Innovative Technology for Collaborative Learning and Knowledge Building (ITCOLE) project

Project Brochure

Download the ITCOLE project brochure:
itcole_brochure.pdf (4MB)

Introduction

ITCOLE project focuses on developing innovative pedagogical models, design principles and technology for collaborative knowledge building to be used in European education.

The models and technology will be tested and disseminated throughout the European education landscape free of charge in order to help in building a coherent and unified network of participants that supports sharing of expertise, content, practices and tools. The ultimate goal is to build a network spearheading the use of collaborative learning technology by utilising pedagogical best practices.

The project has started on the 1st of April 2001 and it will last until 30th of June 2003. The project is funded by The European Commission in the Information Society Technologies (IST) framework; IST-00-III.2 'School of Tomorrow'.

Description of the Work

The main work of the project consists of creating software tools and pedagogical best practices, testing and refining them and eventually disseminating them throughout European education landscape. First stage tasks include reviewing the state of the art in CSCL practices and tools, generating practical pedagogical models for the use of CSCL tools (to overcome current obstacles) and refining them into a set of best practices.

Second stage work will implement a working prototype for a next generation CSCL system that enables collaborative knowledge building according to the best practices. This prototype will be tested, evaluated and improved through several development cycles in order to arrive at a highly usable, robust and scalable multi-user knowledge building environment to be used on the web.

Third stage work consists of evaluating the tool and pedagogical practices on a large scale in various schools in order to find the best match between innovative local practices and designed environment and pedagogical models. This phase will result in further refinement and development of the learning environment (the software and related practices) fusing it with the findings of the evaluation and benchmarking phase.

Final stage work aims at disseminating the software and practices widely and free of charge throughout European schools. This work aims at enabling local centers of expertise to be formed around common tools and practices that together will tie these into a Europe-wide learning network. The goal is to build a self-sustaining network of participants that will continue to use, develop and disseminate the built tools and practices with the aim of managing continued educational excellence in the field of collaborative knowledge building and information technology.

Project Objectives

The project has three key scientific and technical objectives:

1. Develop pedagogical models of collaborative knowledge building for European education.
2. Develop a modular knowledge-building environment to support collaborative learning.
3. 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).