110 likes | 212 Vues
Formazione continua e classe virtuale l’apprendimento del linguaggio Java tramite tecnologie di formazione a distanza. Riccardo Mazza SUPSI-Scuola universitaria professionale della svizzera italiana Galleria, 2 - 6928 Manno (Switzerland) mazza@die.supsi.ch
E N D
Formazione continua e classe virtuale l’apprendimento del linguaggio Java tramite tecnologie di formazione a distanza Riccardo Mazza SUPSI-Scuola universitaria professionale della svizzera italiana Galleria, 2 - 6928 Manno (Switzerland) mazza@die.supsi.ch http://www.supsi.ch - http://virtualcampus.supsi.ch
Swiss virtual campus • A national program founded by the Swiss Confederation (30 Million CHF) for years 2000-2003 • Universities participate with 50% of costs. • 50 ongoing projects, almost every Swiss university participate • Three main aims: • Take advantage of the opportunities now available through new information and communication technology • To strengthen collaboration between the universities, a system of credits should be set up • To develop high-quality, multilingual, teaching materials • To improve the quality of student learning processes • SUPSI participate in 7 projects as partner, heads of “MACS project”
Goals of the MACS project • Experiences with new learning technologies • Evaluation of the realised courses in order to improve their quality • Plan to introduce NLT in other post grade and basis courses • The realisation of continuous education courses in the Studio postdiploma in informatica avanzata (MACS) of theDipartimento di Informatica ed Elettronica (DIE) • C. E. courses are a simpler situation than basis education courses • Computer science courses have an experienced audience
Partners • Facoltà di scienze della comunicazione (USI) • ISPFP, Istituto svizzero di pedagogia per la formazione professionale • Eduswiss, partenariato universitario per la formazione continua • IDSIA, Istituto Dalle Molle di studi sull’intelligenza artificiale (USI-SUPSI) • CSCS, Centro svizzero di calcolo scientifico
Choice of two types of course • 2001: The Java programming language • wide interest ("beginner course") • in Italian • offered mainly in Ticino (near Italy and to italophones in Switzerland) • Started at March 20th 2001 (first F-T-F meeting), finished on May 29th 2001 (exams) • 24 students participated (3 from other regions, 2 from Italy) • 2002: Data Mining • advanced course • in English • open worldwide
The virtual class:how to create the learning community • Face-to-face or synchronous meetings: • introduction • mid-time meeting • weekly chat meetings • examination (in presence!) • Temporal structure • red thread/fil rouge
The virtual class (2) • Study materials online • reading materials (mostly text): theory, examples, etc. • links to other materials online • proposal of books to read during the study • Different kinds of learning activities: • automatic comprehension tests • open exercises • discussion forums • individual (closed) exercises • group assignments • …
The virtual class (3) • Collaborative learning: • especially in the situations student-to-student and one-to-many • not easily realised even in traditional approaches • new technologies can be helpful • important in order to create the virtual learning environment • … and to avoid dropouts • The role of the teacher become even more important and also more difficult and time-consuming
Evaluation • During the courses: • surveys (before, during, at the end and later) • monitoring of the online access • … and of the various collaborative activities • feedback through the solution of individual exercises • … and following the online discussions • After the course: • elaboration of strategies to improve the quality of learning
Some outcomes • A mixed approach (on-line and face-to-face) can be useful to avoid some typical problems in distance learning (students feels alone, lacks of interactions, …) • Is useful to create a red-thread of the course to help students to maintain a “pace” during the study • Teacher needs to spend more time in a on-line course rather than in ex-cathedra course (62h instead of 48h) • Students have more time to spend in solving exercises and to collaborate in discussions • Is fundamental the supervision of teacher in discussions and synchronous events