LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND LEARNING OBJECTS:A SUCCESSFUL SINERGY

Pierfranco Ravotto, Francesca Berengo, Luisa Farinati, Mara Masseroni, Luigi Petruzziello,Monica Terenghi, Marilena Vimercati (ITSOS "Marie Curie")

Com'esser puote ch'un ben, distributoin più posseditor, faccia più ricchidi sé che se da pochi è posseduto? How can it be, that boon distributed The more possessors can more wealthy makeTherein, than if by few it be possessed?

Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, Purgatorio: Canto XV

English translation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Abstract

This article focuses on the reasons why an upper secondary school has decided to get involved ineLearning and illustrates two of the main activities carried out by ITSOS in the SLOOP project: thedevelopment of learning objects and the planning and delivery of online courses.SLOOP's outcomes confirm what ITSOS had already experimented on the field as far as eLearning isconcerned: successful eLearning takes place when the learning objects fully exploits all the potential of the web and the learning environment favours interactions between people. All this makes learning more effective and attractive.

E-learning in a traditional face-to-face environment

Every morning at 8.10 – from Monday to Saturday, from mid September to mid June – 1.400 studentsand 180 teachers start their day at ITSOS, an upper secondary school that delivers training to 14 – 19year-old students.If by

eLearning

we mean the use of electronic devices (computer) in teaching, arguments in favour of its use in a face-to-face institution are obvious and various:

•

students are often fascinated by such a device and this supports their learning motivation;

•

computer activities, as any other lab activities, require an active mode that is more suitable tolearners rather than the traditional and more passive way of learning;

•

the computer allows simulation activities promoting

learning by doing

and

learning bydiscovery

.But if

eLearning

stands for “online learning”, why should we use it in a face-to-face environment?

Online and face-to-face isolation

The danger of isolation in online learning is a drawback often denounced by some critics. Butalthough it may be considered a contradiction, isolation does exist also in face-to-face learning: in factstudents are often alone while studying!Such a feeling of isolation is often linked to school failure. Students who are absent-minded in theclass, who are not independent, who get lost in the information provided by the text book,….often fail:they are not able to find their own way in what, where and when to study.

ELearning at ITSOS and the use of FirstClass

Since mid 90s ITSOS has its own net - based on FirstClass software - that is a node within a larger Milanese school net called SiR. Each teacher or student, who applies, is provided with an e-mailaddress, a private mail-box, the access to a “conferences” system based on permissions (private and public conferences, reading and writing or only reading permission,….) and the possibility to chatwith other users regularly enrolled in the system.It is years since ITSOS teachers started using such an environment for teaching activities, from a mereexchange of messages with students to the opening up of class conferences, structured into subject-conferences that can be further subdivided into topics, modules, activities. Such conferences are work environments often rich in messages. A survey carried out by ITSOS in 2004/2005 showed that therewere 6 subject-conferences containing over 1.000 messages. [Ravotto 2005].Students show to appreciate such a communication environment and use it in an effective way:sometimes in a collaborative way, sharing properly scannerized notes or summaries in preparation of a test.

Web-based eLearning at ITSOS

Being FirstClass a messaging system, it allows to exchange only lessons made up of texts andmessages, but in a broader perspective of eLearning web potential goes far beyond. It allows to have:

•

multimedia, that is a combination of texts, and images with sound and video;

•

interactivity, that is the possibility to propose activities where the students can directly interactwith the learning material and be provided with immediate feedback;

•

simulation activities, that is the possibility to act and see the results of one’s own action;

•

personalisation of learning paths thanks to hypertextual navigation and/or on the basis of thefeedback received.These are the reasons why ITSOS teachers have decided to get involved in the development of web- based lessons, a field already explored in other national and European projects, such SiR2 [Bocchetti2003], SOLE [Ravotto 2003], BiTE [Berengo 2003].Thanks to these projects ITSOS has realised that, while the creation of a work environment is easilyand quickly done, the development of teaching material suitable to be delivered online requires largeresources. What’s worse such an amount of resources often doesn’t guarantee the re-usability of suchmaterial in diversified learning contexts, with different targets and courses and the possibility totransfer it onto different Learning Management Systems.

Learning environment and teaching material

ITSOS has chosen to promote the SLOOP project – a project of sharing and developing learningobjects – on the basis of its ten-year long experience of blended learning, that is integration of eLearning and face-to face learning. Such an experience has highlighted the following crucial points:

•

the central role played by an environment that could favour communication between students,teachers and peer-groups in the view of building a shared knowledge [Calvani 2004];

•

the need of teaching material purposely planned for the net [Colorni 2002];

•

the importance of re-usability, from the technological (standardisation) and pedagogical pointof view;

•

the benefit of a collaborative mode for the development and sharing of learning objects.

SLOOP production of metaLOs and subject-based LOs

In the SLOOP project, ITSOS staff, along with all the other partners, has been involved in the production of learning objects. First step was the planning and development of LOs called

meta LOs

,namely LOs describing what LOs are, how they can be used and how they can be developed.The choice has been to develop SCORM 1.2 compliant LOs and to choose IEEE LOM standard for metadata [Fini, Vanni 2004].

MetaLOs

Eight metaLOs have been developed and translated into the partners’ languages (IT, EN, ES, RO, SL):

•

Learning Objects,

•

LO: pedagogical approaches,

•

SCORM standard,

•

The Metadata,

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How to make a LO SCORM compliant,

•

The packaging of LOs,

•

Communication between LO and platform,

•

Sharing free LO.The first 4 MetaLOs are descriptive, they deal with the “ status of art” on this matter. The eighth, alsodescriptive, illustrates the aim of the SLOOP project, that is developing, sharing, using and modifyingLOs in a free way. These MetaLOs are basically hypertexts with self-evaluation tests.The MetaLOs n. 5, 6 and 7 aim to train teachers with basic computer knowledge, not web masters or computer experts, to develop SCORM compliant LOs, to save them as

Content Package SCORMs

and to upload them on a

Learning Management System

. These Web-based LOs, apart from texts andimages, are also provided with “film clips” that show, with the help of a speaker, the several activitiesto be performed (launching the programme, opening the file, clicking on, ...”). In this case self-evaluation is provided by the success one gets while performing such activities.The above mentioned LOs require about one hour of learning – they are formed by 5-7 SCOs(Sharable Content Objects) of a considerable size.These metaLOs have been tested by all partners in courses delivered in virtual class or supported self-learning modes. They are available, in a self-learning mode, in the SLOOP site (www.sloopproject.eu

)and they can be downloaded from the SLOOP

freeLOms

to be modified and used in other learningcontexts.

Subject-based LOs

ITSOS staff has also developed:

•

a few LOs for teachers’ training on mobility initiatives;

•

a set of Maths LOs on parabolas addressing 15 - 17 year-old students;

•

a set of LOs to learn English as a foreign language;