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© NEXT-TELL consortium: all rights reserved

Project Final Report September 2010 – October 2014

Grant Agreement number: 258114

Project acronym: NEXT-TELL

Project title: Next Generation Teaching, Education and Learning for Life

Funding scheme: Collaborative Project

Period covered from 2010-09-01 to 2014-10-31

Project co-ordinator Harald Mayer Head of Intelligent Information Systems Group JOANNEUM RESEARCH

Tel: +43 316 876 1136

Fax: +43 316 876 1191

E-mail [email protected]

Project website address www.next-tell.eu

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.next-tell.eu/

Project Final Report (09/2010 – 10/2014)

© NEXT-TELL consortium: all rights reserved page iii

History

Version Date Reason of change

1 2014-08-22 document created with initial structure and content

2 2014-11-28 first contributions integrated

3 2015-01-23 next iteration of contributions integrated

4 2015-02-11 information from questionnaires integrated

5 2015-03-23 Full version for final revision

6 2015-03-27 Final version – submitted to EC

Impressum

Full project title: Next Generation Teaching, Education and Learning for Life

Grant Agreement No: 285114

Project Co-ordinator: Harald Mayer, JRS

Scientific Project Leader: Peter Reimann, MTO

Acknowledgement: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 258114.

Disclaimer: This document does not represent the opinion of the European Community, and the European Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of its content.

This document contains material, which is copyright of certain NEXT-TELL consortium parties and may not be reproduced or copied without permission. The information contained in this document is the proprietary confidential information of certain NEXT-TELL consortium parties and may not be disclosed except in accordance with the consortium agreement.

The commercial use of any information in this document may require a licence from the proprietor of that information.

Neither the NEXT-TELL consortium as a whole, nor a certain party of the NEXT-TELL consortium warrant that the information contained in this document is capable of use, nor that use of the information is free from risk, and does not accept any liability for loss or damage suffered by any person using the information.


© NEXT-TELL consortium: all rights reserved page v

Table of Contents

1 Final Publishable Summary Report ............................................................................................................. 6

1.1 Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................... 6

1.2 Description of Project Context and Objectives ......................................................................................... 7

1.2.1 Project context........................................................................................................................................................................... 7

1.2.2 Project Objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 8

1.3 Main S&T Results/Foregrounds ................................................................................................................ 9

1.3.1 Use Cases ................................................................................................................................................................................... 9

1.3.2 Applications ............................................................................................................................................................................. 12

1.3.3 Training approach and materials............................................................................................................................................. 25

1.3.4 Classroom studies program ..................................................................................................................................................... 27

1.4 Potential Impact ...................................................................................................................................... 30

1.4.1 Impact in participating schools ................................................................................................................................................ 30

1.4.2 Socio-economic impact ............................................................................................................................................................ 32

1.4.3 Main dissemination activities .................................................................................................................................................. 33

1.5 Contact .................................................................................................................................................... 35

2 Glossary .................................................................................................................................................... 36


© NEXT-TELL consortium: all rights reserved page 6

1 Final Publishable Summary Report

1.1 Executive Summary

NEXT-TELL provides computational and methodological support to teachers and students in the classroom so that they have available nuanced information about learning when it is needed and in a format that is supportive of pedagogical decision-making, thus optimizing the level of stimulation, challenge, and feedback density. NEXT-TELL provides methods to capture process and product aspects of students` learning and makes this information available various formats for reflection, appraisal, and negotiation, based on methods for datamining, process visualisation, e-portfolio appraisal, and (open) student modelling.

The project outcomes comprise 15 individual software tools, and four integrated “packages”. They have been developed in cooperation with teachers in an empirical research program of 44 studies on 252 teachers in 45 schools located in 8 countries. Each package configures a set of individual tools into a workflow that supports an important pedagogical format, such as collaborative learning. Most of the tools, and all the packages, are web-based. They can be used through any modern web browser, and require hence no installation.

The main tools are:

nextREALITY: Inquiry learning for the 1:1 classroom with high performance Internet connection (technology saturation: very high).

nextTALK: project-based learning for high to intermediate technology saturation (1:1 to 1:5)

nextTRACK: teacher led, activity-based learning for high to low technology saturation with mobile devices (1:1 to 1:whole-class).

nextPRACTICE: teacher-team led inquiry into students’ learning within and across classrooms.

In addition to tools valuable for teaching and learning, NEXT-TELL delivered a method and tool for the alignment of school's ICT strategic planning with teacher-led research: nextPRACTICE combines a balanced score-card inspired planning method with a participatory model for inquiring into students' learning, thus realizing a whole-school approach.

From the pedagogical perspective the methods and tools are well-aligned with the current move from assessment of learning to the assessment for learning (formative assessment), and the development of 21

st century learning and assessment methods. The outcomes also support the vision of teachers as innovators,

extending the vision of teachers as researchers.

With respect to the technical development, NEXT-TELL contributes to mainstreaming methods of learning diagnosis and learner modelling that have so far largely be confined to the ‘niche’ of Artificial Intelligence-based learning systems. Our approach of ‘keeping the teacher in the loop’, in particular in the role of the pedagogical decision maker, has proven instrumental in this respect. Key enablers have been research by the partners on learner modelling with the competence-based knowledge space theory, visualizations methods based on research on open learner modelling, and methods for meta-modelling derived from research on enterprise modelling. Furthermore, NEXT-TELL builds on and integrates with frequently used and well-supported open source projects, in particular Moodle and Mahara, and on free cloud services, in particular the Google suite of productivity tools. Provision of single-login to all components makes NEXT-TELL tools readily usable.

Key reports, publications, tools and training materials are available at http://www.NEXT-TELL.eu.




1.2 Description of Project Context and Objectives

1.2.1 Project context

Classroom research revealed that at a given moment, 40 percent of students report that their learning activities involve content they already know. Every teacher will confirm that even at the best of times, only a part of the classroom will be fully engaged in the activities suggested by the teacher. Findings and observations such as these allow only one conclusion: A good part of classroom time does not get used for learning. While it is certainly not the teachers alone who are responsible for this, it is as certain that providing teachers with better information on students' on-going learning and their recent learning history would lead a long way to increase.

Students' time is also not well used for homework. Chances are that the same students, when at home, will spend a substantial part of the school-free time in front of screen media, less and less in front of TVs, more and more in front of interactive devices and on social web sites. While most of those activities have to count as leisure and entertainment, at least part of the time is or could be devoted to school-relevant content and activities. Today's youth is frequently creative, interactive, and collaborative; uses Web 2.0 technologies in their everyday lives, including homework; and believe that more use of such technologies would lead to increased preparation and engagement. However, it is very difficult at this stage to have those activities and their outcomes counted as schoolwork. Levin et al.

1, for instance, report that few of the 3000 students they

surveyed had experienced that their teachers used the Internet for communication and interaction. At the same time, these activities (on-line writing, for instance) are relevant for the development of their identity and often reflect students' developing interests. Indeed, 55% of the online teenagers in the USA are using Web 2.0 technologies, such as social network sites, outside of schools, and visit these several times a day, devoting an average of nine hours a week to the network. This trend is rapidly increasing with the widespread availability of mobile phones and the interoperability between these and the Internet.

The flow of digital technologies available to students at home and in schools and other learning environments will be further increasing. Young peoples' learning ecology is rapidly expanding and already much larger than the information provided in school. However, this significant part of young peoples' life is at this stage not considered educationally relevant, although there are many aspects of on-line activities (such as communicating in a foreign language with peers on Facebook, contributing to a 'geek' forum such as Slashdot) and many aspects of gaming that have clear relationships to educational goals and curricula, and include activities that relate to 21

st Century learning skills. Creating more relations between the school and students

self-initiated and self-sustained on-line life would not only increase content variety and "time on task", but also enable to tap into the significant motivational resources that drive the development of interest and identity.

Let us summarize the new demands teachers face in the 21st

classroom as a consequence of technological and pedagogical developments:

The demand to develop 21st

century competences in students, amongst them digital competence, learning-to-learn, and entrepreneurship

2. To achieve this, teachers will need to employ pedagogies that

build on and further develop students’ capacities for self-guided learning and creative work.

The demand to personalise3 learning for individual students, taking into account a wide range of

information on students' learning, development, interests and well-being, including students' use of and

1 Levin, D., Arafeh, S., Lenhart, A., & Rainie, L. (2002). The digital disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savy students and their schools Retrieved 1-October, 2009, from http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/t/67/report_display.asp

2 European Reference Framework: Key compentences for lifelong learning.

3 Harnessing Technology for Next Generation Learning: Children, schools and families Implementation Plan 2009-2012. Downloadable from BECTA: http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=39547.



contributions to the "information ecology" outside of school: on the Web (2.0), in museums, at historic sites, etc.

The demand to manage a "high bandwidth/high density" classroom4 in which students frequently use

individual devices for learning and in which the teacher has to conduct communication through multiple channels (orally, through interactive whiteboards, through students' individual devices).

The demand to provide evidence-based accounts5 for pedagogical and curricular decisions to a number of

stakeholders: students, parents, school leaders. Since teachers 'orchestrate' in large parts students' activities and the communication between stakeholders, they play a key role in this increasingly distributed and multi-voiced planning and appraisal role.

In order to deal with these demands, teachers need to rapidly capture an ever-increasing amount of information about students’ learning, interpret this diverse body of information in the light of students’ development, appraise it in light of curricular goals, and make reasoned decisions about next learning steps. However, in comparison with most other professionals from whom clients expect rapid decisions in a dynamically changing environment, presently teachers often do not get the information they need for decision making in a timely fashion and in an 'actionable' format. This is particularly a challenge in technology-rich settings (the school computer lab, the laptop classroom) with high content and communicative density, where students engage with learning software and tools that teachers can only partially follow at any point in time. However, as technology increasingly is permeating all schools and all classrooms, the challenge is there for all to face.

1.2.2 Project Objectives

The main objective of NEXT-TELL is to provide, through research and development, computational and methodological support to teachers and students so that they have nuanced information about learning when it is needed and in a format that is supportive of pedagogical decision making, thus optimizing the level of stimulation, challenge, and feedback for students. The project will focus on technology tools to support classroom instruction that supports teachers (and in appropriate form to other stakeholders) to handle the information on students' learning in real time, and to individualize and optimize the classroom learning environment while the learning process is still under way. Different from most other research on advanced and adaptive learning technologies, our focus is not on individual learning applications or services, such as an interactive simulation, an immersive game, or a cognitive tutorial program; instead, NEXT-TELL will focus on how such advanced learning technologies can be integrated into teachers' practices, schools' workflows and communication with stakeholders outside of schools (parents, potential employers) in order to provide for an overall learner-centred, adaptive classroom a system, not a single application.

4 Penuel, W. R., Roschelle, J., & Abrahamson, L. (2005). Research on classroom networks for whole-class activities. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (pp. 222–229). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE.

5 Abbott, D. V. (2008). A functionality framework for educational organizations: Achieving accountability on scale. In E. B. Mandinach & M. Honey (Eds.), Data-driven school improvement. Linking data and learning. (pp. 257-277). New York, NY: Teachers' College Press.



Our vision of the 21st Century classroom is that of a technology- and data-rich environment that supports teachers and students to use various sources of information generated in the classroom and during homework in pedagogical decision-making. Such an information infrastructure will improve instruction, diagnosis, workflow, and productivity as well as enhance collaboration and communication among students, teachers, and other stakeholders, especially parents. Teachers in particular will be supported in their function as diagnosticians who have to make constantly and rapidly decisions in a highly dynamic and complex environment. To bring about our vision of 21

st Century classroom learning, NEXT-TELL will work towards these

main objectives:

1. Articulate a conceptual framework for designing and implementing methods that can be used to appraise

6 learning with modern learning technologies, and to negotiate the appraisal process amongst

stakeholders.

2. Provide resources and ICT support for teachers and students to develop learning activities and appraisal methods appropriate for 21st Century learning based on this conceptual framework.

3. Provide IT support in the classroom so that teachers and students have available nuanced information about students' learning when it is needed and in a format that is supportive of decision making, thus optimizing levels of stimulation, challenge, and feedback.

4. Provide IT support for making students' activities in informal learning places – and in general in the "learning ecology" outside of school – part of 'accountable work', thus building on students' interests, fostering their identity development and supporting their social networks.

5. Foster in-service teachers' professional development by providing new methods and tools for learning from students' learning and for learning from peers' teaching.

6. Increase a school's capacity for data-driven decision making by means of leadership development, including ICT support for the strategic planning of teachers' professional development.

1.3 Main S&T Results/Foregrounds

1.3.1 Use Cases

Eleven use cases have been developed, covering a range of pedagogical scenarios:

Table 1: Overview of use cases

No. Title Link

1 Making collaborative decisions about formative assessment

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/making-collaborative-decisions-about-formative-assessment/

2 Using iPods for formative assessment http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/using-ipods-for-formative-assessment/

3 Primary school learning analytics using tablets

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/primary-school-learning-analytics-using-tablets/

4 Primary level math training http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/primary-level-math-training/

5 Training in data visualization and data comprehension

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/training-in-data-visualization-and-data-comprehension/

6 We use the term appraisal interchangeably with formative assessment, not only because it is shorter, but also because its root in Middle English relates to praize, giving it a more positive connotation than 'assessment'.



http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/using-ipods-for-formative-assessment/

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/using-ipods-for-formative-assessment/



http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/primary-level-math-training/





No. Title Link

6 Meeting virtually – Learning English in OpenSim

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/meeting-virtually-learning-english-in-opensim/

7 Collaborative eWriting http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/collaborative-ewriting/

8 Detecting students’ misconceptions http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/detecting-students-misconceptions/

9 A small but effective and flexible class book

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/a-small-but-effective-and-flexible-class-book/

10 Developing competencies to facilitate (on-line) teamwork

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/developing-competencies-to-facilitate-on-line-teamwork/

11 Students helping each other http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/students-helping-each-other/

Three of the use cases that were frequently used in schools over the project life cycle are summarized next.

1.3.1.1 Example use case: Primary school learning analytics using tablets

Nika and Martina area teachers of two primary school classes in Vienna. Nika is presently leading a 1st and Martina a 3rd grade. They collaborate and jointly educate their 50 students who speak 13 different mother tongues. In order to address the very diverse skill-levels of the children they use a lot of “free learning” with Montessori materials. Both of them spend a lot of time observing, documenting and analyzing the individual learning of the different students.

NEXT-TELL’s package nextTRACK offers LIP, a tool that helps documenting and analyzing the learning process of each student. First a web- and tablet-based “app”, tailored for the use with tablet computers or smart phones helps collecting the data efficiently. It is so easy to use, that the students themselves can use it. Instead of a roll call at the end of each school day Nika and Martina are able to collect the data during class. This frees up 20 minutes of working time for each student each day! In addition the analysis comes in real time. Instead of transcribing the hand written data to a spreadsheet and running different analysis by hand all insights are now available instantly. This saves Nika and Martina a lot of time in the afternoon. Within the nextTRACK package, the collected data can also be projected to a skill model, which builds a belief about the individual’s progress. This helps Nika and Martina a lot for planning individual steps for their students and serves as orientation when discussing next steps and grades with students and parents.

1.3.1.2 Example use case: Meeting virtually – Learning English in OpenSim

Gabriele is an English teacher in Germany and Lisa teaches English in Gabrieles Norwegian partner school. Gabriele and Lisa want their classes to cooperate in a virtual environment to practice their English. Therefore they meet with their English classes in Chatterdale, an isolated island on an OpenSimulator server that is tailored to educational purposes. They have designed a little quest that requires communicating, listening, reading, and understanding English texts. In total 20 children from Germany and 18 from Norway enter the virtual island and spread all around the little town Chatterdale. Also Gabriele and Lisa are logged in and move through the town, aiming at supporting and guiding the children in case they need help.

Gabriele and Lisa both use nextREALITY’s Teacher Control Center to monitor their student’s activities. In Germany, Gabriele is interested in communication density and the type of communication. The Teacher Control Center provides Gabriele with the chat intensity (e.g., the number of chatted words) over time summarized for her entire class. In addition Gabriele can immediately see the log-in times and the amount of communication of each individual student. Gabriele is also interested whether her students used certain phrases and she wants to control if the children used swear words. Gabriele applies simple filters that highlight predefined phrases in one colour and swear words in another.



http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/collaborative-ewriting/

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/detecting-students-misconceptions/

http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/detecting-students-misconceptions/





http://next-tell.eu/portfolios/students-helping-each-other/



In Norway, Lisa is more interested in learning performance with respect to pre-defined standardized language skills (CEFR). She defined simple rules for the little quest, for example, the rule “when a student finds a text with instructions and follows those instruction within a certain period of time, then this student has certain reading and understanding competencies”. The Teacher Control Center shows Lisa the likelihoods for the predefined CEFR competencies for each of her students in form of easy to understand bar charts. Lisa can also access the text chatted by each student and she can adjust the competency level manually with a slider control. With a button click, the outcomes of the OpenSim session can be transferred to Lisa’s Open Learner Model (OLM) account, where all achievements of her students are archived and visualized.

1.3.1.3 Developing competencies to facilitate (on-line) teamwork

In professional live, meetings are a pivotal means for deliberation, planning, decision-making, capacity development, and community building. However, meetings are often badly prepared and conducted, even in professional contexts. This is even more the case for on-line meetings (e.g, via Skype or other video-conferencing tools), which require special skills and careful preparation. And while students in K-16 spend increasingly time in groups for learning purposes, rarely is that kind of work used to also foster teamwork skills systematically. This activity allows students to make experiences with the kind of activities that are required for facilitating a team’s work, thereby developing a set of competencies that are useful for the life in school, and beyond.

Teacher narrative: I charge my students with the task of preparing (face-to-face and/or on-line) group meetings for 5-7 of their peers, to conduct meetings, and to document and communicate meeting outcomes. Sometimes I determine the meeting topic, sometimes I leave it to the students to decide what they want to achieve during a group meeting. In general, a meeting will be focusing on idea generation and problem solving, not on learning as such. The students who are charged with preparing and conducting the meeting do not have a ‘teaching’ role; instead, they act as facilitators: they help their peers to do their best thinking in the team in a limited amount of time.

A facilitator prepares the meeting agenda and discusses it with me before conducting the meeting. I provide feedback and guidance on how to improve the meeting agenda. Then, the facilitator ‘runs’ the meeting, with 3-7 peers. If the meeting is face-to-face, I provide a device for audio-recording, and sometimes video-recording of the meeting. If the meeting is conducted on-line, I prepare the conferencing technology (usually Skype), and a documentation tool (usually one of the Google Apps: Document/Spreadsheet/Presentation) that everybody in the group can access. If Skype or such is used, I request that the session is recorded from one of the screens with tools such as Camtasia or Audacity. Even if the meeting is conducted face-to-face in the classroom, I make the documentation tool (usually Google Apps) available in class so that the team members and the facilitator can record process and outcomes of the meeting. After the meeting (usually 40-60 minutes length) is conducted, I request form the facilitator to document meeting outcomes and to reflect on the process, using the audio- and video recordings. Time allowing, the facilitator prepares and communicates the outcomes in a short formal presentation for the whole class, using Google Presentation or equivalent. When the situation allows it, I let my students practice a meeting in a virtual immersive environment (SecondLife, OpenSim), in particular for creative group tasks. My students enjoy the opportunity to experiment with various identities via their avatars.

Throughout the activity my role is on advising the facilitators rather than on managing the various groups. Only in case of conflicts or sustained non-activity do I intervene directly in a group. I found that the activity works particularly well when during a certain period of time the facilitator role can rotate so that every student in the class takes on that role at least once. If students have a second opportunity to practice facilitation activities, they show usually strong improvements compared to the first time. Furthermore, I found students learn a lot from comparing an on-line with a face-to-face experience.

Realisation: nextTALK Package



1.3.2 Applications

The applications come in four comprehensive packages and a number of individual tools. With few exceptions, they are all web-based, and can be used through a browser, with no further installation required on the user's side. The narrative overviews given are identical with the use cases described before.

1.3.2.1 nextREALITY

Core purpose

Teaming up in virtual worlds – meet and learn together no matter of the physical distance – communicate, discuss, and play – talk to experts – master quests – experience adventures – see worlds you’ve never expected to see – experience events from the past or the future …

Virtual worlds offer an indescribable range of possibilities to meet, communicate, experience, and learn as individual or in groups. Virtual worlds offer a strong motivational potential, they are boosting interest, curiosity and the will to explore. Virtual worlds are a perfect educational playground!

nextREALITY offers ideas and guidelines of how to use virtual worlds in the ‘real’ classroom; it leads through safety and technology concerns and illustrates pedagogical approach for an effective uptake of virtual worlds in ‘serious’ teaching.

This is done by addressing two major questions that teachers face when thinking about bringing virtual worlds into their classroom:

1. Pedagogical context: What can those worlds be used for? What can students learn in such a world?

2. Classroom management: What, concretly, could a session in a virtual world look like? How is such a session delivered and managed?

nextREALITY illustrates the pedagogial context by

1. offering two fully worked-out quests, that can be used as they are or be adapted by teachers as well as

2. in-depth training material about virtual world’s pedagogy.



Classroom management issues are addressed by

1. providing a tool for monitoring student’s activities in real-time, the “Teacher Control Center” and by

2. sharing guidelines and detailed instructions about setting up and running an activity in virtual worlds.

Narrative overview

Gabriele is an English teacher in Germany and Lisa teaches English in Gabrieles Norwegian partner school. Gabriele and Lisa want their classes to cooperate in a virtual environment to practice their English. Therefore they meet with their English classes in Chatterdale, an isolated island on an OpenSimulator server that is tailored to educational purposes. They have designed a little quest that requires communicating, listening, reading, and understanding English texts. In total 20 children from Germany and 18 from Norway enter the virtual island and spread all around the little town Chatterdale. Also Gabriele and Lisa are logged in and move through the town, aiming at supporting and guiding the children in case they need help.

Gabriele and Lisa both use nextREALITY’s Teacher Control Center to monitor their student’s activities. In Germany, Gabriele is interested in communication density and the type of communication. The Teacher Control Center provides Gabriele with the chat intensity (e.g., the number of chatted words) over time summarized for her entire class. In addition Gabriele can immediately see the log-in times and the amount of communication of each individual student. Gabriele is also interested whether her students used certain phrases and she wants to control if the children used swear words. Gabriele applies simple filters that highlight predefined phrases in one colour and swear words in another.

In Norway, Lisa is more interested in learning performance with respect to pre-defined standardized language skills (CEFR). She defined simple rules for the little quest, for example, the rule “when a student finds a text with instructions and follows those instruction within a certain period of time, then this student has certain reading and understanding competencies”. The Teacher Control Center shows Lisa the likelihoods for the predefined CEFR competencies for each of her students in form of easy to understand bar charts. Lisa can also access the text chatted by each student and she can adjust the competency level manually with a slider control. With a button click, the outcomes of the OpenSim session can be transferred to Lisa’s Open Learner Model (OLM) account, where all achievements of her students are archived and visualized.

Curriculum area and student age

nextREALITY’s quests are designed for K-12 students of English as a foreign language (level A2/B1), however the described methodology and the Teacher Control Center are very general and can be used for more or less all age-groups and subjects.

Core competencies addressed

Virtual worlds show their true strength for teaching and learning as soon as they are used for activities that can’t be done in real life. This includes afternoon-trips to foreign countries, to the future or the past, to the moon or into deep see, inside a cell, a painting of Van Gogh or the brain of a person suffering schizophrenia. Furthermore they allow to meet people that are not physically present and they offer a great potential for project work, e.g.: movies, exhibitions, architecture.

In the context of nextREALITY and the provided quests, the addressed core competencies are reading and speaking English, teamwork and complex problem solving.

People and roles

Teachers define the activity and rules for collecting and presenting the information.

Students enjoy the possibility to use a virtual world in class.

Peers can join the virtual experience.

External experts / teachers are a special added value (e.g. as native speakers playing non-playing characters).



Activities

Activities would typically include

problem solving

collaboration

using English or another second language: reading, text-chatting, talking

experiencing environments and objects in the virtual worlds

experimental learning

learning by doing

1.3.2.2 nextTRACK

Core purpose

Providing students with formatively inspired, individually tailored teaching, support, guidance, and feedback requires a very detailed understanding and great insight into the strength and weaknesses of students, their achievements, their attitudes and the ongoing social interactions. It requires a careful monitoring of the changes and the progress over time – for each individual student. This is a remarkable challenge for a teacher.

nextTRACK supports classroom-learning in two ways: On the one hand it allows a device-independent and very simple tracking of all sorts of events, activities and competence developments. As an example, having a tablet computer on a desk, a teacher can track important events right on time with a simple touch of the finger tip. Using nextTRACK is so easy, that students can use it as well. By documenting their own activities they unburden the teacher and, maybe even more important, take control over their own learning process – with all related positive pedagogical benefits (motivation, self-esteem, etc.).

On the other hand, nextTRACK provides modular features to analyse, work up, and present the gathered information. For example, a teacher can overlook the learning performance of the entire class and can immediately identify competence gaps or critical break-ins. A teacher can also look into the social relationships in a classroom and identify social roles. The system also automatically generates very detailed reports which can be used to communicate achievements or problems to the students or parents.



An epical feature is the Heuristics Engine that allows analysing certain data sets coming from external tools in terms of competency development. These analyses are based on a set of more or less complex rules and heuristics.

The nextTRACK package includes the following components:

LIP: A highly usable tool that allows teachers and students to produce in-depth documentation about activities and observations and links them automatically to predefined sets of competencies. LIP is designed to be used during class time – thus saves documentation time in the afternoon. LIP can transfer its data to myClass and via myClass to the OLM, thus all tools can be used in parallel.

myClass: A handy, device independent classbook that allows recording, analyzing, presenting and comparing educationally relevant information about individual students and entire classes. It serves as an electronic classbook and allows an automatic generation of reports and report cards. myClass comes with an own configuration tool: myAuthoring.

OLM:The open learner model allows in-depth data analysis. While LIP and myCLass are designed to be used during class time, the OLM is the tool for deeper reflection in the afternoon.

Initial Configuration Tool:This tool allows to fill all three tools simultanously with the same data about groups, students, teachers and competencies.

nextTRACK comes either as “empty” system or with predefined sets of competencies and activities. There are various packages depending on age groups, curricula and competency standards.

Narrative Overview

Example 1: using LIP

Nika and Martina area teachers of two primary school classes in Vienna. Nika is presently leading a 1st

and Martina a 3

rd grade. They collaborate and jointly educate their 50 students who speak 13 different mother

tongues. In order to address the very diverse skill-levels of the children they use a lot of “free learning” with Montessori materials. Both of them spend a lot of time observing, documenting and analyzing the individual learning of the different students.

NEXT-TELL’s package nextTRACK offers LIP, a tool that helps documenting and analyzing the learning process of each student. First a web- and tablet-based “app”, tailored for the use with tablet computers or smart phones helps collecting the data efficiently. It is so easy to use, that the students themselves can use it. Instead of a roll call at the end of each school day Nika and Martina are able to collect the data during class. This frees up 20 minutes of working time for each student each day! In addition the analysis comes in real time. Instead of transcribing the hand written data to a spreadsheet and running different analysis by hand all insights are now available instantly. This saves Nika and Martina a lot of time in the afternoon. Within the nextTRACK package, the collected data can also be projected to a skill model, which builds a belief about the individual’s progress. This helps Nika and Martina a lot for planning individual steps for their students and serves as orientation when discussing next steps and grades with students and parents.

Example 2: using myClass

Marco is a teacher at a junior high school where he teaches physics and geography. Marco’s school is not equipped with sophisticated technical devices but there is a computer in each classroom and a computer lab. For the geography class Marco is using software tools from time to time, e.g., to do tectonic simulations or educational games (e.g., the geography game Feon’s Quest developed in the European 80Days project). Most of the time, however, there is conventional classroom education, although occasionally Marco takes the students on excursions out in nature. Marco wishes he could gather and link the information coming from the software tools he is using and, more importantly, Marco would like to be able to realise activity tracking and note taking of learning progress events from both in the classroom and on excursions outside the school.

NEXT-TELL’s package nextTRACK offers a simple yet flexible online platform named myClass; the tool can be accessed by all sorts of devices but it is tailored for tablets and smartphones. When using the system in class, Marco has a tablet on the front desk. With a simple touch Marco can record events for his students such as



“demonstrating great insight”, “did their homework well”, or perhaps, “student comes late” or, “disturbing the lesson”. At home, Marco is wrapping up the school day and correcting homework; he is using his laptop to access MyClass and he is taking notes and adjusting the learning process on competency level for each of his students. When on excursions, Marco is using his smart phone to continue the activity and competency tracking. At the end of the semester Marco receives complete aggregations of his recordings and visualizations about the learning progress of each of his students. With a single click, Marco can generate the report cards and circulate them to the students and parents.


nextTRACK offers a very general approach with no restrictions to a certain curriculum area and student age. There are several predefined sets of competencies available for nextTRACK.

nextTRACK shows its full benefit in “open learning environment”, where documentation is a big issue. Such open learning environments are more common in Primary schools – that’s why most of our pilot schools work in this age group.

Core competencies addressed

As mentioned above, nextTRACK is not restricted to a certain curriculum area or age group. However, using nextTRACK certainly has a big influence on several 21st century competencies, namely the student’s articulation and reflection of learning goals and learning strategies which leads to taking over responsibility for his/her own academic development.

People and roles

Teachers: They collect information about activities, achievements and events and retrieve tailored analyses about their individual students or their entire class. Teachers can utilize the outcomes for their own planning and for communicating learning and teaching to students, parents and colleagues.

Students: Students can document their activities themselves. Visualisations about activities and outcomes foster reflection and motivate students for their future learning as well as for taking ownership of their own learning process.

Parents: By building on the evidence in form of a variety of recorded information teachers can communicate and negotiate achievements, assessments and appraisal.

Activities

nextTRACK supports the following activities:

data collection

data analysis in terms of statistics (who did what how often, with whom, etc.)

data analysis in terms of competency development

reporting



1.3.2.3 nextTALK

Core purpose

In professional life meetings are pivotal means of deliberation, planning, decision-making, capacity development, and community building. However, meetings are often badly prepared and conducted. This is even more the case for on-line meetings (e.g. via Skype or other web-conferencing tools), which require special skills and careful preparation. And while students increasingly spend time in groups in many subject areas, rarely is that kind of work used to foster facilitation skills systematically. This package allows students to learn about and experience facilitation first-hand, thereby developing a set of competencies that are useful for the life in school and beyond. This scenario applies to many subject areas where meetings are required to discuss problems and prepare decisions. The nextTALK software supports peer-facilitated teamwork (PFT) for:

Project-based learning across the curriculum, with teams of students meeting regularly over multiple weeks to drive forward a complex project. This allows them to not only learn about the subject matter, but also how to work in teams, manage time and other resources, and develop their leadership skills.

Second language learning, in particular task-based language learning. Group work increases opportunities for practicing languages significantly, and facilitated group work adds yet another level of efficiency. For second language education, even short-term teamwork around typical tasks such as discussions can be accommodated.

The nextTALK software provides a turn-key solution for deploying PFT in classrooms. It supports all the steps needed to gain basic knowledge about team facilitation and provides an environment for refining facilitation competencies over time by reflective practice.

nextTALK is particularly well suited for project-based learning, where students meet regularly for team work over a number of weeks. But it can also be employed for short-term group work, in particular for practicing foreign language skills.

Narrative overview

Mr P is a teacher of Design and Technology (D&T). The work that he does with his students is often based on collaborative projects. Students work together to solve design challenges; some of these challenges are set by P according to curricular requirements, others are negotiated between him and the students to allow pupils to pursue personal interests in the area of D&T. (Personal learning goals might be developed using e-portfolio technology like Mahara, an open source e-portfolio).



Halfway through the academic year, P decides that he should set some time aside to help students develop meeting-facilitation skills, which will be important for the rest of the year (and beyond!). At this point in time, students have gathered enough background knowledge to support informed discussions during meetings. Therefore, Mr P outlines a structured process based on the following tasks that his students need to perform:

1. to prepare face-to-face and/or on-line group meetings for 5-7 of their peers;

2. to conduct the meetings;

3. to document and communicate meeting outcomes.

The meeting topics are set in advance by P and are based on different aspects of the design challenge. The aim of the meetings is to focus on idea generation and problem solving, not on learning as such. The students who are charged with preparing and conducting the meeting do not have a teaching role; instead, they act as facilitators: they help their peers to do their best thinking in the team in a limited amount of time.

A facilitator prepares the meeting agenda and discusses it with P before conducting the meeting. P provides feedback and guidance on how to improve the meeting agenda. Then, the facilitator ‘runs’ the meeting, with 3-7 peers. If the meeting is face-to-face, P provides a device for audio-recording, and sometimes video-recording of the meeting. If the meeting is conducted on-line, P prepares the conferencing technology (usually Skype), and a documentation tool (usually one of the Google Apps: Document/Spreadsheet/Presentation) that everybody in the group can access. If Skype or such is used, P requests that the session is recorded from one of the screens with tools such as Camtasia or Audacity. Even if the meeting is conducted face-to-face in the classroom, P makes the documentation tool (usually Google Docs) available in class so that the team members and the facilitator can record process and outcomes of the meeting. After the meeting (usually 40-60 minutes length) is conducted, P asks the facilitator to document meeting outcomes and to reflect on the process, using the audio- and video recordings. Time allowing, the facilitator prepares and communicates the outcomes in a short formal presentation for the whole class, using Google Presentation or equivalent. Throughout the activity P’s role is about advising the facilitators rather than managing the various groups. Only in case of conflicts or sustained non-activity does P intervene directly in a group.


nextTALK can be used in all contexts where (regular) group work and the development of collaboration and communication skills matters. The method is suitable for students from 12 years onwards.

Core competences addressed

1. Meeting design:

o Aligning meeting goals with activities and artefacts

o Agenda preparation

2. Meeting facilitation:

o Helping peers to do their best thinking

o Guiding participatory decision making

o Increasing commitment to outcomes

3. Meeting documentation:

o Rich meeting minutes

4. Reflection and self-guided learning

5. ICT skills

People and roles

Facilitators: Students charged with the task to prepare, conduct, and document team meetings;

Students: In the role of team members, addressing a problem, an issue.



Activities

Face-to-face, classroom based

Online, classroom based

Online, outside of classroom (e.g., from home)

Planning activities

Communication, including communication in difficult situations; conflict resolution.

Visualization, documentation, and presentation activities

1.3.2.4 nextPRACTICE

Core purpose

To support teachers’ inquiry, and help them link this to strategic planning in schools. The methods and software are intended to help teachers who have been inspired by their class or colleagues; who want to explore and idea; who want to share what they find with colleagues in an easy and accessible way; and who want to know how to work with the senior leadership teams in schools in order to get support with this.

Research for teachers, by teachers – nextPRACTICE facilitates inquiry-based research among colleagues, using a step-by-step inquiry process supported by a tool to share findings.

Plan, and track your inquiry

Share findings with colleagues

Build a research library directly relevant to your learners and your school

Play an active role in the strategic plans of your workplace

In an educational landscape where teachers are increasingly required to work in evidence-based ways, nextPRACTICE allows you to set and pursue your own agenda to further your expertise and professional practice.

For teachers wanting to explore an aspect of teaching and learning in their classroom, nextPRACTICE provides an inquiry process, developed through a collaboration between researchers and teachers, to plan your inquiry. This process allows the research to be embedded into existing teaching activities.



For teachers and managers who want to work towards evidence-based practice, nextPRACTICE offers a tool to plan, record and share research findings, including inquiries already undertaken by your colleagues that are stored in a research library.

For school leaders, nextPRACTICE collates school-based research on topics specific to your institution. Teacher-led research can inform school strategic plans, directly aligned with the needs of learners and teachers, encouraging the development of a cohesive set of school values.

Teaching and learning is personal, and nextPRACTICE provides a tool and method that supports research on a wide range of teaching and assessment approaches including:

Active learning

Applying new ICTs in educational practice

Co-operative and collaborative learning

Peer and self-assessment of learners

The mobile capabilities of the tool means that you can access your inquiry wherever you are, whether in the classroom while changing practice and gathering evidence, or outside of lessons while planning and sharing the results of your intervention.

Narrative overview

A Geography teacher, responsible for preparing a Year 10 class for their final year of secondary school study, questions whether her students’ independent learning skills are of an appropriate standard. She also queries whether her teaching practice provides suitable opportunity for their development. This provides the kick-off for her inquiry. She uses the nextPRACTICE method and software to plan and record her inquiry.

She uses the software to record her pre-existing assumptions about her learners. These include a notion that Year 10 students do not want to engage in independent learning, and prefer to be lectured by the teacher.

Using the nextPRACTICE method, she begins to refine the focus of her inquiry. First, she identifies what independent learning skills currently look like in her classroom, and what high-level independent skills would look like specifically for her students. She reviews her scheme of work to identify opportunities for alignment with her research method. As the learners are undertaking a controlled assessment with a pre-seen case study on tourism, she plans to conduct her inquiry around their preparatory assignments that focus on tourism trends. She decides to record her own written notes on class work for reflection, in addition to obtaining student feedback in focus groups for qualitative analysis before the summer term.

For her previous classes, this assignment had included creating written essay plans and analysing graphs provided by the teacher. She changes teaching practice to allow for independent learning skills to become part of the focus for the activity, with students preparing podcasts that introduce tourism trends occurring in their local area. These are shared with other classes for revision and exam preparation.

She assesses the learning outcome according to assessment objectives, though also reflects on her own notes and focus group findings to assess the independent learning skill development of her students. This feedback is used to decide what will change as a result of her inquiry. Her focus group findings include that though learners were happy for their work to be shared with their class peers, some felt anxious about their work being accessed by other classes. She also found from her own reflections that some of her learners prefer working visually. As a result, she changes her practice to include sharing of material only within her own class, and plans to use video for her next preparatory assignment. These findings are recorded and shared with colleagues using the nextPRACTICE tool, and can be used to inform broader school-initiated change.


nextPRACTICE is a package which can be utilised by teachers of any curriculum area or learner age, as teacher inquiry offers a professional learning opportunity for teachers to research issues specific to their own classroom contexts.



Core competences addressed

1. Planning stages support adoption of the role of teacher-researcher.

2. Inquiry focus can be aligned with school strategic goals.

3. Collaboration between teaching colleagues is encouraged, formalising channels for professional, pedagogical conversations.

Trends

Educators are being asked to work in evidence-based ways

Teachers can develop their own agendas to develop their expertise and professional practice

Schools can help teachers build links between their innovations and strategic priorities

Possible approaches to teaching and assessment

Because of the personalised nature of teacher inquiry, nextPRACTICE provides a tool and method that can support research on a range of teaching and assessment approaches including:

Active learning

Applying new ICTs in educational practice

Co-operative and collaborative learning

Peer and self-assessment of learners

Environment

Outside of the classroom: teachers plan for and share the results of their intervention

In the classroom: teachers change their practice and gather evidence about its effects

People and roles

Teachers: design an intervention, plan the evaluation, undertake the intervention, gather evidence, analyse it and share it with their peers

Senior leadership: negotiate and support links between individual teachers’ innovations and strategic priorities

Activities

Plan evaluation

Plan the intervention

Negotiate the fit between the intervention and school strategic priorities

Undertake the teaching intervention in the classroom

Gather evidence and analyse it

Share practice with senior colleagues and peers

1.3.2.5 Open Learner Model

App Description: The open learner model (OLM), is a tool that visualises individual learners’ current understanding of a topic, or their level of competency. The learner model updates as the student learns, and the data that lies behind the model can come from a variety of sources, such as outcomes of teacher or student self-assessment, or computer-based learning interactions. Learner models are built over time, present the most up to date information about student competency, and allow teachers and students to easily identify strengths and areas of difficulty.



Target Groups: Teachers, Students, Students’ Peers.

Application Benefits: Viewing the learner model may be useful for:

identifying student competencies, strengths, and weaknesses

planning future learning

focusing learning

promoting metacognition (reflection, planning, (self-)monitoring)

encourage learner independence

facilitating interaction between teachers, students and their peers

supporting assessment, providing formative assessment opportunities

1.3.2.6 LIP

App Description: NEXT-TELL’s „learning is personal” (LIP) is a tool that captures learning activities in real-time and provides instant statistical feedback. It supports learners’ self- and peer assessments as well as teachers’ observations. It is optimized to fit into the dynamics of classroom activities where time and attention are scarce resources.

The focus of this tool is to provide a holistic overview over all learning activities in all subjects over the whole term. It does not provide specific insights or in-depth analysis. For this purpose, the captured data is forwarded to other NEXT-TELL tools like myClass and OLM. However it provides the teacher with simple, real-time insights and allows the teacher to enhance the data model (e.g. used material) on the fly.

The LIP tool is optimized for performance and to be used on handheld devices like tablets, mobiles or laptops.

Target Groups: Teachers, students, students’ peers.

Application Benefits:

integrated into the learning process in class

supports both online and physical learning objects – plus it’s linking to competencies

helps identifying student’s competencies, strengths and weaknesses

helps planning future learning

encourages learner independence

facilitates interaction between teachers, students and their peers

supports assessment

1.3.2.7 Sonic Divider

App Description: The Sonic Divider is a Windows-based tool for practicing formal divisions.

Target Groups: Primary school children, 6 to 8 year olds; German language

Application Benefits: Sonic Divider is a neat and handy tool to practice divisions in school or at home as homework. The teacher can quickly gain an overview about the achievements, scores, and competency levels.

1.3.2.8 myClass

App Description: The platform offers very simple and usable features to maintain students, classes, and subjects, more importantly, it allows tracking activities of students by mouse/finger clicks, and it allows adjusting competencies and learning goals.



Target Groups: Teachers and educators, all interested in competence-centered learning analytics and mobile activity tracking

Application Benefits: The prime advantage of myClass is that independent from a technical infrastructure and the concrete nature of learning activities, a teacher can easily track and record activities and competency levels using any sort of device with internet connection. In particular the platform is design to be used with Tablets or Smartphones.

1.3.2.9 Language quests in virtual worlds

App Description: NEXT-TELL’s Language Quests in Virtual Worlds provides you with:

1) Two complete examples of virtual world activities in Chatterdale

2) A description of NEXT-TELL’s strategy how to track and assess student’s behavior in those activities

Target Groups: Teachers

Application Benefits: The activities (quests) are fully worked-out and ready for you to use in your class.

1.3.2.10 Repertory Grid for formative assessment

App Description: The RGFA application is a Teaching Analytics tool designed and developed by CBS as a general-purpose spatial diagnostic tool for teachers and students. RGFA Teaching Analytics Tool is divided in two parts: the RGFA Website and RGFA Dashboard.

Target Groups: Teachers, Students, Students’ Peers.

Application Benefits: Using the repertory grid from formative assesment (RGFA) may be useful for:

identifying student competencies, strengths, and weaknesses

planning future learning

focusing learning

facilitating interaction between teachers, students and their peers

supporting assessment, providing formative assessment opportunities

1.3.2.11 SPICE

App Description: The SPICE Planner is a tool to support the SPICE (Strategic Planning for ICTs in Education) methodology for the strategic alignment of a school’s pedagogical goals with its use of information technologies.

The SPICE Planner is based on the Balanced Scorecard and Baldrige approaches, aiming to support school leaders who will act as Strategy Planners to identify and define relevant ICT strategy.

Target Groups: School leaders


Full support of strategic planning, including definition of: goals, indicators, tasks/initiatives as well as assigning responsibilities from the organisational structure

A flexible mechanism which allows definition of strategy plans on various levels: school-wide planning, planning for a single class or teacher’s project

An assessment mechanism based on traffic-light-coding for an easy status overview

A graphical interface to define above listed elements



1.3.2.12 TISL

App Description: The TISL Planner is designed for teachers and educational researchers interested in evidence-based practice. It allows planning, recording and sharing research findings.

The TISL Planner is based on TISL method (Teachers Inquiry into Students Learning), giving teachers and researchers a structured, step-by-step guidance for defining inquiries, supported by various mechanisms to establish and enable quick wins for involved stakeholders.

Target Groups: Teachers, researchers


A simple web interface designed for fast and easy development of TILS inquiries

Full support of TISL Heart Method steps, including possibility to add more details/notes to each step

For advanced planning: extended method to plan single steps/activities, time-frame, documents and goals

Easy access using tablets and smart phones

Different visualisation modes for quick overview as well as detailed TISL description

A private and shared space with TISL projects for easy data sharing

A live-search mechanism which support reusability of existing (and shared) projects of other teachers

An assessment mechanism to visualise completeness and reusability of different TISL projects

1.3.2.13 ECAAD

App Description: The NEXT-TELL ECAAD Planner tool provides a structured planning approach for activity and assessment description based on the ECAAD (Evidence Centered Activity and Assessment Design) methodology.

The tool supports in an integrated manner the definition of the domain, definition of learning activity steps and related assessment approaches for learning activities as a knowledge management tool for teachers.

From a tool perspective, a graphical, model-driven implementation is provided that builds on collaboration, sharing and reusability of defined plans utilizing a library of plans, plan fragments/snipplets.

Target Groups: Teachers, students


Using ECAAD is beneficial to:

Develop and construct lessons plans including assessment methods

Externalize knowledge and expertise available in schools

Re-use, share and collaborate on knowlegde development

1.3.2.14 Assessment engine - data marshalling

App Description: The Next-TELL Assessment Engine, also named Data Marshalling service provides means for the configuration and enactment of data marshalling streams using a graphical modeling approach. The graphical approach externalizes the assessment value calculation approach and provides a transparent view on the actual implementation of updates.

The service allows to define GET, TRANSFORM and PUSH services that can be executed following certain control logic to move and transform data elements from one application to the other. The service enables



NEXT-TELL to connect internally and integrate tools on one hand but opens the development to external applications and heterogeneous environment as observed by the schools targeted.

Target Groups: Developers


Using the data marshaling is beneficial to:

Enable data integration between components, tool and services

Operationalize the integration triggered manually, by events, or according to a time-schedule

Flexibly adapt and modify the environment, continuously extend by new services included in the approach

1.3.2.15 Chat log analyser / Teacher control center

App Description: The Teacher Control Center is a standalone module of ProNIFA. The tool can be used to specify heuristics and rules and to analyze all sorts of log files on this basis. In addition to conventional activity data (e.g., time on task, chat intensity and frequency), a competence-centered analysis is possible.

Target Groups: Teachers and educators, all interested in using collaborative environments, in particular virtual worlds such as SecondLife or OpenSim, and related competence-centered learning analytics.

Application Benefits: The module allows an easy, competence-centered and rule-based analysis of large scale log file information, particularly such coming from learning sessions in virtual worlds.

1.3.3 Training approach and materials

The training program has been developed for the participating teachers in English, German and Norwegian language, to provide all required materials, and to conduct the training in the participating schools. Training sessions are conducted in a combination of face‐to-face workshops and on‐line activities

7. The on-line materials

are also made available for pre-service teacher education. For instance, lecturers in an Education.

Faculty in a course on educational assessment can make use of these materials in their teaching. The training materials are available in English, and in many cases in German and Norwegian as needed.

1.3.3.1 Pedagogical approach to training

Training teachers to participate in NEXT-TELL is characterised by a range of settings; institutional, national and subject matters differ from each scenario being carried out in school. To support the training in a range of settings, training materials are made available as modularised Moodle courses that can be adapted to use in these situations. The materials are primarily meant to support teachers learning the tools, but can also support those carrying out training workshops from the researchers in the project. One course has also been made available as support for students learning the tools using a combination of instructor led work in school and individual work from home.

Training is most typically carried out as workshops with project members and teachers as participants. The project members often take the role of the tutor, in a face-to-face instructional situation with the teacher. This communication-rich training setup has the advantage that questions from the teachers can be addressed directly as they arise. The training concept is that project members train the participating teachers, who in turn train their own students. The training sessions typically include hands-on work with the tools.

7 http://next-tell.eu/resources/training/



The theoretical approach to conducting teacher training in NEXT-TELL is influenced by Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978). ZPD is a specific aspect of a more general perspective on teaching, learning and development represented in sociocultural psychology. In the context of NEXT-TELL method and tool training while the project is running, the concept of ZPD applies because our training concept is based on personal contact, and hands-on experience for teachers right from the start. Rather than providing up-front theoretical training, in NEXT-TELL training events teachers’ goals and the resources available to them in their respective schools are taken into consideration right from the start. The teachers are working together with the NEXT-TELL representative on a set of tasks where the teachers take an active role and where their learning is scaffolded by the NEXT-TELL expert as well as peers (other teachers). Scaffolds and support are gradually removed, up to the point where the teachers can perform the task on their own.

The online materials are hosted on a Moodle server and are freely available. The following table provides an overview of the training materials available online.

Tool / method

Modules Material types Languages

TCTP Theoretical background, constructing a learning course based on the CbKST, Support Tools, Summary and Guidelines

Text English

1X1 Ninja Introduction, 1X1 Ninja: Gamifying maths, Features of 1X1 Ninja, Technical help - installation

Text, pictures, use case

English

RGFA Introduction, suggestions for teachers, suggestions for students, creating an exercise, replying to an exercise, user manual

Text, PowerPoint, use case

English

LIP Introduction, Overview, The Learning Diary, Administration, LIP - DEUTSCH

Text, pictures, use cases

English, German

GDocs Analyzer

Introduction, user manual Video, text English

SPICE Training in SPICE, Introduction to SPICE, The BSC-approach in schools, Strategic planning – effects on teachers, Strategic planning – effects on students, The SPICE tool

Text, pictures, video, tutorial

English, German

TISL TISL Tutorial Text, video, tutorial, use cases

English

ECAAD ECAAD Introduction Text, tutorials, video

English

Mahara Introduction, Getting started with Mahara, User profile, The portfolio, Groups, Settings

Text, video English

OLM Introduction to OLM, OLM for teachers, OLM for students, OLM for elever (students) – NORWEGIAN, OLM für Lehrer – DEUTSCH, OLM für Lerner – DEUTSCH, Configuration

Text, Pictures, PowerPoint, Video, Use cases

English, German, Norwegian

OpenSIM OpenSIM – Training Concept, Introduction, Life as Avatar, Virtual worlds pedagogy, putting on your students’ shoes, Learning Scenario Design, Analysing students’ activities with ProNIFA, Administrators corner

Text, PowerPoint, videos

English



Tool / method

Modules Material types Languages

Sonic Divider Introduction, Sonic Divider in the classroom, Sonic Divider Highlights, Sonic Divider for the teacher, Technical details - installation

Text, Pictures English

WAT Overview, Webtrack Text English

Google Progress Tracker

Overview Text, pictures English

1.3.3.2 Teacher certification

The main purpose of the teacher certification program realised in NEXT-TELL is to prepare teachers to work independently with the advanced learning technologies and applications developed and provided within project’s lifetime. More concretely, the resulting teacher-training package contains training materials that prepare teachers to benefit from ICT use especially in their teaching, their formative assessment practices and learning experiences. To this end, altogether, the teacher-training package will include the following seven self- contained online learning courses: i) non-numerical formative assessment on the basis of Competence-based Knowledge Space Theory, ii) ECAAD design and planning for formative assessment, iii) Portfolio-based Education, iv) Teaching in virtual worlds, v) Repertory Grid Analysis, vi) SPICE, and vii) Activity Tracking Methods and related tools.

The psycho-pedagogical model to the training delivery in the context of the teacher certification process is based on the Competence-based Knowledge Space Theory (CbKST) in conjunction with a sociocultural approach to learning, specifically informed by ZPD.

The materials needed to train and certify teachers are also available on the already mentioned Moodle Server.

1.3.4 Classroom studies program

1.3.4.1 Approach to classroom research

The NEXT-TELL project aims at providing computational and methodological support for teachers and students in order to make nuanced information about learning available when it is needed and in a format that supports the pedagogical decision-making in schools. Our main focus hereby was, to develop tools and software components that cover all stages of a formative e-assessment and thus optimize the level of stimulation, challenge, and feedback density. The way these tools and software components were developed was inspired by a design-research based approach, meaning that we directly wanted to involve teachers and students into the developmental process by testing our tools in school settings, receiving feedback by teachers and students and integrate this feedback into the further development of tools and methods in a recurring cycle.

We chose the design-research approach because it allows mutually reflective, incremental and empirically based development of theory and technology, as well as pedagogy. Our approach consisted of four different study types that built on each other. We conducted Baseline Studies (BS) in year 1 to describe current state of the art of ICT use in schools and teaching. Also in year 1, we planned Requirement Analyses (RA) in order to develop a first version of pedagogical tools and learning scenarios which were to be implemented in two rounds of Researcher-led Design Studies (RDS) (year 2). The last two years of NEXT-TELL aimed at conducting Teacher-led Design Studies (TDS) in which teachers were to investigate their students’ learning more closely.

A goal of NEXT-TELL was to support teachers in gleaning information about their students’ learning processes. More specifically, the focus was on supporting teachers in handling information about student learning in real time, and support them in individualising and optimising the learning environment while the learning is on- going. And as an extension of this, NEXT-TELL set out to approach the whole classroom as an ecology, rather



than focusing a single piece of learning technology. That means that NEXT-TELL aimed at studying of how advanced learning technologies could be integrated into teacher practices, workflows and communications with students, other teachers and stakeholders such as parents.

1.3.4.2 Studies on Science and English as Second Language learning

A number of studies looked into the use of NEXT-TELL tools in the STEM and TESL classroom. The next table provides an overview. The deliverables are available at http://next-tell.eu/publications/project-deliverables/.

Study name NT tool/method used Initially reported in

Chaining e-Assessment tools to Detect and Resolve Students’ misconceptions

RGFA, OLMlets, OLM D6.5

Mathematics with Classroom Network Technology

ECAAD Planner (retrospectively by researchers)

D6.4

Supporting problem-based learning through e-Assessment

Google Spreadsheets, OLM D6.5

Critical Questioning and Thinking: The 6 Thinking Hats Method Adopted in Science Teaching

Moodle, Mahara, OLM D6.5, D6.6

Orchestrating and Assessing Second Language Learning in OpenSIM

OpenSim/Chatterdale, ProNIFA, Teacher Control Center, OLM

D6.4

First Steps Towards TISL in Norway n/a D6.4

Developing a tool for the TISL Heart Method and its model

n/a D5.6

1.3.4.3 Studies on use of specific formative assessment methods

An key objective of NEXT-TELL was to provide a range of formative assessment methods in combination with tool support, useful for teachers to monitor students’ learning and provide feed-back and feed-forward. The following table provides an overview.

Assessment tool First described in

ECAAD Planner D2.2

ECAAD Designer D2.2

OpenSIM D2.2

Google Spreadsheet D2.2

Sonic Divider D2.4

ProNIFA SecondLife Module D2.4

ProNIFA CLIL Module D2.4

Pixel cloud D2.4

Excel Reader D2.4

myClass D2.5

1x1 Ninja D2.6

http://next-tell.eu/publications/project-deliverables/



Assessment tool First described in

LIP D2.6

Deliverable D2.2 accounts for three tools; ECAAD Designer and ECAAD Planner. ECAAD Designer is for supporting teachers in designing formative assessments, while Planner is for planning learning activity sequences. A TESL scenario with Google Spreadsheet is provided, and Deliverable 2.4 describes the tools Sonic Divider, and the ProNIFA modules for SecondLife and CLIL. Sonic Divider is a division-practicing tool for the primary school level, which includes a formative, competence feedback mechanism on student performance. ProNIFA, an acronym for Probabilistic non-invasive formative assessment, is a tool for supporting teachers in the evaluation process. Using performance data (student test scores for example), ProNIFA updates the probability of predefined competencies, thus enabling teachers to carry out semi-automated assessments. The SecondLife module enables analysis of chat log modules in the virtual world of SecondLife, including for example number of text items and frequencies of activity. The CLIL module allows analysis of standardised language test results. Additionally, a pixel cloud visualisation tool for ProNIFA output and an Excel spreadsheets-based tool for organising competencies in dependencies.

In D2.5 MyClass is presented. MyClass is a browser-based tool for tracking student activities, to be used on tablets or smartphones (it also works on PCs). It allows teachers to keep a diary of student activity, which can serve as an information source for ProNIFA, track activities on the go, adjust a table of student competencies and to create visualisations of the information. It is designed with speed of interaction in mind, with an interface supported by screen touch, to serve the purpose of real-time use in class by a teacher.

The deliverable describing the finalised software development process for ECAAD-related tools (D2.6) presents two new tools: LIP (Learning Is Personal) and 1X1 Ninja. 1*1 Ninja is an online multiplication trainer for primary school students. A teacher can adjust the scoring system and difficulty levels. A teacher can also choose between different feedback modes presented to students, with combinations of visual and audio feedback on correct/incorrect, and no feedback. Data on individual student performance is also available to the teacher, organised around number of played sessions, percentage of correct answers, total time played and percentage of correct answers tied to multiplicand and multiplier. LIP is a tool for collecting real-time performance data and support for teachers whilst in class. It collects information about students and groups of students, competencies, materials used in class linked to competencies, tasks linked to competencies and observations made on the spot by the teacher. A teacher can log details daily, including for example which student did which activity with whom, tied to which material, task and organisational context. LIP can then present the outcome as graphical models, for example about connections between students, activity related to time and social interaction related to subject.

1.3.4.4 Main conclusions from studies

It is not possible here to provide a summary of the studies and findings beyond the sketch provided here so far. For the interested reader, an important document Is D6.7, Final Report on Pilot Studies

8. It summarizes and

provides pointers to the four year empirical research program in NEXT-TELL. This table delineates this program in key numbers:

Country Schools Principals Teachers Students Classes

Austria 13 1 9 307 15

Denmark 2 0 11 6 3

England 14 7 168 300 51

8 http://next-tell.eu/wp-content/uploads/NEXT-TELL-D6.7-2.9-KMRC-UniRes-Deliverable_v06.pdf



Country Schools Principals Teachers Students Classes

Germany 8 5 24 78 4

Italy 1 0 0 29 2

Netherlands 3 0 6 125 8

Norway 2 2 31 149 6

Singapore 2 0 3 64 2

overall 45 14 252 1058 91

1.4 Potential Impact

1.4.1 Impact in participating schools

On a general scheme, we got the insight from year 1 on that there seems to be cultural differences across the participating countries when it comes to teachers’ pedagogical knowledge with respect to state of the art assessment methods, teachers’ professional development, teachers’ readiness to use different ICT in their teachings, and also the ICT equipment in schools. Apart from the cultural differences nearly all teachers feared that new ICTs would increase their already high workload instead of reducing it.

Furthermore, we can say that nearly all teachers that we have approached during the last four years were keen on and interested in the objectives and ideas NEXT-TELL had. An important discovery was made in year 1 - that teachers and school leaders felt challenged with the complexity of NEXT-TELL (i.e. the several different layers) because we wanted to develop solutions that transform existing practices. The TPACK framework helps analysing this observation in the sense that teaching situations in themselves are regarded as very complex and become even more complex as soon as new technology is introduced (or in NEXT-TELLs case incrementally developed), as introduction of new technology entails not only to learn that technology, but also reinterpretation of existing pedagogical and content knowledge. As NEXT-TELL was aiming at providing computational support for all different school layers this was at first rejected by schools because integrating technology into one single layer alone (e.g., the instructional layer) would already lead to a reinterpretation of existing knowledge and practices, meaning that an instructional solution could lead to a new problem on a different layer. Therefore, with the beginning of the second project year, it was one of our main focuses to reduce this complexity. We did not offer all possibilities to one school anymore but talked to teachers before introducing NEXT-TELL as a whole to find out in which areas they might be interested in the most. After that, we suggested a “NEXT-TELL light” version with a selection of possibilities NEXT-TELL had to offer that fit their specific interests.

Our approach to simplify NEXT-TELL solutions continued throughout the project duration and finally led to the development of our packages, which can be seen as one of our main contributions, and that also takes our main objective of considering the ecology of the classroom into account because the packages provide integrated sets of tools that are available online. Each package fit one main purpose (e.g., tracking of students’ learning → nextTRACK package, including myClass, LIP, and OLM) and only comprehends and integrates the NEXT-TELL tools that are necessary for that specific purpose together with a value proposition what makes dissemination quite easy. Furthermore, attention is paid to contextualising the packages with potential use cases, scenarios and training aids, in addition to the actual tools, to help teachers see how the packages could fit with or be adapted to their existing teaching practices. That means at the same time to enable teachers to reflect on their existing practices themselves.

As stated in the introduction to this deliverable, one of the main goals of NEXT-TELL has been to support teachers in gleaning information about their students’ learning processes, and in particular to support teachers in handling information about student learning in real time, and support them in individualising and optimising



the learning environment while the learning is on-going. Throughout the duration of the project, it became increasingly evident that especially three content-free tools (LIP, OLM and myClass), two content-based tools (Sonic Divider and 1x1 Ninja - that also serve as assessment methods for the STEM field) as well as one of our methods (TISL) were of special interest to the participating teachers. All of these tools and methods focus on providing the teacher with, or helping him to gain more insight into students’ learning and understanding, although we have developed a much more extensive set of tools.

First, the content-free tools that gained most interest from teachers were LIP, myClass and OLM. LIP and myClass were specially tailored to the needs of teachers in Austria and not in the initial project set of tools. Therefore, those have been used mainly in Austria (with small exceptions that arose during the fourth project year when they expanded their coverage to Germany) and are experienced as easy to use in a day-to-day setting (once the setup is done). LIP and myClass are specifically designed to support real time classroom use, and may have uncovered a new way of working with assessment and appraisal data that teachers recognise as possible to align with their current pedagogical and content knowledge.

The OLM is perceived as interesting because of the obvious underlying concept and support of Assessment for Learning (which is also part of myClass and LIP, but not directly visible) and the opportunity it presents for students to engage in self- and peer-assessment activities, supporting classroom based learning-reflective activity for students. As a result, OLM has been extensively used in several of the classroom studies. Still, in terms of perceived usability, it is at times experienced as somewhat cumbersome and non-self-explanatory in use, and they occasionally feel challenged when using it on their own. Some teachers have been willing to invest time because they can imagine the possible benefits that come with it. As our experience with teachers using the OLM show it also seems to be demanding for teachers on a pedagogical side because a lot of the features it holds have not been used yet.

A possible explanation for why especially these three tools were noted as interesting could be that all three tools support activities that are already part of the everyday school practice - documenting learning processes of students as well as keeping evidence for development talks and the like - and furthermore hold the additional functionality of visualizing the inserted data. For LIP and myClass it is additionally helpful that the process of inserting data is very timesaving for the teachers, as they are designed from the beginning to be used in real time in the classroom. We have to note that the OLM was mainly used as an amplification for existing analogue practices (e.g., documenting processes, providing quantitative feedback) but is slightly advancing to be used transformatively (e.g., cumulative and comparative view on learners’ comprehension states and using those for individualization and further lesson planning). LIP and myClass were already extensively used in a transformative way.

The content-based tools represented in Sonic Divider and 1x1 Ninja were well received by the teachers, which can also be supported by the notion that tools are more easily adapted when they align well with existing practices. As these two tools provide a clear usage scenario in themselves, and work as ready-made assessment solutions for practicing/rehearsing division and multiplication on a primary school level (in an intelligent tutoring system like way that is based on the cbKST framework), no additional knowledge was needed by teachers to apply them to their teaching setting. During the three studies in which the tools were used, we could furthermore show that the cbKST-based formative feedback which is provided by the tools lead to slightly superior learning results in comparison to visual feedback (correct/incorrect) or visual feedback with added auditive feedback.

The TISL method was mainly used and developed in England as well in Norway. We found that at the beginning of the project the teachers in the aforementioned countries were familiar with teacher research, and that it is a widely accepted approach to teachers’ professional development. This is different to Austria and Germany, where teacher research is not well known and also slightly frowned upon. Taking this into account it gets clearer why the TDS studies were a special challenge and were most often undertaken with the close support of NEXT-TELL researchers in the two latter countries.

Nonetheless, we consider the development of the TISL method as a success and one of the key contributions NEXT-TELL has to offer. We worked very closely with teachers on this matter to make the method more practical to use. Given where we started with this method, and by working through feedback received from teachers taking part in the several TISL-related workshops, the different processes within TISL now are



perceived by teachers as less academic and therefore much nearer to the practical teacher domain, what potentially lowers the integration into their attitudes and beliefs.

The studies conducted resulted in a very structured approach to teacher inquiry (TISL heart) that was also implemented into the TISL Planner. Furthermore our studies provided us with a theoretical understanding of how teachers share professional experiences for the sake of development of practices within this domain, and how teachers’ inquiry thus might impact school change.

On a non-tool specific level, we found that the integration of tools and technology into teaching is challenging and demanding for teachers and for students as well if they are to be used in a pedagogical sensible way. Although we would like to argue that our tools inherit (socio-constructivist) pedagogical concepts and were designed with the purpose of instructional use in mind, which should lower the threshold to use them pedagogically sensible and integrate them into ones teaching, this does not seem to be the case. This has something to do with the fact that our tools were not meant as ready-made solutions for teachers, but rather as a starting point in a DBR-inspired empirical research and development process. In fact teachers are more used to “already established tools” when they use technology which would mean that NEXT-TELL tools would require more knowledge by teachers although the developments inherit pedagogical affordances. Notwithstanding the fact that the idea of a co-design process was appreciated by teachers (and as the development of e.g., myClass shows partly also very successful), co-design is difficult if requirements from several different school systems and teacher personalities needs to be covered. Several changes and updates in the tools that were made due to new requirements that went beyond bug fixing were received as confusing when features were moved to different places within the tool or disappeared or when the interface changed although the features were still the same.

Apart from that it could also have to do with the fact that the underlying pedagogical concepts are not common practice for most of the participating teachers so that not only a new technology needed to be learnt. Additionally, our developments furthermore forced to rethink one’s own attitudes. Teachers more than once mentioned that they generally liked the opportunity to step one step back and think about, investigate and reflect upon competencies and learning goals they demand by their students but of course this is a challenging thing to do.

1.4.2 Socio-economic impact

Socio-economic impact assessment focuses on evaluating the impacts development, in our case the NEXT-TELL project, has on community social and economic well-being. Development impacts are generally evaluated in terms of changes in community demographics, housing, employment and income, market effects, public services, and aesthetic qualities of the community. What constitutes the ‘community’ depends on the target group the development is aiming at. In can reach from local communities (school, neighbourhood, city) to districts, states, countries, and beyond.

It is obvious that the relation between a research project that targets school classrooms and individual teachers as the main ‘users’ of the R&D innovation will have a very indirect effect on larger communities, and on the economy. With respect to economic benefits, direct links are most unlikely, given the fact that the general relation between education and economic benefits is far from being established, nor particularly probable

9. We

are not in a position to claim any direct economic benefits – with those we mean going beyond the partners in the consortium – for NEXT-TELL because there is no established model for such benefits we could build on and because there is no visible way we could have measured such benefits, nor can we gauge them in the future. The case becomes even more problematic as such benefits, if they were to exist at all, would occur with a substantial, but largely unknown time delay. Again, there is no established macro-economic theory that can tell us when in time to most likely to expect such benefits. And of course we are not in a position to make these measurements in the future, on the basis of the project.

9 Roschelle, Jeremy, Bakia, Marianne, & Patton, Charles. (2011). Eight Issues for Learning Scientists About Education and the Economy. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20, 3-49.



The story for measuring social impact – that is benefits in form of betterment of the lives of citizens in non-economic terms – of the NEXT-TELL project is only slightly more realistic. Beyond the immediate effects on the participating teachers and students, which have been described above, we are not in a position to perform the needed measurements and analysis, due to a lack of resources, and time, and, indeed, accountability. Funds have to be spent on the research issues as delineated in the work plan, not on wider impact research that lies outside of the expertise of the consortium and the focus of the Commission’s research program.

The most direct socio-economic impact we can expect, but only have episodic evidence for is between some of our developments and teachers’ job satisfaction. To the extent that technology such as developed by us can relief teachers from routine work that they experience as boring (and provided they do so) and can help them to devote more time to activities they find more rewarding, also in terms of benefits to their students, job satisfaction should increase. This would in general be a good trend because the teacher profession is plagued by a high drop-out rate, and a high burn-out rate, and in many countries by low job retention rates. But even with respect to job satisfaction, the relation to classroom technology improvements are affected by many other factors that affect job satisfaction, such as the school climate, relation to colleagues and management, leadership style, relation to students and parents, and also dependent on changes to curriculum and school organisation. Taking all these factors into account in a scientifically sound manner was beyond the scope of the project.

What we can say with confidence is that we are not creating hurdles to socio-economic impact: Most of the project’s reports are free for anybody to access, the tools developed all follow an open source policy, and we have published in formats accessible to the wider educational research community.

1.4.3 Main dissemination activities

The purpose of the dissemination activities was to create awareness about project results in all important target groups and constituencies. Main efforts have been within the RTD community and with schools (teachers and school leaders) to create awareness about the NEXT-TELL project and to disseminate the scientific results and inform on directly usable tools and methods.

To disseminate the results of NEXT-TELL there is of course the main NEXT-TELL website (www.next-tell.eu) containing all relevant information and providing access the results in form of access to the software packages and components and to all public deliverables. In addition there have been some 70 publications and more than individual 120 dissemination activities, mainly in form of presentations or workshops with our target groups.

NEXT-TELL YouTube Channel

NEXT-TELL has established its own channel on YouTube to collect and make accessible all video based material generated in NEXT-TELL. The channel can be reached at: http://www.youtube.com/user/NEXTTELLproject/. This channel includes also an animated video, which focuses on the set of tools developed in NEXT-TELL. This video has been used as an eye-catcher on many dissemination events

Book “Measuring and visualising competence development in the information-rich classroom”

The legacy of NEXT-TELL will also be available as book, internationally published by a highly reputated publishing house in the learning domain. A team of co-editors from the NEXT-TELL consortium has been formed (Susan Bull, Barbara Wasson, Michael Kickmeier-Rust, Ravi Vatrapu, led by Peter Reimann) that developed a proposal for a book on “The Information-rich Classroom” for Routledge/Taylor & Francis during July 2013. The proposal has been reviewed by Routledge and finally being accepted. The book is completed and is scheduled to be published in November 2015. See also http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138021136/.


http://www.youtube.com/user/NEXTTELLproject/

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138021136/



TeL 2020 e-book

NEXT-TELL is also represented in the free e-book “Advances in Technology Enhanced Learning” as a section on Classroom Learning Diagnostics. The e-book is freely available on iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/book/advances-in-technology-enhanced/id663022333?ls=1. The book quickly reached a number of 1.000 downloads and was listed in the top 10 bestseller charts of iTunes UK.

ONLINE EDUCA 2012

The ONLINE EDUCA is one of the largest conferences and exhibitions in the Technology-enhanced learning domain. In 2011 there have been 2154 participants from 96 countries. All relevant sector of the learning domain are represented, i.e. academic (43%), corporate (21%), governmental (34%), and associations/NGOs (2%).

ONLINE EDUCA 2012 took place from November 28th

-30th

, 2012, in Berlin, Germany.

NEXT-TELL represented with a small stand (6 sqm) where all information on NEXT-TELL and its results have been presented and discussed with visitors. Moreover, a presentation of the NEXT-TELL idea and results was held by KMRC at the conference part of the ONLINE EDUCA.

ICT 2013 – Vilnius, Lithuania, November 6-8, 2014

The ICT2013 event was organized by the European Commission in partnership with the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the EU, and the official sponsors of the Presidency. ICT2013 brings together Europe's best & brightest in ICT research, with businesses old & new, web start-ups and digital strategists to chart a path for Europe's ICT research policy. Overall some 5.000 delegates attended the event, where NEXT-TELL was selected to have a stand in the exhibition area to present our results.

didacta 2014

NEXT-TELL was present with a booth at didacta 2014 in Stuttgart from March 25-29, 2014. didacta is an educational fair and the largest trade fair for the education sector in Europe. With more than 800 exhibitors the fair is a national and international contact forum for businesses. More than 60 individual contacts with professionals from diverse backgrounds, from kindergarten to university, have been established and more than 100 information brochures about the project have been distributed.

We presented especially the tools LIP, OLM, and myClass and were able to attract around 200 teachers, teacher educators as well as other stakeholders from the educational sector.

Teacher workshop co-located with EC-TEL 2014 in Graz

The opportunity to have EC-TEL 2014 being hosted in Graz in 2014 was used to organise a workshop in German language particularly targeted at Austrian and German teachers. The workshop was titled „Individualisierung, Kompetenzorientierung und formative Beurteilung – Technologie und Klassenzimmerrealität“ and held on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 16, 2014. The workshop was also supported and promoted by the Austrian ministry for education, represented by Ministerialrat Mag. Helmut Stemmer, who also attended the workshop and gave some opening remarks.

The main objective was to present the sustainable results and conclusions from NEXT-TELL, as well as enabling an exchange of experiences between teachers, including invited teachers from Germany who have participated in the pilot studies. A presentation from another Austrian school initiative enriched the programme as well.

NEXT-TELL enabled the venue to be a forum for practitioners to share both day-to-day knowledge for the classroom and integrate technological enhancements and solutions on display. By this, we accomplished to start connections that outlast the project duration. One German school in particular is on its way to prepare for an Erasmus+ program including technology from NEXT-TELL.

https://itunes.apple.com/book/advances-in-technology-enhanced/id663022333?ls=1

https://itunes.apple.com/book/advances-in-technology-enhanced/id663022333?ls=1



1.5 Contact

Harald Mayer

Administrative Co-ordinator JOANNEUM RESEARCH Steyrergasse 17 8010 Graz, Austria email: [email protected] phone: +43 316 876 1136

Prof. Peter Reimann

Scientific Co-ordinator MTO Psychologische Forschung und Beratung GmbH

email: [email protected]

Please visit www.next-tell.eu.




2 Glossary

Terms used within the NEXT-TELL project, sorted alphabetically.

Partner Acronyms

JRS JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, AT

UniRes UNI RESEARCH AS, NO

KMRC Medien in der Bildung Stiftung, DE

TUG Technische Universität Graz, AT

CBS Copenhagen Business School, DM

BHAM University of Birmingham, UK

IOE Institute of Education, University of London, UK

LL Lattanzio Learning SpA, IT (former eXact Learning Solutions SpA, IT)

TALK Verein offenes Lernen, AT

BOC-AT BOC Asset Management GmbH, AT

BOC-PL BOC Information Technologies Consulting SP.Z.O.O., PL

MTO MTO Psychologische Forschung und Beratung GmbH, DE

Abbreviations

BS Baseline Study

CbKST Competence-based Knowledge Space Theory Training Course

CBT Computer Based Training

DBR Design-Based Research

ECAAD Evidence Centered Activity and Appraisal Design (builds on the ECD)

ECD Evidence Centered assessment Design (e.g. PADI project)

EFL 'English as a Foreign Language'; EFL refers to learning English in a non-English-speaking region, such as studying English in an Asian or Latin American nation. Typically, EFL is learned as part of a student's school curriculum or for career purposes if working for an international corporation.

ENA Epistemic Network Analysis

ESL English as a Second Language; refers to learning English in the target language environment

HCI Human Computer Interaction

ICT Information and Communication Technology

IT Information Technology

LEPP Longitudinal Evaluation of Performance in Psychology (2nd generation e-portfolio)

NEXT-TELL Next Generation Teaching, Education and Learning for Life



OLM Open Learner Model

PADI The PADI project aims to provide a practical, theory-based approach to developing quality assessments of science inquiry by combining developments in cognitive psychology and research on science inquiry with advances in measurement theory and technology.

RA Requirement Analysis

RDS Researcher-led Design Study

SRI Stanford Research Institute

STEM The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields are collectively considered core technological underpinnings of an advanced society, according to both the National Research Council and the National Science Foundation

TDS Teacher-led Design Study

TEL Technology Enhanced Learning

TESL Teaching English as Second Language

TISL Teachers Inquiry into Students Learning

Acknowledgement: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 285114.

project final report - next-tellnext-tell.eu/wp-content/uploads/next-tell-wp1-jrs-final... · 2015....

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