Active learning through improved interactivity (ALTII)
Although for many years there has been a growing awareness around the world of the necessary essential changes in education systems, there is no consensus on what or how to do it. However, the belief, which stems from cognitive and constructivist theories of learning, that the student needs to be placed at the center of the learning process dominates. Nevertheless, active learning is still a rarity in practice.
COVID-19-induced teaching constraints have accelerated the application of ICT, the Internet, video lessons, and video transmission of lectures. Nevertheless, lectures remain the dominant way of teaching either in live teaching or at a distance.
It is necessary to change passive lectures into interactive ones, which will start a more active role of students in the educational process.
Frequent and appropriate asking questions to students and encouraging them to seek solutions to problems raised by the teacher, as well as encouraging them to ask spontaneous questions during lectures can significantly raise the quality of acquired knowledge and understanding. The obstacle to this is the personal inexperience of teachers in active learning and the unaccustomedness of students to asking questions and actively seeking answers.
The project proposes the development of an innovative tool to encourage interactivity in the AudIT lecture that will have properties not found in the currently available tools for testing knowledge and interaction. It will combine known properties and adapt them to the needs of students and teachers. Innovative features such as scoring unique answers, the ability for students to respond simultaneously both anonymously and under their own name, the ability to direct answers to any application such as mind maps and games will significantly raise students’ motivation to actively participate in the lecture.
A series of innovative solutions will facilitate the application of tools to teachers regardless of the educational situation, environment and technological equipment in which they find themselves.
The innovativeness of the tool is that its use will not require maintenance or expansion of server resources when used by a very large number of users.
The partner schools in the project will create a core of 50 experienced practitioners who will create methodological guidelines for potential beneficiaries to give them concrete examples of knowledge and ideas on how to apply interactivity in their own teaching.
To make it easier for teachers to use AudIT, the consortium partners will also develop an LMS (Learning Management System) with methodological instructions and examples. The LMS system will be designed as self-study material and will provide teachers with additional education and ideas on how to improve interactivity in the classroom with the use of AudIT.
AudIT will also monitor interactive expert systems for use (text, recordings, video – designed as a decision tree that will easily and easily lead teachers to answers) and an interactive expert installation system (if teachers want to have a copy of AudIT on their own server – for reliability, adding functionality or privacy to student answers and questions).
The project’s website will contain text and video instructions, an expert system, and a database of good practice, as well as a directory of more experienced practitioners ready to help new interested teachers.
The results of the project will be disseminated through education authorities, professional associations and the media to all EU countries and candidates.
See more from the project website: https://altii.online/
and Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ALTII-112107737591633
Partners:
Aquilonis d.o.o. (CRO)
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (CRO)
The Anton Martin Slomšek Institute (SL)
Secondary School of Economics and Gymnasium Maribor (SL)
Tartu Vocational College (EE)
Duration:
03/01/2021 – 02/28/2023
Project coordinator/contact person:
Andrei Atškasov (+372 7361 894; andrei.atskasov@voco.ee)
