Institute of Education we
managed, through personal contact, to address the
school headmasters directly, thereafter we eventually
started to receive teachers applications for the online
course. The final number of applicants for the EUCIP
online course (64) and their structure of employment
are presented in Figure 2. The majority of course
applicants were secondary school teachers.
The dropout rate of participants during the
progress of the course is presented in Figure 3.

0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60
65
70
applied not started C. M 1 C. M 2 C. M 3 C. M 4 C. M 5
N
o
.

o
f

p
a
r
t
i
c
i
p
a
n
t
s

Legend: C. completed, M - Module

Fig. 3: Participants by completion level
Out of 64 applicants three never enrolled on the course;
the majority of entrants dropped out from the course after
the first (30%) or the second (20%) course module, but
approximately 50 % of those who originally entered
remained in the course and entered the final Module 5 of
the course. It needs to be noted that some of those
completed most, but not all of the required assignments in
modules 2-4. The moderate dropout rate can be attributed to
tutors support and high motivation of the participants, as
found also by Chen and Huang (2010). When confronted
with a demanding task to prepare learning materials for
their own online course, only the most motivated ones
persisted and finished the course, therefore the final drop-
out rate was 74 % indicating that only 17 participants out of
64 fulfilled all the requirements of the Slovenian EUCIP
pilot online course.

5. QUALITY OF PARTICIPANTS'
ACTIVITIES

Module 1 - Using Moodle as a student and as a
teacher
Out of 61 participants who actually entered in the first
Module of the course, 51 were able to add resources and 52
to create a forum in the module trial space. More
demanding tasks - preparing a lesson and quiz in Moodle -
were successfully completed by 46 participants and 41
respectively, while optional tasks - preparing a
questionnaire and book in Moodle - were accomplished by
13 and 15 participants respectively. These numbers could
be misleading unless the quality of participants lessons and
quizzes are taken into account. In this respect we were
unpleasantly surprised. The online course was not meant to
address didactical aspects of lessons and quizzes, as the
majority of participants were teachers. We assumed that
they would be knowledgeable in the didactics of the
subjects they are teaching. However, the lessons they
produced were poor representations of their efforts, most
often presented even without titles, goals, and defined
topics. In most cases participants only created three or four
pages of the lessons framework without any real content.
In the case of quizzes they did not use all possible options
for preparing test items; they chose just the easiest one
true/false. Instead of 10 test items as recommended, the
majority prepared only between 2 and 5 test items,
preferably of the same type. Only 10 participants joined a
discussion forum on the usefulness of quizzes in Moodle.
Out of 17 participants in the discussion on the usefulness of
Moodle lessons, 15 were introduced to this tool for the first
time, whereas all claimed that they would use lessons in
Moodle more often.

Module 2 - Being an online tutor and using
Web 2.0 tools
First the participants were asked to express their view
on the role of an online tutor, which was done on the forum
by 32 participants. In the next task, 38 participants
described their current use of Web 2.0 tools. From the
discussion forum on the use of Web 2.0 tools, we could
conclude that they were familiar with most of the Web 2.0
tools and that they are using them regularly in their

53
everyday life. Also the discussion on the role of tutors
in e-learning was very vivid. The prevailing opinion
was, however, that it is difficult to draw a line between
a tutor and a teacher since their roles are often
interwoven. Further tasks included adding entries on
Web 2.0 tools in Delicious (completed by 30
participants), publishing a document in Google Docs
(32) and adding entries on Web 2.0 tools to a Moodle
Wiki (30). Some of the tasks mentioned were
completed with some delay. In the main collaborative
task, all participants starting the course were divided
into groups (alphabetically) of 10-11 that had to
prepare learning materials on selected Web 2.0 tools
using Google Docs. The level of collaboration within
groups varied greatly, from 2 to 8 active members. 30
participants, in some cases with delay, successfully
completed this task. As expected from the findings of
Engelbrecht (2005), participants of the online course
were poorly prepared to assume responsibility for their
own learning especially when they were confronted
with collaborative tasks. Some of them declared that
they were not used to collaboration and one even
expressed that she didnt want to work in a group. As a
result some either dropped out of the course or skipped
the tasks. Tutors were faced with a reaction that one
would not expect from teachers. Since the introduction
of new school curricula in 2008 and 2010 all teachers
are being encouraged to use active teaching and
learning strategies enriched by interdisciplinary
approaches in their classes. This new paradigm could
be realised only in close cooperation with teachers of
different disciplines and even different schools.

Module 3 - Designing and sharing learning
objects in an open perspective
All participants assignments in this Module were
individual; 32 solved the quiz (mean score 8.89 out of
10), 29 prepared their own PowerPoint presentation
and uploaded it in the Slide Share, 27 produced and
uploaded their own movie in YouTube, but the most
demanding task preparing and uploading in the trial
space a SCORM of e-unit, was completed on time by
only 19 participants. In the middle of Module 4, four
more participants managed to upload their SCORMs;
and thanks to the detailed guideline referring to the
structure and content of the e-unit and critical analyses
of their lessons and quizzes prepared in the first
module, the quality of their products increased
substantially. Therefore we gained confirmation of the
importance of tutors intervention and permanent
participants guidance throughout the e-course in order
to achieve the sustainability and quality of learning
outcomes. The participation in the discussion forums
also improved as compared to that for Module 1.
Altogether, 30 participants joined the discussion on
Creative Commons licences and their applications. The
majority would assign a licence to their resources:
approval of the authorship, non-commercial and share
alike, and 32 of them participated in the discussion on
usefulness of sharing open learning objects for
promotion of e-learning. They mostly agreed that the
idea of open learning resources of a high quality would
be welcome promotional material for broadening the use of
e-learning in our schools.

Module 4 - European Qualification
Framework (EQF), e-Competence Framework
(e-CF) and EUCIP certificate

The quiz on the European Qualification Framework
and e-competences was solved by 24 participants (mean
score 9.56 out of 10) while the quiz on the EUCIP
certificate was solved by 20 participants (mean score
8.5/10). 25 participants supported the idea of introducing
the European Qualification Framework and e-Competence
framework in Slovenia, but they were rather critical in their
opinion and some of them even claimed that they didnt see
any particular benefit of such an endeavour. Especially
participants without formal education in Informatics
endorsed the idea of EQF, as they saw the possibility of
obtaining a formal recognition of their competences and
knowledge through this system. In addition, 24 participants
took a Proximity Profile test; all of them found the test
useful and all of them declared that the results met their
expectations. At the end of Module 4, participants had to
identify three categories of knowledge/modules from the
EUCIP Core and/or IT Administrator syllabi and to order
them according to their preferences.

Module 5 - Collaborative development of
educational resources based on the EUCIP
standard

Based on the participants preferences five
workgroups were formed by tutors: A7: Legal and Ethical
Issues (six participants), B2: Data Management and Use
(six participants), B4: User Interface and Web Design (7
participants), M1: PC Hardware (six participants), M2:
Operating Systems (six participants). On one hand, such
composition of groups ensured an even distribution, and on
the other the majority of participants were assigned the
topic of their highest defined priority. Before designing the
content of their online course, the groups were instructed to
cover the knowledge categories that they recognised as
important for their work. In the first two weeks of Module
5, workgroups had to select a group leader and produce an
outline of their course according to the guidelines given by
the tutors. The course outlines were then analysed and
commented on by the tutors, after which the groups had five
weeks to prepare courseware materials. For this part, the
tutors offered a series of suggestions and hints about the
most appropriate tools for presentation of different
courseware elements. This final task needed very dedicated
and permanent on-time collaboration by all group members.

6. SELF-EVALUATION

Each course module ended with two questionnaires:
self-evaluation questionnaire and module evaluation. The
questionnaires were designed in the form of simple
statements, and participants were asked to respond to these
statements on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 - not at

54
all true, to 5 - very true for me. Frequencies of
responses to both questionnaires are presented in
Figure 4.

0, 0
10, 0
20, 0
30, 0
40, 0
50, 0
60, 0
70, 0
80, 0
90, 0
100, 0
Module 1 Module 2 Module 3 Module 4 Module 5
F
r
e
q
u
e
n
c
y

(
%
)
Self -ev al.
Module ev al.

Fig. 4: Frequencies of responses

Participants were generally more reluctant to
evaluate the modules than their learning outcomes,
Figure 4. Approximately 20 % more participants
evaluated the first module and 9 % more participants
evaluated the second module than giving an evaluation
of their own learning outcomes of these modules. The
frequencies of responses to the third and the fourth
module are levelled on both questionnaires, while
approximately 8 % less participants evaluated Module
5 than their own learning outcomes. With the first one -
the self-evaluation questionnaire - participants of the
course were expected to reflect on their knowledge
increase while studying the materials of the modules
and fulfilling their assignments.

Module 1: Part one - Moodle from the students point
of view (44 respondents)
Self-evaluation categories and average rank assigned to
each category:
Registration (4.8)
Editing a user profile (4.9)
Exchange of messages (4.4)
Entering a trial area (4.6)
Cooperation in discussion forums (4.0)

Part two Moodle from the teachers point of view
each category:
Following student activities (4.0)
Editing course settings (4.3)
Adding resources (4.4)
Adding activities (4.1)
Adding a link to a Web page and code from
You tube (4.2)

Module 2: (28 respondents)
each category:
Understanding the role of an online tutor (3.9)
Linkography (3.9)
Social bookmarking (3.8)
Using Skype (3.7)
Using forums (4.6)
Google Docs (4.6)
Wikis (4.1)
Role playing and simulations (3.5)
each category:
Understanding the meaning of open resources
and learning objects (4.3)
Understanding the meaning of CC licences (4.0)
Familiarity with online databases with free
teaching resources (3.7)
Exchange of resources using Web 2.0 tools (4.1)
Use of eXe Learning software for production of
interactive learning resources (3.9)
Understanding the SCORM model (3.9)
Production of a SCORM package using eXe
Learning (4.0)

Self- evaluation categories and average rank assigned to
each category:
Understanding the meaning of EFQ (3.8)
Understanding the structure of the EU framework
of e-competences (3.8)
EUCIP competences and Informatics profiles (4.0)
EUCIP certificates and procedure of certification (3.6)
EUCIP and IT administrator competences for
Informatics professionals (3.7)
Usefulness of Proximity Profile test for further
education (3.6)

each category:
Planning learning resources (courseware) (4.1)
Production of courseware (4.4)
Sharing learning resources in an open perspective (4.1)
Collaboration in preparation of a Moodle course (4.5)

The dropout rates of respondents for self-evaluation
questionnaires are presented in Figure 5.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Module 1 Module 2 Module 3 Module 4 Module 5
R
e
s
p
o
n
c
e
s

Fig. 5: Drop-out rates of respondents

Only 72.1 % of participants who originally enrolled
for the online course responded to the first questionnaire, 46
% responded to the second, 38 % to the third, 28 % to the
fourth, and 23 % to the fifth. Such results could be

55
explained either by indifference or forgetfulness on the
part of the participants, since they were always
specifically invited at the end of the module to fill-in
both questionnaires. From the results of the self-
evaluation questionnaires it is possible to conclude that
participants evaluated their study outcomes for each
module as above average (< 3) or good (= < 4).
Unfortunately, these high average scores were not
always reflected, either in the quality of their
assignments or in the timeliness of completion. For
example, they claimed high proficiency in using
Google Docs (4.6) and Wiki (4.1), but they had
problems in collaborative tasks of the second module.
Also on using eXe and producing a SCORM package
of their own they achieved above-average scores of 3.9
and 4.0 respectively, but only 19 participants managed
to complete the task on time. In spite of having had the
possibility to address the problems encountered in
using the eXe programme and SCORM production
through the discussion forum, only a few participants
used this option to overcome problems. They also very
highly rated their abilities to plan and collaboratively
prepare courseware, but their products and the high
dropout rate from their workgroups did not support
their claims.

7. EVALUATION OF MODULES

All modules were evaluated using the same
categories: correlation between the objectives and the
content presented, level of fulfilment of participants
expectations, content novelties, adequacy of the
modules timing, approaches used, usefulness of the
content, learning environment, tutor support, and
overall grade of the module. The participants were
asked to respond to statements on a 5-point Likert scale
ranging from 1 - not at all true, to 5 - very true for me.
Participants evaluation of Module 1 - results
are presented in Figure 6.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Goals
Expectations
Upgrade k.
Usefulness
Approaches
Timeline
Learning envir.
Tutor's support
Total grade
Percent (%)
5
4
3
2
1

Fig. 6: Evaluation of Module 1

The participants assigned the highest possible
scores of 5 or 4 to all categories, only 4 % of the
participants did not feel that they had upgraded their
knowledge on the use of Moodle, and 5 % of them
claimed that the content of the module was not useful for
their work.
Participants evaluation of Module 2 results are
presented in Figure 7.
0 20 40 60 80 100
Goals
Expectations
Upgrade k.
Usefulness
Approaches
Timeline
Learning
environment
Tutor's support
Total grade
Percent (%)
5
4
3
2
1

Fig. 7: Evaluation of Module 2

Only 3 % of the participants assigned the lowest grade
1 to tutors support and timing of the course, and a further 6
% gave grade 2 to tutors support, while 56 % and 38 %
assigned the highest respective grade (5) to the same
categories. However, Figure 7 shows that marks 5 and 4 are
prevailing in the assessment of all categories of the
evaluation: 13 % of the participants claimed that they had
not advanced their knowledge with the content of Module 2,
and 6 % did not recognize any value in the content of this
module. These low scores might be due to the fact that
some participants had been already well familiarized with
the applications of Web 2.0 tools - as they expressed in the
forum - and that some participants work in activities where
the application of Web 2.0 tools is not needed. But, in spite
of the prevailing high scores assigned to all categories of
the second module, their difficulties in completing this
modules activities did not support their evaluation scores.
Participants evaluation of Module 3 - results are
presented in Figure 8.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Goals
Expectations
Upgrade k.
Usefulness
Approaches
Timeline
Learning envir.
Tutor's support
Total grade
Percent (%)
5
4
3
2

Fig. 8: Evaluation results of Module 3

56
Apart from the adequacy of timing, which was
given the highest score by 44 % of the participants, all
other categories got the highest score (5) by from over
50 % up to 78 % of participants (tutors support). The
reason for that might be that the tutors had also learned
from experiences obtained in the first two modules, and
they also participated more frequently in the discussion
forums and commented on participants efforts.
Participants evaluation of Module 4 - results
are presented in Figure 9.
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Goals
Expectations
Upgrade k.
Usefulness
Approaches
Timeline
Learning
environment
Tutor's support
Total grade
Percent (%)
5
4
3
2


Again, the majority of the participants assigned
high scores to all categories (4, or 5), but 6 % of them
were - according to their responses (low scores) -
already familiar with the EUCIP system, and e-
competences, therefore they did not upgrade their
knowledge, in addition 11 % of participants obviously
did not see the content of the module as being useful.
Such a response from the participants came as rather a
surprise, since we had thought that the major reason for
joining the online course was to gain a deeper insight
into the EUCIP system and programme.
Participants evaluation of Module 5 results
are presented in Figure 10

0 20 40 60 80 100
Goals
Expectations
Upgrade k.
Usefulness
Approaches
Timeline
Learning environment
Tutor's support
Total grade
Percent (%)
5
4
3
2
1

In the fifth module high scores (4 or 5) were assigned
to all categories of the evaluation, but 20 % assigned low
scores to tutors' support, and 10 % (one participant) did not
upgrade his/her knowledge. We added some additional
questions to the questionnaire since we wanted to get
participants' reflections on their own efforts in collaborative
design of their online course; 70 % of them claimed that
the workgroup they were assigned to was appropriate (score
5), 60 % were satisfied with the number of workgroups
(score 5), and an equal percent were happy with the number
of participants within the group; 40 % assigned the highest
score to the clarity of instructions for drafting the course,
and 30 % to the clarity and usefulness of tutors' hints for
preparing courseware; 50 % assigned the highest score to
the usefulness of the prior knowledge gained in previous
modules, but only 10 % were satisfied with the level of
collaboration within group, while 40 % claimed that the
level of collaboration was low or extremely low. This is not
in line with the self-evaluation results where the average
number of scores assigned to the collaboration of
participants in online course preparation was 4.5.
The feeling of low level of collaboration within
workgroups during the production of courseware was
further confirmed by the number of participants within each
workgroup who actually contributed to the design of the
course: workgroup A7 (two out of six); workgroup B2
(three out of six); workgroup B4 (five out of seven);
workgroup M1 (four out of six) and workgroup M2 (two
out of six). Participants were also asked to evaluate the
level of satisfaction with the online course they had
produced. They were quite critical, as only three
participants were satisfied with the course they had
produced and chose score 5, while all the others were either
partially satisfied (score 4 or 3) or not at all (score 2).

8. FINAL RESULTS

As the final result of the course, which ended on the
10
th
of April 2011, participants managed to design and
prepare courseware for 5 online courses, aimed to achieve
goals of three EUCIP Core Syllabus knowledge categories
(A7, B2 and B4) and selected knowledge areas from two
modules of IT Administrator (M1 and M2). For the
evaluation of the quality of products, the tutors developed a
special method and a respective evaluation template was
prepared. The following building blocks of the course were
evaluated: (1) diversity of teaching tools used (28 points
maximum), (2) adequacy of content selection (maximum 50
points), and (3) adequacy of didactical approaches (50
points maximum). Results of the evaluation are presented in
Table 1.

Table 1: Evaluation of online courses prepared by five
working groups of participants

Working
group
No. of
active
participants
No. of points
achieved
Comments
A7: Legal
and Ethical
Issues
4 out of 6
94/128
73 %
Strengths: variety of tools
used, good course
structure
Weakness: not all topics
covered

57
Working
group
No. of
active
participants
No. of points
achieved
Comments
B2: Data
Manage
ment
and Use
3 out of 6
88/128
69 %
Strengths: good structure
and didactical design of
courseware
Weakness: low variety of
teaching tools, not all
topics covered
B4: User
Interface
and Web
Design
7 out of 7
123/128
96 %
Strengths: good coverage
of topics, great variety of
teaching tools selected
Weakness: introduction
missing
M1: PC
Hardware
4 out of 6
92/128
72 %
Strength: the course
represents coherent
teaching material
Weakness: topics only
partially covered
M2:
Operating
Systems
2 out of 6
71/128
55 %
Strength: two high quality
SCORMs prepared with a
SCORM test
Weakness: the course does
not meet the criteria for
the course design since
only two participants
remained in the group

From the results in Table 1 it can be concluded
that the major strengths of the online courses produced
by five working groups of participants are the variety
of teaching tools used and well structured content
divided into sub-topics, which results in coherent
teaching materials.
The major weakness is the coverage of the
content, which is in all cases but one (B4) incomplete.
This drawback is on the one hand the result of a low
level cooperation among participants of the group and
poor management of the group work by group leaders,
and on the other an irresponsible attitude of some
groups members who ignored the fact that their
contributions would be of utmost importance for the
quality of the final product. The level of cooperation
during the 5th module of the online course confirmed
our previous observation, that some Slovenian teachers
are not ready to accept the responsibility for their own
learning process and for consequent actions needed to
successfully reach the learning goals.

9. WHAT DID WE LEARN?

Monitoring the participants throughout the
duration of the course has shown that transferring the
course content from one cultural background into
another was not a trivial task. We should be more
familiar with the real expectations and prior knowledge
of the course participants before we start designing the
content of each module. From the weaknesses of each
module that participants openly expressed in the
Modules' evaluation questionnaires we have learned
that - particularly in the first module - from their
perspective and needs, the content was presented too
mechanically, while they needed didactical guidance
on the use of Moodle. In fact, for each task assigned
they expected to be given an example together with
didactical instructions so that it could be used as a
model for their own products. This shortcoming was
corrected in Module 3 where they were given an example of
the SCORM, whereupon they followed the example in
preparing SCORMs of their own teaching units. In
evaluating Module 2, again some participants were missing
didactical instructions on how to integrate and effectively
use Web 2.0 tools in a controlled learning environment.
Some of them expected tutors to enter their Google Docs
and Wiki and help them carrying out the tasks since they
were not able to work collaboratively without the tutors'
support. One participant claimed that too many tools were
presented for her capabilities and so she lagged behind. In
evaluating the content of Module 3, participants did not
mention any weakness. One even claimed that he got
exactly what he needed and that he was eager to provide his
colleagues with the content of this module. In the case of
Module 4 some technical problems with sound were
mentioned as a weakness. One participant expected the
translation of the EUCIP core and IT Administrator
curricula in Slovenian, a claim that we considered unusual
for someone who works in Informatics. We carefully
designed the content of Module 5 based on the participants
feedback, especially in the first and the second module. As
the final task of the fourth module, the participants had to
identify three knowledge categories from EUCIP Core
syllabus and/or modules from the IT Administrator syllabus
and arrange them in order of their preferences. From
participants preferences the tutors selected five categories
and divided participants into groups, taking their
preferences into account as much as possible. We have also
structured the design of their online course into two phases.
First they had to prepare the draft structure of the course
according to guidance and then develop their own online
course in a trial area of each group. These efforts paid off
since the participants, who in spite of all their problems
completed their assignments, contributed to the quality of
the courses produced and at the same time successfully
completed the EUCIP course. The results allow us to
conclude that benefits from this online course are mutual;
participants have deepened their knowledge and we, the
tutors, have learned that playing a tutors role is a
demanding task that requires patience, persistence and more
than just a bit of diplomacy in order to be completed
satisfactorily.

10. CONCLUSIONS

The Italian online course was successfully adapted
and modified to meet the needs of Slovenian Informatics
teachers. The adaptation refers primarily to adding elements
that according to a series of research results proved to
support sustainability and better orientation of participants
throughout the online course. It has been found that, from
the participants viewpoint, the most demanding part of the
course was collaborative tasks, which is an observation
indicating that our teachers were poorly prepared to take the
responsibility of their learning process. The dropout rate
(68.25 %) was considerable but in line with our
expectations. However, additional research would be
needed in order to find out the real reasons behind the
dropout, since during the course, a significant number of
participants notified us that they were unable to continue in
the course due to the high workload. The interest of the

58
community of practice in the EUCIP standard was
extremely low, as neither members of the Slovenian
Society INFORMATIKA nor Informatics professionals
who were personally invited to take part in the
discussion forum ever entered into discussions at the
special forum EUCIP in Slovenia. A similarly
indifferent attitude was also observed in institutions
and individuals in charge of the education of
Informatics teachers at all levels. But those teachers
who persisted in the course as well as the tutors are
proud to have overcome all challenges and managed to
finish the course delivering useful products of
reasonable professional and didactical quality.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our sincere thanks to
the Leonardo da Vinci fund for financial support of the
project. We are also grateful for the support of AICA,
in particular to Pierfranco Ravotto for his advice on the
structure of the online seminar, Paolo Schgr for his
swift answer to our needs regarding EUCIP syllabi, and
Roberto Bellini and Carlo Tiberti for their access to
and help with the Proximity Profile questionnaire. The
project would not have been possible without the
dedication and hard work of all participants. For their
persistence in the course we would like to express our
deepest gratitude.

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59

A LESSON LEARNED AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE
ACTIONS IN E-LEARNING

Maria Murray
1
, Metka Vrtacnik
2
,Danica Dolnicar
2
,Giovanni Fulantelli
3

1
DEIS, Cork Institute of Technology
2
Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Department of Chemical Education and Informatics,
University of Ljubljana
3
Institute for Educational Technologies - National Research Council of Italy
maria.murray@cit.ie
metka.vrtacnik@guest.arnes.si, danica.dolnicar@ntf.uni-lj.si,
giovanni.fulantelli@itd.cnr.it

Abstract

This chapter summarises the lessons learned from the SLOOP2DESC project, and in particular from the online
courses for teachers and trainers in Italy, Romania and Slovenia. Actually, online courses represent the most central
part of the project, where all the strategies and methodologies behind the project were put in practice and tested.
For this reason, the analysis of the online courses presents facts and findings from the various project stages and
offers critiques and recommendations for the future.

KEYWORDS: Evaluation, elearning, moodle, LMS, web 2.0, European Qualification Systems, teacher training.

SLOOP2DESC was a far-reaching initiative that
involved a large number of trainees across three
European countries. Logistically speaking, the project
was ambitious; there was a palpable challenge in the
content being covered, the scope in terms of number of
participants, the diversity of those participant
backgrounds and also the geographical spread of
participants.
The hope for SLOOP2DESC was to enable
teachers across the target countries to use web2.0 tools
in their teaching practice and to introduce European
qualification schemes (such as EUCIP) to the
participants. The introduction of these qualification
schemes was done with the view to adapting the
various curricula to incorporate content cohesive with
the qualification schemes Thereby connecting with
their students in a language they could understand,
bringing the digital revolution into the classroom with
the aim of more fully equipping students for future
accreditation. Finally, an important objective of the
project was the involvement of stakeholders, and in
particular representatives from companies, in order to
stimulate a debate amongst teachers and companies on
the application of European qualification systems, both
from the teachers' perspective and the companies' point
of view.
The SLOOP2DESC courses ran in Italy, Slovenia
and Romania. The project was structured into two
phases in Italy, the training of a number of trainee-
tutors in Moodle and web 2.0 tools with a view to those
tutors going on to become proficient enough in the
tools to be able to train a further, larger group of
teachers, thus exponentially widening the knowledge
pool. The project in Slovenia and Romania learned
from the approaches and experiences of the Italian
teacher-training course and implemented Slovenian and
Romanian teacher-training courses.
The project used Moodle as the LMS platform for
designing the course, delivering the courseware, organising
and delivering student assignments and connecting tutors
with students, and students with students. Moodle itself
served as course content as the first three modules of the
SLOOP2DESC course were dedicated to training students
and tutors in the various aspects of the Moodle platform. In
Italy, the project portal (based on Joomla) was also used to
stimulate public discussions on the different aspects
covered by the project; these discussions were not
exclusively for the teachers enrolled in the online curses,
rather we developed a Community of Practice involving
also stakeholders, representatives from companies, people
visiting the portal, and so on, and for this reason we decided
to use the portal as the main access point to the public
forums.
This chapter focuses mainly on the experience of the
online courses, which represent the main activity of the
project. Specifically, lessons learned relate not only to the
pedagogical aspects to training such a large number of
teachers in web2.0 tools, but also in how best to use Moodle
to achieve this end.
While the project yielded many interesting and positive
results, there is of course always room for critical reflection.
This chapter aims to outline possible improvements that
could be made to the course for future iterations and to
highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the course.

1. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

As a result of a continuous user-feedback process and
following discussion amongst course facilitators in the

60
different countries involved, a number of strengths and
weaknesses of the course were identified.

Strengths
A number of participants spoke about the value of
on-going feedback and support from the tutors, both
via email and in forum discussions in Moodle. Moodle
was also utilised to good effect as the inclusion of
additional specific assignments (e.g. production of
quizzes, lessons, SCORMs) and back up resource
material was seen as a positive bonus. The ability to
adapt courseware and assignments to suit participants
needs as they arose was also a positive bonus of the
Moodle platform.
It is worth pointing out that while Moodle had
many strengths that added to the success of the
program, face-to-face meetings with tutors was still
seen as a bonus. While the learners became very
accustomed to Moodle and could identify many
strengths of the platform, they still valued the face-to-
face support from tutors where it was possible to
provide this.
Much of the learning involved current web2.0
tools. The methodology encouraged was to learn by
doing. That is, the technical practice in creating
content using these tools was infinitely superior to any
academic explanation of the tools. The final output
was to create an online course in Moodle, thus putting
into practice in a very practical way all the new
knowledge acquired.
The courses itself were developed bearing in
mind that the methods learned needed to be relevant to
teachers in the classroom. This proved to be one of the
strengths of the course as teachers reported back that
they were indeed using the techniques and tools taught
in the courses. In addition, some participants claimed
that they would be happy to recommend the
SLOOP2DESC approaches and courseware to their
colleagues.
The homogeneous groups in terms of a shared
skill set fared quite well, citing their shared knowledge
pool as an advantage in tackling the course.
A strength that came up time and time again was
the peer-to-peer and peer-to-tutor interaction. This was
greatly facilitated by the use of the Moodle platform
forums as they gave learners constant access to other
learners and the tutors. The face-to-face meetings also
enhanced this, when these were possible.
Successful completion of the course could be
recorded in the teachers job promotion scheme. For
some (mostly younger) teachers, this was an additional
motivating factor.
Finally, in Italy the participation of the Business
Mentors (tutors from companies) in the final part of the
online course, despite an initial skepticism amongst the
trainees, stimulated a meaningful debate on the
application of competences-based training principles to
the educational settings.

Weaknesses
As previously mentioned, the group of learners
was very large, and their areas of expertise reflected the
diversity and number of the participants. It was difficult to
design a course that would suit all levels of IT expertise, as
some learners had a greater degree of prior knowledge than
others. Those groups that had a very mixed level of
abilities in terms of computer literacy ran into more
difficulties than those groups that were more homogenous
in this respect.
Some participants didnt take assignments, either
individual or collaborative, as mandatory, and they didnt
recognise them as testimonies of their own learning process.
Additionally some participants proved to have low level
didactical expertise of their discipline, this drawback was
particularly evident in informatics teachers. This issue
occurred both in Slovenian and Italian contexts.
There was also a feeling that group leader roles could
have been more explicit, as some group leaders possibly did
not fully understand the importance of their role.
Varying levels of motivation was also reported as a
weakness in the course, perhaps this is due to the differing
levels of expertise within the different groups, time
constraints also proved a major factor in dropout rates.
As a serious weakness, which is also often discussed
in the literature, a missing readiness of some participants to
take full responsibility for their own learning process, was
observed by some tutors.
Additionally, Slovenian tutors and participants
stressed the irresponsible attitude of the authorities
responsible for teachers formal education, in-service
teacher training and application of ICT in the classrooms, as
a weakness. This was highlighted as one of the main
reasons for informatics teachers at vocational and technical
school not taking part in the online course, in spite of the
fact that the Leonardo da Vinci projects are primarily
focused at teachers of these schools in order to improve
their programs and teaching approaches.
Poor levels of collaboration within some groups could
be also attributed to the lack of use of synchronous
communication tools. Where there were no face-to-face
meetings, Skype or chat sessions could probably speed up
the decision process, improve the group spirit, and invoke
more responsibility. Scheduled forum meetings could also
help in this direction.
Even when working within a group, some participants
still function as individuals who carry out the tasks assigned
to them but remain uninvolved with other members work,
e.g. making comments, corrections or suggestions in order
to improve the group product. This may be due to a
perceived lack of competences, reluctance to critique a
colleague or simply lack of group spirit. This approach
could be overcome by specific assignments to enforce
proper collaboration and not just task distribution.
The use of the SLOOP2DESC portal to promote an open
public community of practice in Italy caused some
confusion amongst trainees, who were required to use both
the Moodle and Joomla forums, for different purposes.

2. CONCLUSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS

A number of recommendations arose from subsequent
feedback from participants and discussion amongst course
leaders.
61
A close cooperation between teachers,
headmasters and authorities (e.g. Ministries, Faculties)
who are responsible for teachers education and in-
service training could be recommended as a pre-
condition for the successful on-line education.
One impediment to successfully completing the
course was the time constraints on the learners. The
course is aimed at practicing teachers, many of which
work fulltime in addition to studying the course. Some
of the suggestions by participants included the option
to take breaks from the course if needed. There could
be benefits to this approach but the impact to group
work would need to be carefully considered.
Good, on-time communication among the
participants is crucial for collaborative work, therefore
efforts should be made by the tutors to encourage and
promote the use of various methods, especially
synchronous. This could be incorporated into
assignments.
Participants appreciate the interactive quizzes to
test their acquired theoretical knowledge, so it would
be good to have them incorporated into courseware
wherever applicable.
Assignments on practical topics should be hands-
on, with specific instructions and good examples,
followed by feedback/evaluation from the tutors. It
might be beneficial to add grading to at least some of
the assignments.
In order to minimize any negative impact caused
by varying degrees of subject matter expertise, it may
be beneficial to group students in terms of their prior
learning. Following on from this, if resources allowed
it, it may be desirable to devise different courses for
different levels. If this is not possible, it is advised that
course facilitators be very prescriptive in terms of
levels of expertise needed to complete the course.
It is of paramount importance that any subsequent
revisions to the course keep as their focus those topics
that are most relevant and practical to teachers. Many
cited the practical aspect of the course, as its strongest
asset.
The Sloop methodology is based on intensive
collaborative activities amongst participants. Bearing this
in mind, it is advisable to have all participants at the same
point in the course. However, tutors should think carefully
about any decision related to imposing limits on the
duration of the modules and hiding proceeding modules as a
method to keep all participants at the same juncture.
Imposing limits and restrictions in this way with the aim of
enforcing an unnatural equilibrium can be frustrating and
counter-productive for students.
Tutors must be aware that being a tutor is a demanding
and responsible task, which needs a lot of patience,
perseverance, didactical expertise and more than just a little
bit of diplomacy, but knowing the expectations of course
participants in advance could substantially ease the role of
the tutors.
Business Mentors, who were involved in the final part
of the online course, should be involved at an earlier stage,
in order to have time to develop interpersonal relationships
with other participants, propose the difficulties met by
companies in identifying qualified workers, thus reducing
the gap between education and training institutions and the
labor market.
A centralizing of assets and communication platforms
should be established in order to avoid confusion on where
to find information and where to best communicate with
peers and teachers.
As previously mentioned the SLOOP2DESC project
was far-reaching and ambitious. The project involved
hundreds of people at a pan-European level. The feedback
from participants was insightful and useful. As
demonstrated above, many positive aspects of the course
were identified, as were areas that could be improved. The
need for teacher training in the area of web 2.0 tools was
evident based on the feedback of participants and the high
number of teachers that are using the technology in their
classrooms as a result of the course.

Centro METID
Metodi E Tecnologie Innovative per la Didattica
www.sloop2desc.eu
Preparing the teachers
for a competence-based
education system
Editors: Giovanni Fulantelli
Lucian Oprea
Sloop2desc
Sharing learning objects in an open perspective
to develop European skills and competences
The SLOOP2DESC-Sharing Learning Objects in an Open Perspective to Develop European
Skills and Competences-is a project funded by the European Commission under the
Lifelong Learning programme, Leonardo da Vinci sub-programme. This publication reflects the views
only of the authors and the European Commision cannot be held responsible for any use which
may be made of information contained therein. "
Project number: LLP-LDV/TOI/09/IT/0461CUP Code: G72F09000050006
Coordinator: Italian National Research Council Institute for Educational Technologies
Phone: +39 091 6809220 - Fax: +39 091 6809239
e-mail: giovanni.fulantelli@itd.cnr.it

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivs 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
ISBN: 978-606-8216-94-2

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