An Exploratory Study for the Deployment of a Techno-pedagogical

Staff Learning Environment

Laurent Moccozet, Omar Benkacem, Bineta Ndiaye, Vjollca Ahmeti, Patrick Roth, Pierre-

Yves Burgi, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Plan

• Context• Motivations• Exploratory study• Study results• Implementation• Further developments• Conclusion

Context

• How to introduce and implement PLE at an institution level such as the University of Geneva ?– Various audiences (students, teaching staff,

administrative and technical staff)– A range of available e-learning systems (2 LMSs,

CMS, Blog, Mediaserver, Portal my.unige, etc…)

Motivation

• Lots of sound objectives: – Encourage and develop learners autonomy in an institutional

context.– Provide an integrated access to formal and informal resources.– Facilitate the development of collaborative learning networks

among learners.• But where are we starting from:

What are the current practices ?Don’t change practices, make them evolve

Exploratory study

• Three action lines– Quantitative survey

• 14000 students asked about their IT and Web 2.0 practices (from which 1400 answered). <1>– Data collect and processing

– Qualitative survey• Interviews with 7 members of the boards of students associations

from different faculties. <2>• Interviews with 10 teachers and techno-pedagogical experts. <3>

Study ResultsInstitutional

resources

External resources

Local resources • Local resources:

– Personal resources (mainly available from the student’s personal equipments – laptop, smartphone, desktop…).

• Institutional resources:– Resources available from the

institution (mainly LMSs).

• External (cloud) resources:– Resources available from the Web 2.0

ecosystem.

Study results

Study results• Equipment ? Definitely not a problem !• Students are

– not proactive with web 2.0 resources and tools usage (no particular interest to “discover”).

– opportunistic with their usages of Web 2.0 resources and tools. • usages are mainly evolving according to the

evolution of the environment they know (ex : Facebook, google …)

– having informal learning/training usages of the Web 2.0 resources and tools (but they don’t know)

Study results

• Doctoral students are identified as a potential “early adopters” audience for a PLE.

• Doctoral students are the one that are the more interested in accessing “external” resources.

Implementation

A global approach:Pedagogical axis associates technology watch, awareness and training.Technological axis introduces the PLE as a “pedagogical dashboard” to aggregate IT resources.

Implementation

Pedagogical axis

Awareness Dedicated blog

Watch: Introduction of a collaborative tool for evaluating and sharing resources

Training:Soft skills seminars for PhD students (digital & information literacy) Dedicated training modules (based on activities) Experimenting dashboard in pilot classes

Technological axis

• Pedagogical dashboard :– A «hub», a single entry point to

access/manage formal and informal resources.

– Evolutive environment:• Pre-integrated resources

(no requirement to discover…)• Open to new resources

(… but you if you want/can anyway)

Technological axis

Graaasp

Technological axis

Further developments

• Extend PLE with/to other institutions:– Lausanne Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

(European project ROLE) – University of Fribourg – University of Lausanne– University of Zurich– SWITCH members

Conclusion

• Design and build an accurate global environment to stimulate new models of learning.

Your questions