Necessidades de formação contínua dos professores para utilização das TIC na escola : um estudo com professores de uma escola secundária em Cabo Verde

No momento em que se verifica algumas reformas no sistema educativo cabo-verdiano, torna-se necessário analisar a questão da formação dos professores de forma a prepará-los para a função que têm que desempenhar. Com a realização deste estudo, pretende-se diagnosticar percursos e necessidade de formação dos professores na área das Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), bem como descrever o sentido de competência (auto-eficácia) dos professores na utilização das tecnologias, concretamente à mobilização dos mesmos no processo ensino e aprendizagem. Tendo em conta os objetivos do estudo, optou-se por utilizar uma metodologia de natureza quantitativa. O estudo integra a participação de 87 professores. Escolheu-se a técnica de inquérito, realizando um inquérito por questionário com questões fechadas aos professores da Escola Secundária Abílio Duarte situada na Cidade da Praia, ilha de Santiago, Cabo Verde. A revisão da literatura permitiu verificar que já foram desenvolvidas iniciativas, a nível nacional, para a implementação das TIC nas escolas. Atualmente destaca-se o programa Mundu Novu do governo de Cabo Verde, coordenado pelo Ministério da Educação, que tem como objetivo modernizar o processo de ensino através da utilização das TIC criando um novo paradigma de ensino interativo. Os resultados apontam para a progressiva utilização das TIC nas atividades dos professores que revelam um moderado sentido de auto-eficácia de utilização das TIC. A formação de professores é apontada como o principal obstáculo à integração e utilização educativa das TIC.

The Relationship between Teachers and Students in the Classroom: Communicative Language Teaching Approach and Cooperative Learning Strategy to Improve Learning

The aim of this research is to to investigate how a supportive relationship between teachers and students in the classroom can improve the learning process. By having a good relationship with students, teachers can offer to students chances to be motivated and feel engaged in the learning process. Students will be engaged actively in the learning instead of being passive learners. I wish to investigate how using communicative approach and cooperative learning strategies while teaching do affect and improve students’ learning performance. To achieve these goals qualitative data collection was used as the primary method. The results show that teachers and students value a supportive and caring relationship between them and that interaction is essential to the teacher-student relationship. This sense of caring and supporting from teachers motivates students to become a more interested learner. Students benefit and are motivated when their teachers create a safe and trustful environment. And also the methods and strategies teachers uses, makes students feel engaged and stimulated to participate in the learning process. The students have in their mind that a positive relationship with their teachers positively impacts their interest and motivation in school which contributes to the enhancement of the learning process.

The Arts (Music, Arts&Crafts and Drama) as a procedure for learning pre-school content: Grupo Edebé Project

There is nothing as amazing and fascinating as children learning process. Between 0 and 6 years old, a child brain develops in a waythat will never be repeated. At this age, children are eager to discover and they have great potential of active and affective life.Because of this, their learning capacity in this period is incalculable. (Jordan-Decarbo y Nelson, 2002; Wild, 1999).Pre-school Education is a unique and special stage, with self identity, which aims are:attending children as a whole,motivate them to learn,give them an affective and stable environment in which they can grow up and get to be balanced and confident people and inwhich they can relate to others, learn, enjoy and be happy.Arts, Music, Visual Arts and Drama (Gardner, 1994) can provide a framework of special, even unique, personal expression.With the aim of introducing qualitative improvements in the education of children and to ensure their emotional wellbeing, and havingnoticed that teachers had important needs and concerns as regards to diversity in their student groups, we developed a programbased on the detection of needs and concerns explained by professionals in education.This program of Grupo edebé, object of our research, is a multicultural, interdisciplinary and globalizing project the aims of which are:developing children's talent and personality,keeping their imagination and creativity and using these as a learning resource,promoting reasoning, favouring expression and communication,providing children with the tools to manage their emotions,and especially, introducing Arts as a procedure to increase learning.We wanted to start the research by studying the impact (Brice, 2003) that this last point had on the learning of five-year-old childrenschooled in multicultural environments.Therefore, the main goal of the research was the assessment of the implementation of a child education programme attending todiversity in a population of five-year-old children, specifically in the practice of procedures based on the use of Arts (music, arts andcrafts and theatre) as a vehicle or procedure for learning contents in Pre-school stage.Because children emotional welfare was a subject of our concern, and bearing in mind that the affective aspects are of vitalimportance for learning and child development (Parke and Gauvain, 2009), Grupo Edebé has also evaluated the starting, evolving andfinal impact in five-year-old children given that they finish Pre-school education at that age.

Satisfaction survey of Directed Experiential Learning (DEL)

The aim of this questionnaire is to assess your experience of the DEL learning process as developed by your university. The questionnaire is anonymous and it should not take more than fifteen minutes to complete.

On learning dynamics underlying the evolution of learning rules.

In order to understand the development of non-genetically encoded actions during an animal's lifespan, it is necessary to analyze the dynamics and evolution of learning rules producing behavior. Owing to the intrinsic stochastic and frequency-dependent nature of learning dynamics, these rules are often studied in evolutionary biology via agent-based computer simulations. In this paper, we show that stochastic approximation theory can help to qualitatively understand learning dynamics and formulate analytical models for the evolution of learning rules. We consider a population of individuals repeatedly interacting during their lifespan, and where the stage game faced by the individuals fluctuates according to an environmental stochastic process. Individuals adjust their behavioral actions according to learning rules belonging to the class of experience-weighted attraction learning mechanisms, which includes standard reinforcement and Bayesian learning as special cases. We use stochastic approximation theory in order to derive differential equations governing action play probabilities, which turn out to have qualitative features of mutator-selection equations. We then perform agent-based simulations to find the conditions where the deterministic approximation is closest to the original stochastic learning process for standard 2-action 2-player fluctuating games, where interaction between learning rules and preference reversal may occur. Finally, we analyze a simplified model for the evolution of learning in a producer-scrounger game, which shows that the exploration rate can interact in a non-intuitive way with other features of co-evolving learning rules. Overall, our analyses illustrate the usefulness of applying stochastic approximation theory in the study of animal learning.

Schemata as a framework for full body and physical design interfaces

Digital art interfaces presents cognitiveparadigms that deals with the recognition of the symbols and representations through interaction.What is presented in this paper is anapproximation of the bodily experience in that particular scenario and a new proposal which has the aim to contribute more ideas and criteria in the analysis of the learning process of aparticipant discovering an interactive space or interface. For that I propose a first new approach where metaphorically I tried to extrapolate the stages of the psychology of development stated byJean Piaget in the interface design domain.

Metabolic activation pattern of distinct hippocampal subregions during spatial learning and memory retrieval.

Activation dynamics of hippocampal subregions during spatial learning and their interplay with neocortical regions is an important dimension in the understanding of hippocampal function. Using the (14C)-2-deoxyglucose autoradiographic method, we have characterized the metabolic changes occurring in hippocampal subregions in mice while learning an eight-arm radial maze task. Autoradiogram densitometry revealed a heterogeneous and evolving pattern of enhanced metabolic activity throughout the hippocampus during the training period and on recall. In the early stages of training, activity was enhanced in the CA1 area from the intermediate portion to the posterior end as well as in the CA3 area within the intermediate portion of the hippocampus. At later stages, CA1 and CA3 activations spread over the entire longitudinal axis, while dentate gyrus (DG) activation occurred from the anterior to the intermediate zone. Activation of the retrosplenial cortex but not the amygdala was also observed during the learning process. On recall, only DG activation was observed in the same anterior part of the hippocampus. These results suggest the existence of a functional segmentation of the hippocampus, each subregion being dynamically but also differentially recruited along the acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval process in parallel with some neocortical sites.

Faculty-librarians collaboration in an e-learning experience : resources management and training in Open University of Catalonia (UOC)

The traditional model of learning based on knowledge transfer doesn't promote the acquisition of information-related competencies and development of autonomous learning. More needs to be done to embrace learner-centred approaches, based on constructivism, collaboration and co-operation. This new learning paradigm is aligned with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) requirements. In this sense, a learning experience based in faculty' librarian collaboration was seen as the best option for promoting student engagement and also a way to increase information-related competences in Open University of Catalonia (UOC) academic context. This case study outlines the benefits of teacher-librarian collaboration in terms of pedagogy innovation, resources management and introduction of open educational resources (OER) in virtual classrooms, Information literacy (IL) training and use of 2.0 tools in teaching. Our faculty-librarian's collaboration aims to provide an example of technology-enhanced learning and demonstrate how working together improves the quality and relevance of educational resources in UOC's virtual classrooms. Under this new approach, while teachers change their role from instructors to facilitators of the learning process and extend their reach to students, libraries acquire an important presence in the academic learning communities.

Creativity in Collaborative Learning across the Life Span

Peer-reviewed

Trabajo colaborativo en entornos e-learning y desarrollo de competencias transversales de trabajo en equipo: Análisis del caso del Máster en gestión de Proyectos en Cooperación Internacional, CSEU La Salle

Peer-reviewed

Improving Searching and Browsing Capabilities of Learning Object Repositories

Learning object repositories are a basic piece of virtual learning environments used for content management. Nevertheless, learning objects have special characteristics that make traditional solutions for content management ine ective. In particular, browsing and searching for learning objects cannot be based on the typical authoritative meta-data used for describing content, such as author, title or publicationdate, among others. We propose to build a social layer on top of a learning object repository, providing nal users with additional services fordescribing, rating and curating learning objects from a teaching perspective. All these interactions among users, services and resources can be captured and further analyzed, so both browsing and searching can be personalized according to user pro le and the educational context, helping users to nd the most valuable resources for their learning process. In this paper we propose to use reputation schemes and collaborative filtering techniques for improving the user interface of a DSpace based learning object repository.

Relationships between users, resources and services in learning object repositories

In this paper we describe a proposal for defining the relationships between resources, users and services in a digital repository. Nowadays, virtual learning environments are widely used but digital repositories are not fully integrated yet into the learning process. Our final goal is to provide final users with recommendation systems and reputation schemes that help them to build a true learning community around the institutional repository, taking into account their educational context (i.e. the courses they are enrolled into) and their activity (i.e. system usage by their classmates and teachers). In order to do so, we extend the basic resource concept in a traditional digital repository by adding all the educational context and other elements from end-users' profiles, thus bridging users, resources and services, and shifting from a library-centered paradigm to a learning-centered one.

Autoevaluación intercativa y lúdica de Tecnología Farmacéutica

[eng] The individual work of the student, in the European space for higher education, takes a particular relevance. At the same time, in this context, a complex challenge is presented to the professors, in the educational and formative work aimed at the students as well as in the organization of educational plans. Among the different activities that the system of ECTS comprises, we can highlight the preparation and accomplishment of examinations. This fact means to integrate into the learning process the individual and autonomous work that the students have to carry out to acquire the knowledge and to surpass the evaluation test. To achieve this objective, a database including multiple choice questions with three possible answers has been developed (similar to those composing part of the Pharmaceutical Technology test). This database has a design that facilitates its use by professors and students interested in this area and allows as the interactive evaluation of obligatory and optional subjects from the formal point of view, as a corporate recreational environment to make their employment more attractive for the students. The edition of the Web page of the Pharmaceutical Technology Teaching Innovation Group of the UB has been used to place this database within everybody"s reach. [spa] El trabajo individual del alumno adquiere, dentro del marco europeo de educación superior, una particular relevancia. Al mismo tiempo, en este contexto, a los profesores se nos presenta un reto complejo, tanto en nuestra labor docente y formativa del alumno, como en la organización de los planes docentes. De las distintas actividades que engloba el crédito europeo podemos destacar la preparación y realización de exámenes, hecho que supone integrar en el proceso de aprendizaje el trabajo individual y autónomo que realiza el estudiante para adquirir los conocimientos y superar las pruebas de evaluación. Para conseguir este objetivo se ha planteado la elaboración de una base de preguntas con tres respuestas posibles (del tipo de las que componen parte de los exámenes de Tecnología Farmacéutica), en forma de base de datos con un formato que facilite su utilización por parte de profesores y alumnos interesados en este ámbito y que permita tanto la evaluación interactiva de las asignaturas troncales y optativas desde el punto de vista formal, como su aplicación en un entorno lúdico corporativo para hacer más atrayente su empleo por los estudiantes. Se ha aprovechado la edición de la página Web del Grupo de Innovación Docente de Tecnología Farmacéutica de la UB para ponerlo al alcance de todos.

Muutos- ja oppimisprosessin johtaminen teollisuusyrityksessä

Kilpailukeinojen muuttuessa teollisuusyritysten muutostarve nopeutuu. Tämä aiheuttaa yritysten henkilökunnalle uusia haasteita ja lisää paineita elinikäiseen oppimiseen. Samalla se aiheuttaa koko yrityksen organisaatiolle yhteisen oppimisen tarpeen eli muuttumisen oppivaksi organisaatioksi. työssä on tutkittu oppivan organisaation käsitettä, valmiuksia muutosjohtamiseen sekä tarvittavaa asennetta muutosten tehokkaaseen läpivientiin. Muutoksen johtamiseen on esitetty muutosmallia, jonka sovellettavuutta on arvioitu case-yrityksen avulla. Muutosasenteen lisäksi on kiinnitetty huomiota mittaamiseen ja muutosten jatkumiseen päättymättöminä prosesseina. Työn tulokseksi saatiin mm. seuraavia toimenpide-ehdotuksia: Koulutusta tulisi lisätä ylimmälle johdole ja mielipidevaikuttajille. Organisaatiota pitäisi muuttaa tiedonkulkua suosivaksi ja saattaa tietojärjestelmät joustaviksi ja muutoksia tukeviksi järjestelmmiksi.

Best practice report on policy learning infrastructures in innovative labour market policies

This report synthesizes the findings of 11 country reports on policy learning in labour market and social policies that were conducted as part of WP5 of the INSPIRES project, which is funded by the 7th Framework Program of the EU-Commission. Notably, this report puts forward objectives of policy learning, discusses tools, processes and institutions of policy learning and presents the impacts of various tools and structures of the policy learning infrastructure for the actual policy learning process. The report defines three objectives of policy learning: evaluation and assessment of policy effectiveness, vision building and planning, and consensus building. In the 11 countries under consideration, the tools and processes of the policy learning, infrastructure can be classified into three broad groups: public bodies, expert councils, and parties, interest groups and the private sector. Finally, we develop four recommendations for policy learning: Firstly, learning processes should keep the balance between centralisation and plurality. Secondly, learning processes should be kept stable beyond the usual political business cycles. Thirdly, policy learning tools and infrastructures should be sufficiently independent from political influence or bias. Fourth, Policy learning tools and infrastructures should balance out mere effectiveness, evaluation and vision building.