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OER stories/Digital Learning Pathway

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The Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell’Autonomia Scolastica (ex-Indire) has designed and implemented an open source digital learning environment addressed to Italian school administrative and technical school personnel in order to support and promote a network of collaborative learning groups centred on everyday professional issues and based on the sharing and enhancement of situated knowledge.

From 2005 to 2007 the learning environment and the digital resources have been applied in a nation-wide training initiative addressed to administrative and technical school staff and involved more than 130.000 trainees including eight different professional profiles (including caretakers, laboratory technicians, cooks, directors…).

Digital learning resources have been designed and developed through a collaborative construction process involving internal instructional designers and multimedia communication experts, external professionals and content experts and external collaborators in multimedia storyboarding and technical development. School professionals and content experts have provided contents following the guidelines in strict collaboration with the internal instructional designers and the editorial staff. Contents have been elaborated with the help of multimedia communication experts and storyboards have been developed in order to obtain effective and engaging digital educational resources. Motivational aspects of learning have been considered as a main issue in the development of appealing multimedia contents and interaction including online scenarios, webquests, multimedia case studies, videos. For some activities cartoon characters have been created, some activities have been developed as online games and some have been presented using video streaming or animation.

1 The challenge or problem
2 Context
3 Action
4 What worked
5 What didn't work
6 Next steps
7 References/website
8 Other OER stories

[edit] The challenge or problem

The aim was to develop an ICT enhanced training path through the implementation of a constructivist learning environment providing digital learning resources and the needed human support and guidance with the support of the regional school bodies.

The challenge was to introduce the use of digital resources in an effective way especially for those professional profiles that had poor, previous computer literacy skills and, often, no experience of ICT or e-learning. For that reason self-instruction materials and preliminary computer literacy courses have been provided by some local bodies, involved in the overall training initiative, and by INDIRE itself through e-learning modules.

The target of the digital resources and the learning model is the “Administrative and technical school staff” an overall category including different profiles of school personnel, with a range of different professional skills, educational background, and job tasks. Therefore the preliminary study of the instructional conditions took a long time and influenced the digital resources design process. It had to take into consideration all of the following elements: the skills, knowledge and competences that had to be developed, the different target audiences, the motivation of the trainees, the micro and macro context, the constrains ect…

[edit] Context

The online environment and the digital learning resources have been implemented as the result of the educational research activity led by the institute since on instructional design and a pedagogically effective use of ICT and multimedia in school staff training.

The initiative was funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and supported by a national agreement between the Ministry and the main trade unions. The objective was the in-service re-qualification of administrative and technical school staff, including the different professional profiles (laboratory technicians, administrative assistant, director…). The plan of contents covered a wide range of topics related to the professional area and to the school system, depending on the target profile (i.e. safety, first aid, privacy, special needs support, computer and Internet literacy, accounting, communication, human resources management). A committee - formed by national experts, professionals, school inspectors, university professors, representatives of the ministry- drew a national plan of learning objectives for each profile. INDIRE provided the blended instructional model, developed the open source learning environment and designed the digital learning resources.

[edit] Action

The training initiative presented digital resources as training activities based on different computer-based learning strategies and built on a problem-solving approach. Case-based and problem-based are strictly linked to school related authentic contexts; trainees learn to face complexity; problem-based situations requiring to direct their learning while solving problems. The online environment provides a wide range of relevant cases, sharing areas, collaboration tools, information sources, digital resources, and supporting services. Case-based and problem-based online activities require trainees to involve the real work context linking the training proposals to concrete working means, tasks and actors situating knowledge in the work place. The extended concept of environment includes a quite complex training setting where online activities break through the digital dimension and where the online platform integrates the real work live context.

The online platform has been implemented as a community-oriented environment. The provided web forums can be grouped into three main categories: general forums, peer forums, subject forums. They aim at stimulating trainees’ critical thinking on professional issues, sharing and exchanging experiences and professional problems and solutions, discussing with experts. General forums where open to all professional profiles including free discussion forums, forums focused on technical support, on the training model, on tutoring issues. Peer forums where dedicated to each of the eight professional profiles involved in the training in order to discuss on common training and professional issues. Subject forums where moderated by experts and the participating in discussions was tracked by the system as the discussion with the expert on the training main topics is included in the training path saved in the trainees’ portfolio.

[edit] What worked

Interactive activities and multimedia contents were particularly appreciated especially by trainees with less or no online training experience. The decision of implementing different online environments with different functions and tools relating to the characteristics and attitudes of the specific professional profile seems to point out that there is no readymade platform on the market, capable to personalize training paths for different targets, catering for large numbers of trainees, and maintaining the quality possible with a small number of users. INDIRE’s approach is to design and implement customised platforms using open-source software and to improve continuously the use of effective digital resources in training initiatives addressed to the school personnel.

The use of ICT and digital resources supported the creation of a nation-wide system of small adult learning groups working together and situating the new knowledge and skills into the real working school context. Digital resources, documents and tools have been used in every day’s job once the trainees went back in their schools. That seemed an effective way to build a learning path bringing together aspects related to informal and formal learning.

For many trainees it has not only been a new experience and a way to enhance ICT literacy, computer and internet skills, but also a first approach to an effective learning method supporting a new concept of adult oriented pedagogy through theuse of digital resources and online activities. Being able to build their own knowledge considering personal interests, previous experiences, specific educational needs and situating the training contents in their own personal professional context was a help to overcome difficulties related to lack of previous experience in using digital resources and to the general initial perplexity.

[edit] What didn't work

Tutors, the human factor, had an important role to guarantee the effectiveness of the overall implemented digital training path. Tutors who were able to show an understanding of online relationship and communication and to support and motivate trainees influenced the effects of the initiative in many cases. In some interviews and in the online community messages many trainees expressed a very positive opinion referring to the e-tutor and evaluated positively the training itself; just a few showed conflicting opinions on e-tutors and the overall training initiative. It seems that where the e-tutor succeeded in supporting an integrated, continuous, and shared training path, the trainees easily managed to overcome difficulties related to the low level of ICT literacy.

Technical difficulty to access the online training environment and to use the online tools results from the first regional monitoring reports. The difficulties were linked to two main factors: lack of computers and internet access and low level of ICT literacy. Difficulty in accessing a computer and the internet in schools has been a serious obstacle to participation, and many trainees’ do not have a computer and a connection at home. A part of trainees’ did not have basic ICT skills and although preliminary ICT literacy courseware was provided, this was not enough to guarantee a shared initial ICT literacy skill base. Considering the feedback received from some local monitoring reports, and interviews to trainees and tutors involved in the initiative, the ICT oriented approach was new for many trainees but after a first period the course was perceived as effective when trainees could concretely collaborate, share professional and emotional experiences and help each other to face problems.

[edit] Next steps

The experience described above can be considered positively, especially considering that it was almost an absolute “premiere”, for the many reasons described in the body of the article. Both the instructional model and the supporting learning environment will be improved in the light of the results emerging from the forthcoming general monitoring report and the nation-wide users’ survey. Analysing critical points in depth, and trying to cope with them will contribute to improve future training addressed to adult professionals working in the school system.

Considering the mentioned experience and considering the resulting factors of success and critical aspects, we plan to implement a permanent online environment in order to provide all in-service administrative and technical school staff with digital learning resources. The aim will be to provide an ICT enhanced knowledge sharing system with a repository of online learning resources in order to bridge the gap between formal, informal and non-formal adult learning and support the creation and the development of communities of practice.

[edit] References/website

Biondi G. (2007), Scuole, tecnologie, apprendimento: scenari del futuro, in IR: Innovazione e Ricerca, march 2007, <[1]>

CALIBRATE – Learning Resources for School, Website: <[2]>

EUN (2004), INSIGHT special report - Why Europe Needs Free and Open Source Software and Contents in School, European SchoolNet, Bruxelles.

Faggioli M. (2005), Dai corsi alle comunità di pratica: nuove prospettive per la formazione degli insegnanti, 23/11/2005, in IR: Innovazione e Ricerca, november 2005, <[3]>

Granello S. (2005), Personale ATA, In Voci Della Scuola – Vol. V, Tecnodid, Napoli.

Jonassen D. (1999), Designing Constructivist Learning Environments, In Reigeluth, Charles M., Instructional-Design Theories And Models - Volume Ii, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah.

M.I.U.R. – OO.SS. (2004), Intesa sul sistema di formazione del personale ATA, 20th july 2004,

Wenger, E. (1999), Communities Of Practice. Learning Meaning And Identity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Wiley, D. (2006), The current state of open educational resources. iterating toward openness. Weblog entry, February 3. <[4]>

Wiley, D. (2006), Open source, openness, and higher education. Innovate Journal of Online Education, (3)1, <[5]>