eDidaktikum: online community for scaffolding student teachers into digital culture

Kairit Tammets, Priit Tammets, Mart Laanpere :: Tallinn University, Estonia

ECER 2014, Porto :: Network 6 :: Open Learning: Media, Cultures, Environments

Prologue

1993: e-mail courses, mailing lists for teachers

1997: Tiger Leap, national strategy for IT in schools

1999: the first teachers’ portal in Estonia

2005: 70% of all Estonian teachers trained in IT skills

2007: LeMill.net

2009: teachers’ portal Koolielu.ee, today: More than 7000 registered users (there are 14 000

teachers in Estonia) Less than 8000 Learning Objects

Problem

Teachers (both experienced and recently graduated ones) belong to different culture than their students, which is undermining the teaching & learning

Introductory courses on ICT and educational technology in ITE are like a brief walk in the Hong Kong museum of history (does not make you a “local”)

Majority of ITE staff are strangers to digital culture, some actively and publicly hostile towards “digital”

“Digital” activities have been established widely only in educational bureaucracy (campus information systems, e-gradebooks in schools)

Best practice does not “accumulate”

Scaffolding

“Scaffolding is the support given during the learning process, which is tailored to the needs of the student with the intention of helping the student achieve his/her learning goals” (Sawyer 2006)

Scaffolding is gradually fading, while student takes increasingly more responsibility for his/her learning

Scaffolding can be provided by another person or by the (software) system

Affordances of the software: Maslow’s Law of Instrument (“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail")

Design-based research

Wang & Hannafin (2005): “a systematic but flexible methodology aimed to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation, based on collaboration among researchers and practitioners in real-world settings, and leading to contextually-sensitive design principles and theories”

Researchers intervene to the process under study

Open-minded exploration of “what could be”

Multivocal, participatory process using mixed-methods approach

The concept of eDidaktikum

Controlled environment, scaffolding towards digital culture, PLE

Culture of sharing: communities for courses, ad-hoc groups, projects

Annotating learning resources, blog posts etc: taxonomies based on curriculum, ITE program, educational sciences

Competence-based assessment: connect taxonomies with learning outcomes and resources

Organisation: consortium involves all ITE providers in Estonia

Technology: CMS Drupal extended with our own plugins

Learning analytics: Learning Locker LRS (TinCan API)

Learning analytics

Exploring the potential of eDidatikum

Prototype of eDidaktikum was piloted in January – May 2014, this week the new version has been taken into use in more than 10 ITE courses

Gathering feedback from users

Sustainability strategy: software development continues even after ending the project funding

Integration with a wider “digital ecosystem”: personal blogs, SSO, SIS, CMS, teachers portal Koolielu, Finnish-Estonian Educational Cloud