e-LEARNING 2.0. THE NEW LEARNING/TEACHING
PARADIGM
Building up the Collaborative Learning Community
Carlos León de Mora, Julio Cabero Almenara, Juan Camarillo Casado
Information Department, University of Seville, Avda Reina Mercedes s/n. Edif. Rojo, 41012 Sevilla, Spain
Ana Conde Gómez
SADIEL Information Technologies, C/ Isaac Newton 3, 41092 Sevilla, Spain
Keywords: European Higher Education Area, Virtual Learning, Mobility, Community building, Collaborative learning.
Abstract: The University of Seville (UoS) is engaged in a revolution that affects the methodology used in the
educational process and the relationships between the different actors involved in it. The process is driven
by the convergence towards the EHEA objectives and the implementation of the new 2.0 educational
paradigm. This convergence relies on the introduction of new methods and technologies in order to foster
online access to information and services, the development of an infrastructure to support user mobility, and
the collaboration between the members of the university community. The evolution from a granular
scenario, with 4500 teachers and multiple isolated experiences regarding teaching and sharing information,
to the present situation in which all of them accept a corporate e-learning environment has meant a great
challenge. The results leave no room for doubt. The University of Seville has achieved the involvement of
the entire community in the initiatives, and a spectacular progress regarding the implementation of virtual
education services, reaching a penetration of over 80% in terms of the number of students who benefit from
the new environment, less than two years after launching the Virtual Educational Services.
1 THE NEW SCENARIO
After five hundred years of history, Universities are
in a process of change that represents a double
revolution in the learning- teaching methodology
and in the relations between the different actors
involved in the process.
On the one hand, the institution is experiencing a
process of evolution from the classical education
model whose principal agent is the teacher, to a new
one in which the student is the leading figure, origin
and destination of any initiative in this area.
This evolution determines the need for highly
personalised services and for building a new
paradigm, characterised by an easy access to the
educational offer and its related services. Moreover,
it will consolidate new concepts related to e-
government services and in fact, new ways of
communication and collaborative working.
On the other hand, the revolution is driven by the
establishment of the European Higher Education
Area (EHEA), an open environment with no
obstacles to the widespread mobility amongst the
University Community, outlined by the declarations
of La Sorbonne (1998) and Bologna (1999). The
convergence towards the EHEA requires answering
to new demands in the design of the educational
offer and of the learning-teaching methodologies, as
well as strengthening the capitalisation of ICT and e-
government services in the educational environment.
The new Higher Education Model requires the
global redesign of degrees and educational offer, a
new evaluation and accreditation system and a more
flexible curricular organization. This ends up in the
main subject of this article, the need and the fact that
learnig-teaching methodologies focus on the
students’ effective work and their learning, and
encourage their mobility among different academic
organisations, Europe wide, and even world wide.
305
León de Mora C., Cabero Almenara J., Camarillo Casado J. and Conde Gómez A. (2009).
e-LEARNING 2.0. THE NEW LEARNING/TEACHING PARADIGM - Building up the Collaborative Learning Community.
In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 305-308
DOI: 10.5220/0001979103050308
Copyright
c
SciTePress
Multimedia technologies are critical to achieve
these goals. Its application allows completing
standard Learning Management Systems through
functionalities that support teamwork, virtual
classes, and any other activity requiring active
collaboration through audio and/or video facilities
and facilitate personalized tutoring services.
2 VIRTUAL LEARNING AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE
2.1 The UoS Scenario
The UoS is the second Spanish university and the
first of Andalusia by number of students, which
explains its high visibility and social impact, as it
provides educational services to a community of
nearly 70.000 students and 7.000 professionals
(including teachers, researchers and administrative
staff). The UoS educational offer includes 90
degrees, 125 doctoral programs and over 4400
graduate and postgraduate courses.
With these dimensions, it is easy to understand
the enormous complexity of the organization, and
the importance of an efficient process planning to
properly answer to the needs of all members of the
university community. These requirements are not
marked exclusively by the convergence towards the
EHEA, but they also respond to the demands of
teachers and students of getting a collaborative e-
learning environment and to exploit the full potential
of ICTs in their daily activities, from the learning
processes to those devoted to academic management
(registration, evaluation…).
The UoS convergence towards the EHEA began
in 2006, launching several actions according to a
well defined Strategic Plan, which decision-making
relies on the UoS government team:
The creation of the Digital University Area and
its close coordination with other university
services directly related to teaching, such as
the Institute of Educational Sciences, the
Service for Audiovisual Resources (SAV), or
the Center for Lifelong Learning.
The integration of the Virtual Learning
Platform in the corporate technological and
human structure of the UoS, specifically with
the academic management systems.
The promotion of an Educational
Methodologies Renewal Plan, to grant that
every student and every teacher have at their
disposal the tools, contents and procedures
needed to complete their learning-teaching
processes in an efficient and natural way,
adapted to their specific circumstances.
The promotion of the virtual educational offer
among the members of the university
community, by promoting the technical
infrastructure and encouraging the
development of digital content.
The adoption of widely accepted standards,
including SCORM and IMS, to ensure
consistent results, integrable with other
solutions, and accessible with minimum
technological requirements.
The implementation of a set of accompanying
measures to ensure that services are available
to the entire community: training in the use of
the platforms and new concepts of education,
technical and tutorial support, among others.
2.2 Supporting Active Collaboration
With respect to the Corporate Virtual Learning
Services, at the UoS the first step has been to set up
an LMS based on the WebCT CE6 platform, which
is being used for general learning-teaching purposes,
including training for teachers in charge of
eLearning, and a single web access point to the
information and to the services offered, including
education, eLearning and e-Government related
services.
In this process, particular attention has been paid
to the definition of the methodological and
pedagogical framework for the delivery of
eLearning based education and to the identification
of the technological standards that apply to this
discipline.
To ensure the success of the project, at the UoS
the virtual learning support services include
technical assistance to the end-users, support to the
platforms’ technical operation, and follow-up and
control activities, monitoring relevant indicators that
help define continuous services improvement.
In addition, the UoS has promoted pedagogical
support services for content creation, a training plan
for teachers/authors, including software tools
(Course Genie) and an educational resources design
methodology (content design for e-learning).
The goal is to advance in the virtualization of the
subjects until, in many cases, all of their contents are
available to students through the University’s LMS
and can be completely taught through it.
This significant deployment has meant, first, an
exponential growth in the use of the platform by the
university community and, secondly, the continuous
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improvement of the LMS platform through the
integration of a broad range of collaboration
facilities, based on web 2.0 functionalities (wikis,
social networks) and on multimedia tools (virtual
classrooms, voice tools, technology enabled
classrooms, etc.), that make possible the evolution of
learning-teaching processes in a way that differs
completely from the traditional teaching models.
The total number of virtualised courses covering
regular curricula subjects reached 1319, which
added to the 200 graduate programs, accounted for
nearly 30% of subjects available through the Virtual
Learning Platform at the end of the academic year
2007/2008. This value has increased to nearly 2000
subjects already incorporated for the current
academic year.
Regarding access to the platform, the number of
users and of sessions per user also demonstrate an
increasing use of the platform by teachers and
students. It is worth to mention that the academic
year 2007/2008 began with the connection of 12000
students per month, while in 2008/2009 this number
increased to 30000 different users, with more than
50,000 students enrolled, which represents over 85%
of the total amount.
The student accesses to the site have experienced
an exponential growth, from 26773 in November
2006, to over 190000 in the same month in 2007,
and more than 230000 monthly accesses in 2008.
The extraordinary good reception that the
Service has had has resulted in an exponential
increase in the number of registrations to the courses
offered through the LMS platform, as well as in the
requests for support from such users, due to the
generalized use of the platform among the university
community members and to the continuous growth
of the courses and contents offer.
2.3 Multimedia Technologies for
Learning
The UoS has expanded the possibilities of its virtual
learning platform through the integration of virtual
classroom functionalities and voice tools, to
encourage and facilitate social activities,
collaboration, guided practice and evaluation. This is
one of the greatest exponents of on-line real time
virtual learning.
Virtual Classroom tools allow the use of audio,
video, shared applications and presentation of
educational materials. Through these resources (Live
Classroom) teachers can make use of important
interaction elements which would be impossible to
include in traditional training methods.
Thanks to the complete integration of these tools
with the Virtual Learning Platform, the academic
management activities also become easier, as it is
possible to link the registration to courses
automatically to the list of the attendants to the
webinars. This way, teachers can focus on their
teaching activities, preparing their virtual lectures,
and having granted access solely for students
registered in its subjects.
At the same time, the UoS has undertaken other
initiatives which have helped to reinforce the Virtual
Learning Service, such as the Integrative
Technology-enabled Classroom Project, which
provides a multi-user workspace with high quality
real time audio and video transmissions, within an
immersive environment in which users can freely
move and interact as if they were all in the same
room.
Another consolidated project within this area is
the Andalusian Virtual Campus (AVC) which is
running entirely on a virtual and distance teaching
environment using the virtual learning platforms of
all the universities of Andalusia. At present the AVC
has made available over 80 subjects for the
2008/2009 academic year.
The integration of the Web 2.0 paradigm is
nowadays a reality. The UoS’s virtual learning
platform includes blogging, podcasting, RSS
syndication, social networks and other last
generation tools (Elgg, Mediawiki, etc.). The main
intention behind this is to encourage and normalise
collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Furthermore, it is promoting open access to
educational materials for anyone, anywhere, without
limiting its accessibility because of issues related to
intellectual property rights, through the
OpenCourseWare (OCW) project.
This portfolio of projects define a mature and
integrated scenario for the provision of virtual
learning services to the UoS users community.
Looking ahead, the University is committed to
further develop and qualify their Virtual Teaching
and Learning Services, with the aim of promoting
the students social network and mobility through the
development of projects concerning Delegated
Authentication which allows “single sign-on among
universities”, the use of Learning Objects
repositories, the strengthening of OCW initiatives
and the introduction of Knowledge Management
Systems, among others.
As an additional measure to guarantee mobility,
the UoS takes part of the Eduroam project
(Educational Roaming), which allows connectivity
and mobility through different worldwide wireless
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research networks participating in the project
(www.reinus.us.es/eduroam.es.html).
The design and implementation of a Learning
Objects Repository represents a significant advance
in the exploitation, re-use and optimization of the
updating efforts of contents generated by other
authors, either directly or with minimal changes.
Having a single access point to structured and
indexed educational resources (learning objects)
strengthens the Community and allows any author to
learn about what others are developing in the same
field. This is particularly useful in environments
where there is plenty of material generated for
courses plus a significant volume of teachers and
students in continuous growth. The repository will
be integrated with the UoS’s LMS platform and will
be defined according to standards in order to allow
communication with other universities’ repositories.
3 CONCLUSIONS
At present, the UoS counts on a mature
organisational and managerial scenario, oriented to
the establishment of the EHEA and of the student
oriented learning model.
To this aim, technologies, procedures and
methodologies have been merged to allow the
optimisation of internal procedures, the access to
information and indicators on which rely the
decision making process, the use of e-learning
platforms and virtual campus, and the deployment of
e-Government services in line with European,
national and regional directives. In parallel,
strengthening the implementation of the Educational
Methodologies Renewal Plan, and committing to
quality and continuous improvement in all of its
processes.
As a result of these actions, al the members of
the UoS community count on an integrated and
homogeneous scenario, characterized by:
Access to a virtual learning platform, integrated
with the academic management systems of the
university, and enhanced with services and
features to support collaboration and
interaction between the different members of
the learning community.
Support to the virtualization of contents, though
a collaborative model, in which a team of
experienced professionals works together with
the teachers and authors to provide advice and
technical support to the production of digital
content later accessible through the virtual
learning platform.
The availability of digital educational resources
from more than 2000 subjects through virtual
classrooms, and of complementary services
encouraging active collaboration, such as
voice and audio tools, wikis, Elgg , blogging
or content syndication.
The benefits of sharing experiences and digital
resources in an online community of more
than 50000 students and 2000 teachers, and
the possibility of accessing in a short or
medium term, to resources from other
universities, thanks to initiatives launched to
increase mobility, as the federation of
identities and repositories.
At present, the UoS virtual learning platform
gives support to over 600 concurrent users, while
over 10000 users connect to it daily. This gives an
idea of the impact that the introduction of the Virtual
Learning Service is having in the university
community. These figures have made the project of
the UoS at the forefront at national and European
level in terms of implementation of ICT as a means
to improve the teaching/learning methodologies and
to provide universal access to the educational
resources of and to their community.
The key factors for this revolution have been:
The implementation of mutually supportive
initiatives, in order to take benefit of synergy
to achieve goals. So, technological actions are
always accompanied by methodological and
reorganization approaches, training plans,
dissemination campaigns and support to users.
The involvement of the entire community in the
modernization processes and the
establishment of accompanying measures
addressed to the professionals involved in the
provision of services and to the final users.
The selection of flexible, scalable solutions,
based on broadly extended standards, able to
be merged in a comprehensive solution, as
results of a never ending iterative optimisation
process.
REFERENCES
Virtual Learning Support Site: http://ev.us.es
WebCT Learning Management System: http://ev2.us.es
Open Course Ware Inititative: http://ocwus.us.es
Learning Methodologies Renewal Plan (LMRP):
http://www.institucional.us.es/plan_renovacion/
LMRP Technical and Pedagogical Support Services:
http://www.sav.us.es/ensenanzavirtual/descripciondels
ervicio.asp
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