Learning through New Technologies
Designing Models for Active and Autonomous Learning : Resources for Open, Active, and Inclusive Learning about Architecture and Unique Sites
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marina Puyuelo Cazorla, Hidalgo Francisco, Fuentes Durá Pedro
There is a need for new approaches to stimulate learning processes by giving a more active role to the individual involved. There have been so many changes in both work and leisure, that it seems absolutely necessary for education to rebalance processes and contents. The main predictions are uncertainty about future needs, facing changing patterns, and the prevalence of disruptive learning methods. This paper presents research in progress whose goal is to develop simple and new representations that could be efficient and surprising as e-learning-based educational applications to achieve autonomous learning about architecture and heritage sites. It focuses on creating tools to produce new relationship models through reality and knowledge. There are means and technologies based on graphic representations, which can increase accessibility and interaction with the contents, using simple, newly available techniques for discovering more interactively and hands-on learning. We are developing contents to provide a hands-on pedagogical approach for a diversity of users. With this goal, this project explores creating learning models that combine perceptive stimuli (visual, tactile and productive) in an autonomous learning setting. This paper presents the design of some representations made with different technologies readily available today, which allow the user to produce new stimuli and to be involved in the learning process, by experiencing a simple and constructive relationship with some architectural sites.
Using Online Modules to Enhance Students’ Learning of Management Research Methods
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mario Marcello Pasco-Dalla-Porta, Fatima Ponce
Research methods courses are often difficult to teach, for they deal with abstract topics with no precise application to students’ professional careers. This creates a significant problem for undergraduate students that start to work on their dissertations. A recent survey at the management program at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru revealed that students of the Dissertation Seminar course had scarce interest in these matters and barely remembered their previous courses of methods. As a result, they face great difficulties for delimiting methodologically viable research projects. Pedagogical strategies based on blended, active, and problem-based learning have become increasingly attractive for the millennial generation. The use of online modules on management research methods emerged as a suitable alternative to face the problems previously mentioned. These modules emphasized a dynamic multimedia language, incorporated multiple examples of former successful dissertations, and included several self-assessment mechanisms with immediate performance feedback. This pedagogical innovation was assessed through an experimental quantitative design that revealed a significant increase in research methods learning in most students, including topics such as problem identification, analytical framework construction, and methodological design. Post-hoc measurements of the professors’ and students’ experiences showed high levels of satisfaction with the knowledge acquired, learning experience, content and format, self-assessment mechanisms, and modules’ usefulness. Interestingly, professors and students suggested that these modules should not replace classroom orientation because it allows the clarification of doubts about the online contents as well as their specific application to the dissertation research process.
Technological Instructional Material Used by Trainee Teachers in Their Lesson Plans in Science and Mathematics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Konstantinos Karampelas, Michael Skoumios
Technological instructional material has an important role in the learning process. However, research that focuses on the types of technological instructional material that are used in teaching is rather limited. In addition, there seems to be few projects that examine what types student teachers decide to use in their teaching sessions. This project investigates this topic. It focuses on the types of technological instructional material that trainee elementary school teachers include in the lesson plans that they prepare for the subjects of Mathematics and Science. For the scope of the research a total of 190 lesson plans in Mathematics and 235 lesson plans in Science have been collected and analyzed. These lesson plans were submitted by students who attend the fourth year of their course at the Pedagogic Department of Elementary Education, at the University of the Aegean, as part of their teacher training. The lesson plans were expected to be implemented in classes of the fifth or sixth grade of Elementary schools in Greece, where the two subjects are taught. Within this research the types of technological instructional materials that student teachers decide to use where identified and recorded. It was identified that certain types of technological instructional material where preferred to others. Moreover, it was concluded that in some types of technological instructional material there was differentiation between the two subjects.
