ENCODE4OpenU and the Preparation and Delivery of an International Collaborative MOOC: A Preliminary Analysis of its Pedagogical and Technical Implementation
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- (1)
- The project identified and described learning outcomes related to the new digital competences that are required to transition to open science, namely, the active participation of scholars in specific fields of the humanities in international digital infrastructures and in producing and sharing FAIR open data. We approached this issue by combining and adapting to the specific needs of two different competence and assessment frameworks, such as the CALOHEE assessment framework for history and the DigComp 2.1 and 2.2 Frameworks for digital competences. We suggest that this approach is also applicable to other subject areas.
- (2)
- This research addressed the matter of how to design a MOOC for academics, teaching staff, and experts. The main issues addressed in the research include the transnational design of the tool for this specific target group and the choice of the relevant to other subject areas on a larger scale. More specifically, this paper considers the tensions that arise when integrating MOOCs into specific strategies of Higher Education Institutions or Networks of Institutions, such as UNA-EUROPA; we also consider the opportunities offered by International Digital Infrastructures. These opportunities include clustering scientific communities and fostering collaboration not only in the specific research area but also in training that is geared towards open science practices within the specialized communities and their interdisciplinary networks.
- To promote collaborative, participatory, and intercultural digital approaches to ancient written heritage through new professional profiles and the focused training of skilled graduates;
- To meet the learning needs of graduates who apply highly specialized digital skills to the study of ancient writing media in old European, Asian, and African languages, through innovative teaching modules;
- To strengthen the crucial cooperative connections between higher education and cultural heritage institutions, with the latter supplying materials for teaching and self-training to academics and providing stakeholders with support services.
- Be based on an internationally shared definition of learning outcomes, taking into account the relevant European frameworks;
- Use innovative pedagogies, enabling mutual learning among trainees and teachers, lifelong learning for both (being designed as trainee-centered modules), and research-based learning (being conceived as modules that foster problem-based learning, creative planning, and hands-on work, which replicates the forms of knowledge creation and dissemination used in professional contexts);
- Enable modular integration into courses according to training needs and contexts, and be amenable to future development and implementation according to the evolution of technologies and training practices;
- Foster the inclusion of the training sets inside the university study curricula, increasing appeal through ICT-enriched learning and real-world applications.
2. Materials and Methods
- First, it produced a MOOC, which is extremely simple: it is a web page structured in seven sections/steps. Each step includes a short text introduction and one or more videos. That model—even if it appears overly basic—responds to one of the main needs we identified: the motivation of our colleagues and staff, who are using the MOOC on a voluntary basis, and who may only use single parts and skip others as they do not want to be forced to learn within a rigid structure;
- The second interesting aspect of the project is the content. The MOOC produced by the project “YouTrain” deals with issues related to non-formal education, so it gave us good ideas for the units that deal with pedagogy, especially since the modules we will be promoting are targeted not only to staff members operating in formal educational contexts but also towards (self-)training by graduates and specialists. Some videos offer excellent examples of this approach as they are short and simple but, at the same time, informative and stimulating, and include high-quality info-graphics;
- Third, it offers some tutorials which can be useful in designing a MOOC for non-formal education.
3. Results
3.1. Design
3.2. Delivery
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
- Within specific disciplinary fields (in our case, disciplines concerned with ancient written cultural heritage), an increasingly rapid digital transition is underway; this transition is connected with a wider awareness of the need to implement open science practices. Researchers (in our field as in many others) are urged to produce, manage, and share FAIR data, coordinate efforts within digital infrastructures in order to integrate research data and publications and connect with other researchers and projects to build a critical mass of searchable data across disciplinary fields. Academics and teachers, as well as researchers working in cultural heritage institutions, are not always adequately prepared to keep their knowledge up-to-date and to transfer these research competences into their daily teaching or training activities. Our research builds on the assumption that it is necessary to support teachers and academics by providing simple, easily accessible, and reusable teaching and learning materials, information about past training events (to consider as possible models), and future training events in which they can participate. The present effort, however, responds to the fundamental need to encourage academic staff to innovate in teaching and learning. Through focus groups among participants at the training workshops, we learned that international practice-based communities within fields of scientific research are the resource academics and researchers will most likely look to for support; it is, therefore, important to keep this link and to build motivation by offering training (in our case, a MOOC) which uses the infrastructures, platforms, and tools that are more directly connected with the scientific area. Through this MOOC, participants will be introduced to developments in the field and models and materials for innovative training formats and practices. This may, however, be challenging for the institutions that intend to develop and structure policies, infrastructures, and facilities for improving the digital transition in education and support opportunities for the professional development of staff, either at the level of a single HEI or at the level of a network of institutions. Our recommendation is that HEI institutions should develop policies that account for the different strategies and opportunities for professional development that are designed and implemented in scientific fields. New institutional infrastructures and facilities should be as flexible as possible to interoperate and communicate with a multiplicity of initiatives developed within the different disciplines or within interdisciplinary research communities since the wide movement towards open science have now reached a consensus on many common standards; this can be observed in the European Open Science Cloud Portal and Marketplace.
- From our experience, one of the most promising training models that might be used to bridge the gap between highly specialized humanistic competences and the digital skills needed to participate in international digital infrastructures are short intensive training activities in which trainees can practice hands-on digital encoding and review their work within the training group.Our experience with short intensive training (either in person, online, or blended) has shown that the most effective and motivating approaches include international groups and a research setting that can produce results to be published and shared on digital infrastructures; this is also confirmed by literature on the format of training activities related to digital competences in the field of ancient writing cultures [18]. These formats might benefit from further developments within the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programs scheme, where groups of students or staff undertake a short-term placement abroad, as well as participating in a compulsory virtual component that facilitates collaborative online learning exchanges and teamwork; such formats could play a role in the development of HEI policies for blended learning (see [19]). In this regard, we again suggest that there should be a strong effort to connect with the open science initiatives that are developing within international digital infrastructures.
- 3.
- We note that, when designing training activities in an international setting, it is helpful to refer to common reference points that can help to overcome the barriers created by local and national contexts. Within the ENCODE project, as illustrated in this article, we have experimented with ways to design learning outcomes for short intensive training and to deliver micro-credentials that can fit into shared European frameworks, namely, CALOHEE and DigComp 2.2. This experience is incorporated into the MOOC in order to offer a tool to teachers who are facilitating the design of trainee-centered modules, which can be shared in an international environment.
- 4.
- Training for the digital transition within disciplines is best organized at an international level in order to take advantage of project-based work within international digital infrastructures. Connections with larger projects and infrastructures enable us to constantly update training needs and training resources according to the evolution of technologies and practices. In this context, we should also note that this approach allows for the design of research-based learning, fostering problem-based learning, creative planning, and hands-on work that replicates the forms of knowledge creation and dissemination seen in professional contexts. The reciprocal learning among trainees and teachers in the same research training environment is also beneficial and relies on an recognition of the efficacy of cascade training dynamics: the digital training of graduates fosters the subsequent implementation of teachers’ awareness, digital self-training, and engagement. On the cascade effect in self-education and project-based learning, see [20].
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Salvaterra, C.; Bencivenni, A.; Fogagnolo, M.; Gheldof, T.; Vagionakis, I. ENCODE4OpenU and the Preparation and Delivery of an International Collaborative MOOC: A Preliminary Analysis of its Pedagogical and Technical Implementation. Educ. Sci. 2023, 13, 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010043
Salvaterra C, Bencivenni A, Fogagnolo M, Gheldof T, Vagionakis I. ENCODE4OpenU and the Preparation and Delivery of an International Collaborative MOOC: A Preliminary Analysis of its Pedagogical and Technical Implementation. Education Sciences. 2023; 13(1):43. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010043
Chicago/Turabian StyleSalvaterra, Carla, Alice Bencivenni, Marta Fogagnolo, Tom Gheldof, and Irene Vagionakis. 2023. "ENCODE4OpenU and the Preparation and Delivery of an International Collaborative MOOC: A Preliminary Analysis of its Pedagogical and Technical Implementation" Education Sciences 13, no. 1: 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010043
APA StyleSalvaterra, C., Bencivenni, A., Fogagnolo, M., Gheldof, T., & Vagionakis, I. (2023). ENCODE4OpenU and the Preparation and Delivery of an International Collaborative MOOC: A Preliminary Analysis of its Pedagogical and Technical Implementation. Education Sciences, 13(1), 43. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13010043