Overview
The project will develop new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning, as well as university-business collaboration in the development of e-learning technology comprehensive strategy that will be tailored to the needs of the education sector.
The project will also allow the development of a collaboration partnership between universities and companies that promote the joint creation of services based on scientific knowledge and the transfer of educational knowledge to the e-learning company, which in turn will impact on a better service to educational institutions and education professionals.
Finally, the project will address an unresolved technological problem in e-learning solutions such as the necessary interoperability of the applications and services of e-learning. We intend to develop a loosely articulated system that allows the combination of different possibilities of technologies, both open source and corporate, and e-learning services in the same environment. Today, tools and services available for e-learning offer partial and fragmented solutions, with significant communication difficulties among them. The profiles of our technology partners assure expertise in a wide range of technologies and services based on a pedagogical proposal that meets the needs described. The project should lead to the design of a flexible, smart, versatile and interoperable system that allows improving the dynamics of collaboration, regulate self-learning, making a formative evaluation and channelling the feedback to students in practice on an ongoing basis.
Target audiences
The main groups and institutions targeted by the EKT project are:
- University lecturers and researchers of Education Sciences
- Universities (specially Faculties of Education, University Colleges of Teacher Education).
- kindergarten, Primary and Secondary Education Schools and teachers.
- Higher Education Students (kindergarten, Primary and Secondary Education prospective European teachers)
Elearning companies (providers of ICT and services)
Expected Project Results
The partners in this consortium have years of experience in both educational and technological innovation and teacher training. For this reason, in addition to the intellectual products understood as concrete results of the project, we intend to produce a fundamental and long-lasting impact on the improvement of higher education, since it will allow the development of a set of open source, technological tools and services that will be useful for the implementation of active training and collaboration methodologies, which will reinforce and help to regulate self-learning processes. These three methodological components: active learning, collaboration and self-regulation of learning are especially necessary during the application of in school placement, but they can also be useful in any other subject of any degree or master, since they are the fundamental basis of the model of the European Higher Education Area. Especially in dual training experiences (vocational training).
The direct results expected from the project are the following:
- An effective improvement in the training of future European teachers of Infant, Primary and Secondary Education. A greater interactivity between tutors and students, a continuous monitoring and supervision and a greater capacity of self-regulation of the process by the students, will undoubtedly make teaching practice an opportunity for learning the profession and the supervised exercise of professional skills.
- Greater communication and collaboration between Faculties of Education and schools, which today is one of the indispensable requirements to guarantee interaction between theory and practice and to adapt initial teacher training to the needs of practice.
- Greater university-business collaboration allows scientific research to have an impact on business and the transfer of knowledge to society.
- A better understanding of educational needs and an adjustment between the e-learning services produced by companies and the educational needs that will directly affect the improvement of the competitiveness of e-learning companies.
- The development of quality e-learning content and services, using intelligent, interoperable, diversified and user-friendly data.
- The development of innovative and ICT-enhanced training methodology, adapted to the context of school placement of future teachers
These results are specified in the following products:
- A transnational analysis of school placement needs (in five countries: SP, UK, PT, IE, AT) of difficulties, problems and needs for improving school placements in ECE for future European pre-school, primary and secondary teachers. This analysis will allow us to define solutions that will increase the educational impact of school placements and thus improve the ITE and the official qualifications needed to work in the teaching profession in Europe.
- An analysis of the different e-learning services and technological resources developed by e-learning companies and their educational potential and possibilities of convergence and interoperability (commercial and free software and digital resources). This will promote a stable collaboration dynamic between e-learning companies and education and research faculties that will allow the transfer of e-learning resources and services that have been validated in real contexts.
- An innovative methodology supported by advanced e-learning services and resources to improve the ITE during internships in schools. This methodology will make it possible to increase the training impact of placements in schools and thus to improve the vocational training and official qualifications needed to work in the teaching profession in Europe.
- A catalogue of technological products and services adapted to the needs of the ITE and especially for training during placements in schools (advanced e-learning system for placements in schools).
- An evaluation study of the effectiveness of the innovative methodology and e-learning tools and services produced during the development of the project, both in the learning of the trainees and in the development of the school placement.
- Open source specifications and developments to provide other interested users (universities, schools, educational administrations) with improved intelligent tools to provide a better connected learning system for their students.
- A handbook for in school placement in higher education qualifications of European initial teacher training.