The project has three key scientific and technical objectives:
- Develop pedagogical models of collaborative knowledge building for European education.
- Develop a modular knowledge-building environment to support collaborative learning.
- Evaluate, test and disseminate the environment in European schools in order to build meaningful pedagogical practices and to advance the use of collaborative learning technology.
The project aims to contribute to scientific and technical know-how about whether collaborative building of knowledge with the help of new technology could be used to facilitate better learning achievements and development of new cognitive competencies in European education. The objective of the project is on developing and testing innovative pedagogical models, design principles, and learning scenarios of collaborative knowledge building in European education.
The project will develope a web based educational software which will consists of an educational server application (working title ITCOLE CSCL), integration component with existing www servers (i.e. Apache and other freely available servers) and documentation for the platform.
During the project the ITCOLE CSCL software will be used in different stages by a systematically growing number of students and teachers. The pedagogical validation of the learning environment will be conducted in - at least - 5 countries, 10 test sites, 20 schools, 50 teachers, and 2000-3000 students. By the end of this project there will be a set of pedagogical models, practices, design principles, web-based software tools and actual data on their use in real-life educational settings available for further dissemination and research.
As a result of project?s activity, by the end of this project, all European educational institutions will have an opportunity to install and deploy a web-based educational platform along with guiding pedagogical principles, both of which will be verified with pedagogical research during the project?s life. Pedagogical framework will include description of the educational principles, proposed learning activities and tutorial for teachers/tutors, outside experts and students themselves. This will be made into a printable electronic form as well an on-line help within the software application).