M a r i a N a w o j c z y k , A g n i e s z k a C h r z ą s z c z
VIRTUAL EDUCATION: CROSSING CULTURAL AND
TECHNOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES : ICAMP CASE
1. Introduction
Modern information technology enters numerous fi elds of human activity. Aca-demic teachers practically from every branch of science use it in their researches. However, its use in the didactic process happens slowly and to a limited extent. Th e sixth frame programme of the EU, iCamp – Information Society Technology – has undertaken the challenge to introduce the technology to didactics. Th e basic as-sumption of this project is to create an open, wide virtual space, in which both students and teachers, using various tools, will be able to cooperate crossing lan-guage, cultural and technological boundaries.
As a part of the project, students from four countries (Estonia – 7 people, Lithuania – 8 people, Turkey – 13 people, and Poland – 8 people) ventured into an educational process together, in the area of social sciences methodology. Th e di-dactic directive of the project was to encourage collaborative achievement of knowledge by students in small groups. Th e groups consisted of 4 or 5 people, with a restriction limiting the number of students from one country to no more than two. Th e students presented various levels of education – from bachelor’s degree to post-graduate studies, as well as various specialties – from sociology to informa-tion technology. Four academic teachers were involved in the project (1 from each country), who took care of their national groups as wholes, and of two interna-tional groups.
Th e following information technology tools were used in the project: blogs (in-dividual ones of students and teachers, collective – of small international groups, of
pedagogical support and technical support), teleconferences via Skype and Flash-meeting (groups of teachers, groups of students and groups of teachers and stu-dents), various messengers (MSN mainly among students, e-mail – all with every-one), as well as Google docs as a common work space for small groups and their teachers.
2. Scope of the project
ICamp Project comprised three basic dimensions: a pedagogical, technical, and social one1. An educational process with the use of modern technology is not a simple transfer of traditional teaching into the Internet. It requires another type of pedagogical models. As a part of the analysed project, the initial situation was even more complicated, since not only were the traditional face to face relations between teachers and students, like in student groups, supposed to be provided via electronic media, but they were to be conducted in English (which was a foreign language for all the members of the project) and among members from various countries. Th erefore, the pedagogical model had to take cultural diff erences into consideration, as well as the programme diff erences (students were studying vari-ous disciplines at varivari-ous levels) incorporated into the new form of education. It was based on the rule of social constructivism2 with elements of inter-cultural cooperation in social nets.
Th e issues mentioned above constituted not only a theoretical and practical challenge for the pedagogical model, but they posed potential social problems, as well. Th e growing mobility of students in various, mainly European projects of exchange, gives them an opportunity to experience cultural diversity, yet in totally diff erent conditions than the one to which they were exposed in iCampa. Th e ex-perience of cultural diversity included not only students, but also teachers, who cooperated with one another and with international students’ groups. Th e techni-cal devices used by everyone to some extent limited the possibilities of expression of the cultural specifi city and structured communication, which was an advantage in this project.
1 B. Kieslinger, F. Wild, O.I. Arsun, iCamp – Th e Educational Web for Higher Education [in:]
In-novative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing,W. Nejdl, K. Tochtermann (ed.), Berlin,
Heidelberg 2006, pp. 640–645.
2 R.S. Prawat, R.E. Floden, Philosophical perspectives on constructivist views of learning,
3. Communication
Th e iCamp experiment imposed on the students and facilitators specifi c tools and systems that improve communication. Th e starting point were closed e-learning platforms, used in the home universities of the students that participated in the project. Since such systems are not interoperational, thus do not enable communication of the students that have been assigned to them, tools named social soft -ware have been proposed3, which enable cooperation according to the pursued defi nition of creating a collaborative fi nal product (an artefact). Th e off ered tools defi ned two spaces of cooperation – an individual and a group one. In the latter, a blog was of key importance, around which the work of students concerning the fi nal product (a questionnaire) was focused. Th e presence of students on the blog was supported by communication tools (e-mail, Flashmeeting, Skype) or by tools for collaborative editing and creating of the content (Google DNS). Additionally, the students were encouraged to use the social service of bookmarks Del.ici.ous and to write individual blogs.
Th e chart in picture 1 illustrates the space of iCamp during the realisation of the fi rst pilot project.
4. Stages of the project
In this text, we will focus only on this part of iCamp project which has been called “trial 1” (the project still continues as a whole). Its main part, with the participation of students, lasted from the middle of October 2006 to the middle of January 2007. Academic teachers joined the project half a year earlier than students. Th is period was devoted to specify the content, organisational, and time span, which was in-dispensable for the stage with student involvement. During several video-confer-ences and in discussions conducted via the Internet platform created especially for that purpose, four teachers – strangers to one another, coming from various coun-tries, with diff erent didactic experience, of various academic specialties – managed to defi ne common criteria referring to three issues basic for e-learning4: the
crea-3 A. Danielewska-Tułecka, J. Kisielewska, J. Kusiak, Wyzwania w wirtualne przestrzeni
edukacyj-nej [in:] e-Edukacja.net. Materiały Pokonferencyjne, M. Dąbrowski, M. Zając (ed.), Fundacja
Akredy-tacji i Promocji Kierunków Ekonomicznych 2006, pp. 236–241.
4 P. Dillenbourg, D. Schneider, Collaborative learning and the internet [online document] 1995,
S o ur ce: T . V äl ja ta ga, K. P at a, M. L am p er e, T am in g socia l s p a ce s f or c olla bo ra ti ve le ar n in g i n W eb 2.0 – iCa m p c a se , t yp es cr ipt of a s p ee ch re ad d u rin g the co nf er ence “C o m p u te r S u p p o rt ed C o lla b o ra ti ve L ea rnin g“ in R u tg er s U n iv er si ty , 2007. P ic tur e 1. iC am p S p ace W ordpr ess .c om. Gr oup Blog 4 studen ts + facilita to r Synchr onous te xt messages Flashmeeting .c om Synchr onous te xt and audio visual messages Docs .google .c om Synchr onous co nten t editing Skype .c om Sy nchr onous t ex t and audio visual messages GRUP A Links t o posts Studen t's blog Pedagogical suppor t blog W eb sit es Studen t Skype e-mail Blog del .ici. o.us Studen t Skype e-mail Blog del .ici. o.us Studen t Skype e-mail Blog del .ici. o.us Studen t Skype e-mail Blog del .ici. o.us individual spac e gr oup spac e
tion of student groups, the tasks that the groups would be challenged with, and the communication tools which the members of the project would use.
Th e common ground for all the schools participating in the project were cours-es in methodology of social scienccours-es. Since the participation in the project was only a supplement or an extension of regular university courses, the involvement of students was voluntary, and in every school it was subordinate to its internal regulations. Th e process of recruitment of students for the project lasted from the middle of September to the middle of October. Polish members were chosen from among the students of the second year of bachelor studies in sociology at AGH (University of Science and Technology). Maria Nawojczyk performs classes for the students of this year in statistics in social sciences (the same students simultane-ously take part in a course of research methods and techniques), where one of the elements of evaluation is an independently prepared statistical analysis of a chosen research problem (based on Polish General Social Survey). Th e students of this course, in the academic year 2006/2007, were off ered membership in the iCamp project instead of preparing an individual statistical analysis. Th e entrance condi-tions of the project were knowledge of English that enabled students to cooperate and access to the Internet – 9 students applied.
For the students, the project began with a common video-conference, during which all the students and teachers shortly introduced themselves. Th e fi rst task for the students was to create individual blogs. Relying on the blogs, they were supposed to create international groups. Th e only restriction for the students stated that in one group there should be no more than two students from one country. Th e aim was to keep the groups as culturally varied as possible. In two weeks, the students created 7 groups of 4–5 people. Teachers’ involvement appeared necessary only in creation of the last, eighth, group. Each teacher supervised two international groups of students. Next, in six weeks, every student group was supposed to create a ques-tionnaire of a survey for social research connected with the issues of international comparisons and e-learning. Details of this stage of the project will be presented in discussing the educational process. All the created questionnaires were evaluated, both by the teachers and by the students. Th e evaluation process fi nished in the middle of January 2007. Th ere the involvement of the students in “trial 1” fi nished. Th e teachers and organisers of iCamp began their analyses and evaluations. Th e following text is a part of the still lasting process5.
5 S. Kuru, M. Nawojczyk, K. Niglas, E. Butkeviciene, A. Soylu, Facilitating Cross-border
Self-directed Collaborative Learning: Th e iCamp Case; a typescript of a speech read at the EDEN
5. Educational process
An educational process denotes an eff ective transfer of knowledge and of the skills to get it in interaction of teachers and students. Th is relation is not a symmetrical one, i.e. teachers are the much more responsible side for the process. In the peda-gogical experiment created in iCamp, this responsibility was even greater, though for both sides it was a new experience. Our analysis of the process is by defi nition one sided, i.e. we can observe the students and the teachers only from the point of view of the organisers and the teachers. Th e point of view of the students is acces-sible only to an extent to which they shared the evaluation of their involvement in iCamp with us (more about the project and Polish students participating in it can be found on a web page created by them http://icamp.oen.agh.edu.pl). Among the students taking part in the project, there were conducted questionnaires that stud-ied such issues as the expectations connected with involvement in the experiment6. Among the 27 students that participated in the survey, 22 expected acquiring ad-ditional skills in using communication tools and developing their communication skills. 18 students expected expanding their language skills, a similar number ex-pected perfecting their organisation skills and making new friends from other countries. Other expectations included increasing self confi dence, fl exibility of learning and gaining more self-reliance in learning. Apparently, none of the expec-tations concerned achieving more skills in the area which the project referred to (social survey).
Analysing the involvement of students in this process, we would like to empha-sise the issues of their expectations and motivations, as well as their participation and achievements. We will examine them in the categories: a cognitive one – how well the students dealt with their tasks, both individually and in groups; a social one – how well the students dealt with cooperation in groups and with the teach-er, and an emotional one – whether the participation in the project was satisfac-tory for them, and what it concerned. Th is examination will be also a critical look7 on the role of the teachers and organisers of the project.
6 A.V. Nguyen-Ngoc, E. Lai-Chong Law, Evaluation of Cross-cultural Computer-Supported
Col-laborative Learning: Preliminary Findings for iCamp Challenges; a typescript of a speech read at the
Ed-Media Conference in Vancouver, 2007.
7 M. McPherson, M. Baptista, G. Zafeiriou, New Tutoring Skills for Online learning: Are E-tutors
Adequately Prepared for E-learning Delivery? [in:] Th e Quality Dialogue: Integrating Quality Cultures in Flexible, Distance and eLearning, A. Szűcs, E. Wagner, C. Tsolakidis (ed.), proceedings of the 2003
We will begin with two technical issues which seemed basic for the project to be successful. One of them is the ability of the students to use the Internet tools and access to the Internet. Although a number of tools off ered as a part of the project, such as video-conferences, collaborative working fi les, common blogs, or the blogs of technical and pedagogical support, were new for most of the students, learning and using them did not pose a problem for them. Th e only technical problem connected with the Internet that appeared during the project, was the lack of access to the source for some students in the time that most of them found convenient. It caused diffi culties both in communication and in cooperation in a given group, which could only partially be solved by asynchronous communica-tion. Another technical issue was the common English language. It was positive that the language was not the fi rst for any of the participants of the project. Th ere were, of course, diff erences in the language competence, which bred momentary misunderstandings or frustrations, but it was not a factor that would impede com-munication. Another type of diff erentiation appeared much more prominent.
Students from Lithuania, Estonia and Poland studied humanistics, and students from Turkey – information technology. Moreover, students from various countries studied on diff erent academic levels, from bachelor degree studies to post-graduate studies. Th ese two types of diff erences appeared the most signifi cant for the project, its conduct and results. Th ese diff erences are connected with the fi rst neglect of the teachers and organisers – too much attention to the technical possibilities of real-ising the project, without enough emphasis on cultural, social and content prob-lems. It was already noticeable when students were choosing their working groups. Th e idea was for each of the people to create their individual blogs, which were to serve as the basis of fi nding partners to working groups. Th e blogs created by stu-dents concentrated more on socialising than on the subject matter of the project. Th erefore, the choice of groups was more emotional than task-oriented, though it was quite fast (apart from one group).
Th ese diff erences were fully visible when realising the basic task of the groups, which was a creation of a questionnaire for comparative study in the area of issues connected with the use of modern technology in the process of education. Each of the groups,in internal discussion, had to specify a particular research problem, specify the right indicators and construct a proper survey tool in 6 weeks. Since the assumed pedagogical model was based on the idea of self-directed study with support, the main activity should take place in the students groups. Th e students could use the pedagogical blog, where the time and content chart of the project was presented, as well as the basic writings on the subject. Th ere were also latest comments of the teachers, which referred to the project progress in the groups, as
well as discussed the current problems. Every student group had its tutor – teach-er and the possibility to ask any of the teachteach-ers involved in the project.
Group work was characterised by various pace. It was clearly visible that it was not a problem for the post-graduate students to organise their own work, as well as that the level of their knowledge was much higher from other participants. If such a person was active, and the rest of the group was interested in fast improve-ment of their knowledge, the works of this group quickly reached the expected level and pace. It happened in two cases on eight possible, but even in the two cases it was impossible to achieve such a level of inter-discipline where the students of information technology would be included in the content discussion on the indicators of a chosen problem, and not only in the discussion on the technical realisation of the designed survey.
As a result, all the groups fulfi lled the task no more than one week later than they were due. Th ere were two basic models of activity inside the groups8. One of them was based on two very active students and two or three supporting them in detailed issues of other members of the group. Th e second one – on one active person that coordinated the work of other members of the group. Th e fi rst model appeared more eff ective taking into consideration the quality of the students projects (all the questionnaires are available on the aforementioned web page of AGH students), and it constitutes another reason for a discussion on the size of the groups in the Internet-aided teaching9.
Th e participation of the students in the whole project, as well as the survey questionnaires created by the groups were submitted to an intricate system of evaluation. Every questionnaire was evaluated by all the teachers and students that had not created it, in three dimensions: the choice of the survey subject, the choice of indicators to survey this subject, the questionnaire as a survey tool. Every di-mension was evaluated on a scale from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good). Moreover, every student was evaluated by the tutor of his or her group and by other members of the group in three dimensions: a communicative one, contribution to the prep-aration of the project, and using the Internet tools – also on a scale from 1 to 5. Th is system took into consideration both the opinion of experts (teachers), and the self-evaluation (of students) and referred to various aspects of the cooperation. Its only vice was that it was presented to students aft er termination of their work, and it was a kind of surprise for them. Of course the students knew that their work on
8 In detail on the models of communication inside the groups see A.V. Nguyen-Ngoc, E. Law,
op.cit.
9 G. Salmon, E-moderating: Th e Key to Teaching and Learning Online; London–New York 2004,
the project would be evaluated, but they did not know the criteria of this evalua-tion. We believe that from the point of view of the pedagogical assumptions it was not benefi ciary, but as mentioned before, it was a specifi c experiment not only for students, but for teachers, as well – we will come back to this issue later.
Th e evaluation of student participation in the project is only partially available, i.e. we can view only the remarks of Polish students on their Internet page, and the remarks they gave at a meeting aft er the termination of the project. A signifi cant aspect of their positive evaluation of the participation in the project was the social aspect, the fact that they met various “cool” people and they hoped that contact with some of them would be longer than the time of the project. Th ey gained self-confi dence in communicating in English. Th ey learned the Internet tools, which were defi ned as necessary, not only for the project, but for the future , as well. Nev-ertheless, they did not feel they acquired more knowledge when compared to tra-ditionally performed university courses. For the students to appreciate the positive value of participation in such a project we must wait until they pass on to the next levels of academic education10.
Th e opinion of the academic teachers about this project is available from an even more individual point of view (of a co-author of this text). In every type of pedagogical model, even in one assuming self-directed learning, the role of a teach-er deta teach-ermines the process of education11. In this specifi c project, a few pedagogical models and styles of education needed specifi cation. It was necessary to take into consideration the ideas accepted by the organisers of the project and four teachers, who came from various countries and represented various experience and habits. Cooperation among the teachers, with the involvement of pedagogical or technical parts organisers, or with the coordinators of the whole project began half a year before the admission of students to “trial 1”. In this time, a lot of issues were solved and coordinated, unfortunately, just as many slipped our attention. Our analysis of the role of teachers in the described project will begin from the mentioned issues, to pass on to purely individual experiences of the co-author of this text.
Th e organisers of the project left quite a lot of freedom to the teachers in defi ning their role in detail, which on the one hand was an advantage for the
10 I. Op de Beeck, W. Van Petegem, J. Van den Branden, G. Van der Perre, 2002; Network Elearning:
Oppotriunities, Obstacles and Solution Scenarios for Obstacles Netcampus: Improving ODL in a Ne-twork [in:] Open and Distance Learning in Europe and Beyond, E. Wagner, A. Szűcs (ed.), Proceedings of the 2002 EDEN Annual Conference in Granada, Spain 2002, pp. 452–458.
11 E.P. Errington, Th e Infl uence of Teacher Beliefs on Flexible Learning Innovation in Traditional
University Settings [in:] Innovation in Open & Distance Learning, F. Lockwood, A. Gooley (ed.),
trial as a sort of pedagogical experiment, on the other hand, though, it caused ambiguities, which had their negative consequences. In the preparation phase, we managed to agree on the content of the project, i.e. the fact that in the fi nal eff ect we would expect from the student groups survey questionnaires to conduct com-parative research. We specifi ed a general subject area for such studies. We pre-pared a common set of supportive academic writings. We defi ned the rules of creating student groups and the set of the Internet tools which the students should use during the trial. Th e time span of the students’ participation in the project was also delimited.
We failed to prepare a more detailed structure of the course with division into particular phases and with responsibilities of the teachers for given tasks in the course. We did not create a precise defi nition of the supervision of the student groups or the set of actions we had to discuss, or the way to reach an agreement. Since in the group of teachers there was no natural leader, on that would be more active in coordinating work, this work was individualised, which unfortunately sometimes led to sending contradictory information to the students. Perhaps, this slack cooperation of the teachers resulted also in the fact that the students were not enough sensitive to the social problems of intercultural cooperation. Neverthe-less, we sustained communication and information fl ow during all the stages of the project.
In the stage in which the students participated, each of the teachers had a some-what double function: on the one hand of a tutor of his or her national group – i.e. all the students from a given country, and on the other hand of two international student groups. Th e international groups were ascribed to the teachers in a draw. Work in this groups was a fundamental part of this project. We would like to devote some space in our analysis to the specifi cation of this work.
6. From the memories of a “facilitator”
Two student groups remained in my care, one of four people (one person from each country – group A) and one of 5 people (one person from Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, and two students from Turkey – group B). On the day of the draw concerning which teacher would facilitate which group, I sent to both groups an e-mail with information that I would be their facilitator and with a note of how I imagine our further cooperation (later, I found out from the Polish students in other groups that not every teacher performed such an introduction. Since then, the frame of my work day lost any structure. It was one of the problems connected
with e-learning, which I had not been prepared enough for12. My relations with both groups diff ered a lot.
Group A
It was the most active group in this project. It was based on two substantially ac-tive people, but also on the supporting two people and on good communication among all the members of the group. I received from them a few pieces of informa-tion a day on various content and technical issues connected with the project. I par-ticipated in two video-conferences with them, and I constantly added remarks to their work on the project until its fi nal version. Tutoring this group consumed a lot of time, but it gave me a lot of satisfaction, as well. Th e only stressful element was the fact that more oft en than not, their work exceeded the ideas of the teachers as to the next stage of the project – they, group A – were ready, and we, the teachers had not agreed on the next step, yet, or as a result of the work of this group, we noticed that we had not agreed on something that should have been coordinated. When it comes to the eff ects of group work, this group received the highest marks.
Group B
Th is was a group of various levels of activeness during the project. In the begin-ning, all the members of this group contacted only me. When I tried to encourage them to communicate with one another, it stopped almost entirely. Next, it was rarely performed and predominantly for socialising reasons. I managed to organ-ise only one video-conference due to the problems with fi nding time for everyone to be present, and one member was absent anyway. For a considerable part of the project, there was hardly any contribution of the group to the subject matter. I felt entirely helpless in motivating them to work, when my e-mails, posts in their com-mon blog, posts in their working document were left unanswered. In the fi nal part of the project, mobilisation of one person with scarce help of two others let them achieve an eff ect evaluated as good enough.
Conclusions
Such projects help in realising the diffi culties connected with introducing the Internet-supported learning. It seems inevitable that the traditional university learning will be aided by e-learning13, which is confi rmed by the Regulation of the
12 G. Salmon, op.cit.
13 C. McLachlan-Smith, C. Gunn, Promoting Innovation and Change in ‘Traditional’ University
Setting [in:] Innovation in Open & Distance Learning, F. Lockwood, A. Gooley (ed.), London 2001, pp.
Minister of Science and Higher Education14, which specifi es the conditions of studying with the use of distance learning methods and techniques. Th ere is al-ready a demand for such learning, and it results not only from the expansion of technology into didactics, but with social changes, as well. Both students and aca-demic teachers are increasingly mobile, they change their place of studying and living more oft en. Th erefore, they are and have always been searching for fl exible forms of learning and teaching.
Moreover, the expansion of technology into education causes the fact that both students and teachers become engaged in various “virtual activities” - they write blogs, design e-learning materials, become members of social services.
Every more oft en, science is transferred to the Internet, and the members of a learning process become people coming from various cultures, using various styles of work and diff erent tools or the Web services to gain knowledge and aca-demic skills. Due to the iCamp project, we have proven that preparation of students for self-directed learning in a multicultural on-line environment, as well as using a constructivist pedagogical approach requires from the facilitator to prepare proper “soil” so that a student could look for knowledge by himself and direct his own scientifi c development15.
However, for the introduction of e-learning on a bigger scale to be successful, two basic conditions must be fulfi lled. Firstly, universities must invest as institu-tions into proper infrastructure and into its continuous development and mainte-nance. Th is infrastructure should not be limited to computer rooms or to broad-band Internet access, but should provide access to technical and methodological support for both the staff and the students. Secondly, teachers should be convinced that there is a necessity to acquire new skills to successfully conduct the Internet education process. Taking the above into consideration, learning from the mistakes we committed in the described project is a very positive consequence.
7. Ending
iCamp project ends in 2008. Until then, a part of infrastructure will have been developed, which is based on integrating the tools from the OpenSource, accom-panied by expanding methodological concepts that support the tools. Two
follow-14 Dz.U. No. 188, item 1347.
15 M. Moore, Self Directed Learning and Distance Education, “Journal of Distance Education”
ing trials are planned, which will focus this time on creating a network and facili-tating self-directed learning in the on-line environment. The results will be published at www.icamp.eu
B I B L I O G R A P H Y :
Danielewska-Tułecka A., Kisielewska J., Kusiak J., Wyzwania w wirtualne przestrzeni edu-kacyjnej [IN:] e-Edukacja.net. Materiały Pokonferencyjne, M. Dąbrowski, M. Zając (ed.), Fundcja Akredytacji i Promocji Kierunków Ekonomicznych 2006.
Dillenbourg P., Schneider D., Collaborative Learning and the Internet [online document] 1995, at: http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/research/CMC/colla/iccai95_1.html
Errington E.P., Th e Infl uence of Teacher Beliefs on Flexible Learning Innovation in Tradi-tional University Settings [in:] Innovation in Open & Distance Learning, F. Lockwood, A. Gooley (ed.), Londyn 2001.
Kieslinger B., Wild F., Arsun O.I., iCamp – Th e Educational Web for Higher Education [in:] Innovative Approaches for Learning and Knowledge Sharing, W. Nejdl, K. Tochtermann (ed.), Berlin–Heidelberg 2006.
Kuru S., Nawojczyk M., Niglas K., Butkeviciene E., Soylu A., Facilitating Cross-border
Self-directed Collaborative Learning: Th e iCamp case; a typescript of a speech read at the
EDEN Conference in Naples, 2007.
McLachlan-Smith C., Gunn C., Promoting Innovation and Change in ‘Traditional’ Univer-sity Setting [in:] Innovation in Open & Distance Learning, F. Lockwood, A. Gooley (ed.), London 2001.
McPherson M., Baptista M., Zafeiriou G., New Tutoring Skills for Online Learning: Are
E-tutors Adequately Prepared for E-learning Delivery? [in:] Th e Quality Dialogue:
Integrat-ing Quality Cultures in Flexible, Distance and eLearnIntegrat-ing, A. Szűcs, E. Wagner, C. Tsolakidis (ed.), proceedings of the 2003 EDEN Annual Conference in Rhodes, Greece, 2003. Moore M., Self Directed Learning and Distance Education, “Journal of Distance Education”
1986, http://cade.athabascau.ca/vol1.1/moore.html
Nguyen-Ngoc A.V., Lai-Chong Law E., Evaluation of Cross-cultural Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: Preliminary Findings for iCamp Challenges, a typescript of a speech read at the Ed-Media Conference in Vancouver, 2007.
Op de Beeck I., Van Petegem W., Van den Branden J., Van der Perre G., Network E-Learning: Oppotriunities, Obstacles and Solution Scenarios for Obstacles Netcampus: Improving ODL in a Network [in:] Open and Distance Learning in Europe and Beyond, E. Wagner, A. Szűcs (ed.), proceedings of the 2002 EDEN Annual Conference in Granada, Spain, 2002.
Prawat R.S., Floden R.E., Philosophical perspectives on constructivist views of learning [in:] “Educational Psychologist” 1994, 29(1).
Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education, which specifi es the conditions of studying with the use of distance learning methods and techniques; Dz.U. No. 188, item 1347.
Salmon G., E-moderating: Th e Key to Teaching and Learning Online, London–New York,
2004.
Väljataga T., Pata K., Lampere M., Taming social spaces for collaborative learning in Web 2.0 – iCamp case; a typescript of a speech read at the “Computer Supported Collaborative Learning“ at Rutgers University, 2007.
SUMMARY
Th e text is concerned with the aspect of the present-day Information Technology, which enters numerous domains of human activity. Academic lecturers of virtually all scientifi c disciplines use it in their researches. However, the implementation of IT in the didactic process proceeds slowly and in a limited scope. Th e sixth frame programme of the EU, iCamp – Information Society Technology – has undertaken the task of introducing these technologies into didactics. Th e basis objective of this project was to create on open vir-tual domain, in which students, as well as teachers, would be able to cooperate by means of utilising various tools, transgressing language, cultural and technological barriers. Pre-senting the potential of this initiative and the opportunities arising in this respect is the essence of this text.
