e-LEARNING 2.0. THE NEW LEARNING/TEACHING

PARADIGM

Building up the Collaborative Learning Community

Carlos León de Mora, Julio Cabero Almenara, Juan Camarillo Casado

Information Department, University of Seville, Avda Reina Mercedes s/n. Edif. Rojo, 41012 Sevilla, Spain

Ana Conde Gómez

SADIEL Information Technologies, C/ Isaac Newton 3, 41092 Sevilla, Spain

Keywords: European Higher Education Area, Virtual Learning, Mobility, Community building, Collaborative learning.

Abstract: The University of Seville (UoS) is engaged in a revolution that affects the methodology used in the

educational process and the relationships between the different actors involved in it. The process is driven

by the convergence towards the EHEA objectives and the implementation of the new 2.0 educational

paradigm. This convergence relies on the introduction of new methods and technologies in order to foster

online access to information and services, the development of an infrastructure to support user mobility, and

the collaboration between the members of the university community. The evolution from a granular

scenario, with 4500 teachers and multiple isolated experiences regarding teaching and sharing information,

to the present situation in which all of them accept a corporate e-learning environment has meant a great

challenge. The results leave no room for doubt. The University of Seville has achieved the involvement of

the entire community in the initiatives, and a spectacular progress regarding the implementation of virtual

education services, reaching a penetration of over 80% in terms of the number of students who benefit from

the new environment, less than two years after launching the Virtual Educational Services.

1 THE NEW SCENARIO

After five hundred years of history, Universities are

in a process of change that represents a double

revolution in the learning- teaching methodology

and in the relations between the different actors

involved in the process.

On the one hand, the institution is experiencing a

process of evolution from the classical education

model whose principal agent is the teacher, to a new

one in which the student is the leading figure, origin

and destination of any initiative in this area.

This evolution determines the need for highly

personalised services and for building a new

paradigm, characterised by an easy access to the

educational offer and its related services. Moreover,

it will consolidate new concepts related to e-

government services and in fact, new ways of

communication and collaborative working.

On the other hand, the revolution is driven by the

establishment of the European Higher Education

Area (EHEA), an open environment with no

obstacles to the widespread mobility amongst the

University Community, outlined by the declarations

of La Sorbonne (1998) and Bologna (1999). The

convergence towards the EHEA requires answering

to new demands in the design of the educational

offer and of the learning-teaching methodologies, as

well as strengthening the capitalisation of ICT and e-

government services in the educational environment.

The new Higher Education Model requires the

global redesign of degrees and educational offer, a

new evaluation and accreditation system and a more

flexible curricular organization. This ends up in the

main subject of this article, the need and the fact that

learnig-teaching methodologies focus on the

students’ effective work and their learning, and

encourage their mobility among different academic

organisations, Europe wide, and even world wide.

305

León de Mora C., Cabero Almenara J., Camarillo Casado J. and Conde Gómez A. (2009).

e-LEARNING 2.0. THE NEW LEARNING/TEACHING PARADIGM - Building up the Collaborative Learning Community.

In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education, pages 305-308

DOI: 10.5220/0001979103050308

 SciTePress

Multimedia technologies are critical to achieve

these goals. Its application allows completing

standard Learning Management Systems through

functionalities that support teamwork, virtual

classes, and any other activity requiring active

collaboration through audio and/or video facilities

and facilitate personalized tutoring services.

2 VIRTUAL LEARNING AT THE

UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE

2.1 The UoS Scenario

The UoS is the second Spanish university and the

first of Andalusia by number of students, which

explains its high visibility and social impact, as it

provides educational services to a community of

nearly 70.000 students and 7.000 professionals

(including teachers, researchers and administrative

staff). The UoS educational offer includes 90

degrees, 125 doctoral programs and over 4400

graduate and postgraduate courses.

With these dimensions, it is easy to understand

the enormous complexity of the organization, and

the importance of an efficient process planning to

properly answer to the needs of all members of the

university community. These requirements are not

marked exclusively by the convergence towards the

EHEA, but they also respond to the demands of

teachers and students of getting a collaborative e-

learning environment and to exploit the full potential

of ICTs in their daily activities, from the learning

processes to those devoted to academic management

(registration, evaluation…).

The UoS convergence towards the EHEA began

in 2006, launching several actions according to a

well defined Strategic Plan, which decision-making

relies on the UoS government team:

 The creation of the Digital University Area and

its close coordination with other university

services directly related to teaching, such as

the Institute of Educational Sciences, the

Service for Audiovisual Resources (SAV), or

the Center for Lifelong Learning.

 The integration of the Virtual Learning

Platform in the corporate technological and

human structure of the UoS, specifically with

the academic management systems.

 The promotion of an Educational

Methodologies Renewal Plan, to grant that

every student and every teacher have at their

disposal the tools, contents and procedures

needed to complete their learning-teaching

processes in an efficient and natural way,

adapted to their specific circumstances.

 The promotion of the virtual educational offer

among the members of the university

community, by promoting the technical

infrastructure and encouraging the

development of digital content.

 The adoption of widely accepted standards,

including SCORM and IMS, to ensure

consistent results, integrable with other

solutions, and accessible with minimum

technological requirements.

 The implementation of a set of accompanying

measures to ensure that services are available

to the entire community: training in the use of

the platforms and new concepts of education,

technical and tutorial support, among others.

2.2 Supporting Active Collaboration

With respect to the Corporate Virtual Learning

Services, at the UoS the first step has been to set up

an LMS based on the WebCT CE6 platform, which

is being used for general learning-teaching purposes,

including training for teachers in charge of

eLearning, and a single web access point to the

information and to the services offered, including

education, eLearning and e-Government related

services.

In this process, particular attention has been paid

to the definition of the methodological and

pedagogical framework for the delivery of

eLearning based education and to the identification

of the technological standards that apply to this

discipline.

To ensure the success of the project, at the UoS

the virtual learning support services include

technical assistance to the end-users, support to the

platforms’ technical operation, and follow-up and

control activities, monitoring relevant indicators that

help define continuous services improvement.

In addition, the UoS has promoted pedagogical

support services for content creation, a training plan

for teachers/authors, including software tools

(Course Genie) and an educational resources design

methodology (content design for e-learning).

The goal is to advance in the virtualization of the

subjects until, in many cases, all of their contents are

available to students through the University’s LMS

and can be completely taught through it.

This significant deployment has meant, first, an

exponential growth in the use of the platform by the

university community and, secondly, the continuous

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improvement of the LMS platform through the

integration of a broad range of collaboration

facilities, based on web 2.0 functionalities (wikis,

social networks) and on multimedia tools (virtual

classrooms, voice tools, technology enabled

classrooms, etc.), that make possible the evolution of

learning-teaching processes in a way that differs

completely from the traditional teaching models.

The total number of virtualised courses covering

regular curricula subjects reached 1319, which

added to the 200 graduate programs, accounted for

nearly 30% of subjects available through the Virtual

Learning Platform at the end of the academic year

2007/2008. This value has increased to nearly 2000

subjects already incorporated for the current

academic year.

Regarding access to the platform, the number of

users and of sessions per user also demonstrate an

increasing use of the platform by teachers and

students. It is worth to mention that the academic

year 2007/2008 began with the connection of 12000

students per month, while in 2008/2009 this number

increased to 30000 different users, with more than

50,000 students enrolled, which represents over 85%

of the total amount.

The student accesses to the site have experienced

an exponential growth, from 26773 in November

2006, to over 190000 in the same month in 2007,

and more than 230000 monthly accesses in 2008.

The extraordinary good reception that the

Service has had has resulted in an exponential

increase in the number of registrations to the courses

offered through the LMS platform, as well as in the

requests for support from such users, due to the

generalized use of the platform among the university

community members and to the continuous growth

of the courses and contents offer.

2.3 Multimedia Technologies for

Learning

The UoS has expanded the possibilities of its virtual

learning platform through the integration of virtual

classroom functionalities and voice tools, to

encourage and facilitate social activities,

collaboration, guided practice and evaluation. This is

one of the greatest exponents of on-line real time

virtual learning.

Virtual Classroom tools allow the use of audio,

video, shared applications and presentation of

educational materials. Through these resources (Live

Classroom) teachers can make use of important

interaction elements which would be impossible to

include in traditional training methods.

Thanks to the complete integration of these tools

with the Virtual Learning Platform, the academic

management activities also become easier, as it is

possible to link the registration to courses

automatically to the list of the attendants to the

webinars. This way, teachers can focus on their

teaching activities, preparing their virtual lectures,

and having granted access solely for students

registered in its subjects.

At the same time, the UoS has undertaken other

initiatives which have helped to reinforce the Virtual

Learning Service, such as the Integrative

Technology-enabled Classroom Project, which

provides a multi-user workspace with high quality

real time audio and video transmissions, within an

immersive environment in which users can freely

move and interact as if they were all in the same

room.

Another consolidated project within this area is

the Andalusian Virtual Campus (AVC) which is

running entirely on a virtual and distance teaching

environment using the virtual learning platforms of

all the universities of Andalusia. At present the AVC

has made available over 80 subjects for the

2008/2009 academic year.

The integration of the Web 2.0 paradigm is

nowadays a reality. The UoS’s virtual learning

platform includes blogging, podcasting, RSS

syndication, social networks and other last

generation tools (Elgg, Mediawiki, etc.). The main

intention behind this is to encourage and normalise

collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Furthermore, it is promoting open access to

educational materials for anyone, anywhere, without

limiting its accessibility because of issues related to

intellectual property rights, through the

OpenCourseWare (OCW) project.

This portfolio of projects define a mature and

integrated scenario for the provision of virtual

learning services to the UoS users community.

Looking ahead, the University is committed to

further develop and qualify their Virtual Teaching

and Learning Services, with the aim of promoting

the students social network and mobility through the

development of projects concerning Delegated

Authentication which allows “single sign-on among

universities”, the use of Learning Objects

repositories, the strengthening of OCW initiatives

and the introduction of Knowledge Management

Systems, among others.

As an additional measure to guarantee mobility,

the UoS takes part of the Eduroam project

(Educational Roaming), which allows connectivity

and mobility through different worldwide wireless

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research networks participating in the project

(www.reinus.us.es/eduroam.es.html).

The design and implementation of a Learning

Objects Repository represents a significant advance

in the exploitation, re-use and optimization of the

updating efforts of contents generated by other

authors, either directly or with minimal changes.

Having a single access point to structured and

indexed educational resources (learning objects)

strengthens the Community and allows any author to

learn about what others are developing in the same

field. This is particularly useful in environments

where there is plenty of material generated for

courses plus a significant volume of teachers and

students in continuous growth. The repository will

be integrated with the UoS’s LMS platform and will

be defined according to standards in order to allow

communication with other universities’ repositories.

3 CONCLUSIONS

At present, the UoS counts on a mature

organisational and managerial scenario, oriented to

the establishment of the EHEA and of the student

oriented learning model.

To this aim, technologies, procedures and

methodologies have been merged to allow the

optimisation of internal procedures, the access to

information and indicators on which rely the

decision making process, the use of e-learning

platforms and virtual campus, and the deployment of

e-Government services in line with European,

national and regional directives. In parallel,

strengthening the implementation of the Educational

Methodologies Renewal Plan, and committing to

quality and continuous improvement in all of its

processes.

As a result of these actions, al the members of

the UoS community count on an integrated and

homogeneous scenario, characterized by:

 Access to a virtual learning platform, integrated

with the academic management systems of the

university, and enhanced with services and

features to support collaboration and

interaction between the different members of

the learning community.

 Support to the virtualization of contents, though

a collaborative model, in which a team of

experienced professionals works together with

the teachers and authors to provide advice and

technical support to the production of digital

content later accessible through the virtual

learning platform.

 The availability of digital educational resources

from more than 2000 subjects through virtual

classrooms, and of complementary services

encouraging active collaboration, such as

voice and audio tools, wikis, Elgg , blogging

or content syndication.

 The benefits of sharing experiences and digital

resources in an online community of more

than 50000 students and 2000 teachers, and

the possibility of accessing in a short or

medium term, to resources from other

universities, thanks to initiatives launched to

increase mobility, as the federation of

identities and repositories.

At present, the UoS virtual learning platform

gives support to over 600 concurrent users, while

over 10000 users connect to it daily. This gives an

idea of the impact that the introduction of the Virtual

Learning Service is having in the university

community. These figures have made the project of

the UoS at the forefront at national and European

level in terms of implementation of ICT as a means

to improve the teaching/learning methodologies and

to provide universal access to the educational

resources of and to their community.

The key factors for this revolution have been:

 The implementation of mutually supportive

initiatives, in order to take benefit of synergy

to achieve goals. So, technological actions are

always accompanied by methodological and

reorganization approaches, training plans,

dissemination campaigns and support to users.

 The involvement of the entire community in the

modernization processes and the

establishment of accompanying measures

addressed to the professionals involved in the

provision of services and to the final users.

 The selection of flexible, scalable solutions,

based on broadly extended standards, able to

be merged in a comprehensive solution, as

results of a never ending iterative optimisation

process.

REFERENCES

Virtual Learning Support Site: http://ev.us.es

WebCT Learning Management System: http://ev2.us.es

Open Course Ware Inititative: http://ocwus.us.es

Learning Methodologies Renewal Plan (LMRP):

http://www.institucional.us.es/plan_renovacion/

LMRP Technical and Pedagogical Support Services:

http://www.sav.us.es/ensenanzavirtual/descripciondels

ervicio.asp

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