3 Competency Sets of Suitable Learning Technologies
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Document Type Document Title Report Learning technologies – contextual analysis Contract Number Version 619347 1.0 Project no. 619347 EAGLE- EnhAnced Government LEarning Objective ICT-2013.8.2 Technology-enhanced learning; c) Holistic learning solutions for managing, reaching and engaging learners in the public administrations Small-scale Collaborative Project (STREP) FP7-ICT-2013-11 www.fp7-eagle.eu Deliverable. No. 4.3 Learning technologies – contextual analysis WP 4 - LEARNING – OER Learning for e-Enabling (Critical Skill 2) Lead Participant: ZHAW Approval Partner short name Name Date Panel / Function Guerra C. V. ZHAW/Coordinator Assfalg, R.; DHBW/Contributor 03/06/2015 Author Fitzpatrick D.; DCU/Contributor 16/07/2015 Roth S. ZHAW/Contributor Reviewer Sabine Moebs DHBW 18/07/2015 This project has received funding from the European Union‘s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No 619347. EAGLE _D4.3_20150603 i Document Type Document Title Report Learning technologies – contextual analysis Contract Number Version 619347 1.0 Table of Contents GLOSSARY ........................................................................................................................ 1 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 2 2 SELECTION OF EAGLE LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES - PEDAGOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS .. 3 2.1 COMMUNITY BUILDING ................................................................................................. 4 2.1.1 Networking - activities and tools ...................................................................... 5 2.1.2 Participation - activities and tools ..................................................................... 7 2.1.3 Sharing - activities and tools ............................................................................ 8 2.2 AUTHORING USER-GENERATED OERS ................................................................................ 9 2.3 AUTONOMOUS LEARNING MANAGEMENT - ACTIVITIES AND TOOLS ............................................ 13 3 TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR TOOLS SELECTION............................................... 14 3.1 FREE AND OPEN SOURCE .............................................................................................. 15 3.2 FREQUENTLY USED MEDIA FORMATS ................................................................................ 15 3.3 MOBILE COMPATIBILITY .............................................................................................. 17 3.4 INTEGRATION OF USER-GENERATED OERS INTO THE EAGLE PLATFORM ...................................... 18 4 ACCESSIBILITY CRITERIA FOR TOOLS EVALUA ............................................................ 19 4.1 USABILITY CRITERIA FOR ACCESSIBLE WEB TOOLS ................................................................ 19 4.1.1 Clarity and Structure ..................................................................................... 20 4.1.2 User Guidance and Navigation ....................................................................... 20 4.1.3 Text and Language ....................................................................................... 21 4.1.4 Graphics, animated Features and Multimedia .................................................. 22 4.1.5 Links ........................................................................................................... 23 4.1.6 Search ......................................................................................................... 23 4.1.7 Currentness, Consistency and Robustness ........................................................ 24 4.1.8 Contact Information and Support ................................................................... 24 4.1.9 Registration and Forms ................................................................................. 25 4.2 CONTENT AUTHORING CRITERIA ..................................................................................... 26 5 EXAMPLE OF LIFERAY TOOLS’ EVALUATION .............................................................. 28 5.1 ACCESSIBILITY TEST RESULTS OF LIFERAY’S MESSAGE BOARD .................................................. 28 5.2 ACESSIBILITY TEST OF LIFERAY’S WIKI ............................................................................... 32 EAGLE _D4.3_20150603 ii Document Type Document Title Report Learning technologies – contextual analysis Contract Number Version 619347 1.0 5.3 PRELIMINARY REMARKS FROM ACCESSIBILITY EVALUATION ...................................................... 35 6 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 36 7 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 37 8 APPENDIX ................................................................................................................ 38 A. 8.1 PEDAGOGICAL, TECHNICAL AND ACCESSIBLITY CRITERIA FOR EAGLE OER-LP LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES EVALUATION. ................................................................................................. 38 B. 8.2 ACCESIBILITY TEST RESULTS FOR EAGLE OER_LP (LIFERRAY) – MESSAGE BOARDS ............... 47 EAGLE _D4.3_20150603 iii Document Type Document Title Report Learning technologies – contextual analysis Contract Number Version 619347 1.0 Glossary Authoring activities Authoring activities are practices to create or to adapt Open Educational Resources. The terms (activities) creation and adaptation are not interchangeably used. While creation is the development of any media from scratch; adaptation implies the reuse of previously existing media which are significantly changed. Hence, the definition of authoring in the project context of EAGLE does not refer to the mere editing of web-content (it is focused on OER content). Making minor OER changes or developing web content such as the user profile on the EAGLE platform is defined as editing. Authoring Authoring is creating, adapting content Autonomous Learning As defined for the EAGLE project covers all the learning activities needed by a professional in his or her job to obtain knowledge and skills needed to fulfil his or her tasks. The learner is autonomous in searching and choosing learning offers that are appropriate to his/her problem Community for informal It is confirmed by a group of people with similar interests that share learning a work field and get together to exchange knowledge and experiences with the aim of improving work practices and steer their own professional development Portlet Portlet is a content component that is pluggable into a user interface of a web portal. A portal page is displayed as a collection of portlet windows and each portlet window displays a portlet. Portlet applications may include news, e-mail, weather forecast, discussion forums, images etc. Most of the portlets are designed based on portlet standards so that they can be plugged in any portal that supports those standards. EAGLE _D4.3_20150603 1 Document Type Document Title Report Learning technologies – contextual analysis Contract Number Version 619347 1.0 1 1 Introduction As detailed in the project’s Description of Work (DoW), EAGLE’s main objective is to equip employees in rural local governments with a holistic solution for professional development based on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Source (OS) tools to support and foster autonomous learning at the workplace. The use of OERs aims to provide flexible and cost-effective learning solutions to employees in Public Administration (PA) in Rural Local Governments (RLG), supporting community based knowledge-building processes. Considering that EAGLE is an OS project, task 4.3 is responsible for the development of selection criteria which will allow developers to know which technologies are needed to support the designed learning processes and which criteria need to be considered to choose the actual tools to be integrated to the EAGLE platform. These criteria are also important for the sustainability of the project given the dynamically changing landscape of OS tools. The work undertaken to define which tools will support the learning processes within EAGLE was focused in specifying the activities related to three key processes: ● Community building ● Content creation ● Autonomous learning When referring to Social and Communication Technologies (SCT) and OS tools, it gets almost impossible to establish a unique categorization of tools, due to the increasing tendency to gather multiple pieces of functionality into one tool. When combining this with the facility of skilled users who are able to adapt the technology to their needs, it can be said that almost any tool is virtually multi-purpose and its use depends mainly on the users’ competences, technical infrastructure at hand and needs. Therefore in the present document some ad hoc classifications were made to facilitate the use of this information within the EAGLE project or in similar work. When selecting tools and features to support community building and networking processes it is worth differentiating between the collaborative and social features of a tool. Collaborative features are those that enable multiple users to work simultaneously (although not necessarily synchronously) in the production of an object or artefact, e.g. a Wiki allows collaborative writing. While social features provide the