Abstract:

In this challenging COVID era, students ought to be kept constantly engaged through stimulating activities, in order both to keep their education level high (goal1) and help them not to suffer consequences of loneliness and isolation (goal 2).

Goal (2) becomes particularly relevant alongside goal (1) since the coronavirus pandemic has been and still is both an epidemiological and psychological crisis, particularly felt by young generations.

Flipped learning aims at increasing student engagement by proposing complete readings and video lectures to be studied before actual classes. In class, they work on deepenings, doubts, live problem-solving and laboratory activities with the guidance of a mentor.

In this paper we consider a flipped approach to lessons and propose that teamwork activities should be applied as the basis for the preliminary part of the study. This kind of involvement of both groups and teachers could be of great help to achieve both the above goals (1) and (2).

Teamwork is adopted to strengthen the first part of flipped learning, so to help every students feel and be actually engaged in all the class activities.

As a matter of fact, a flipped classroom is structured around the idea that lesson is not the best use of class time, whereas students should better face information before the lesson itself. This is particularly true in teamwork, where a cooperative approach to such information can turn out to be more easily faced and absorbed.

In this way, a better preparation could be achieved before facing classes, especially if groups were properly selected and managed on the basis of their components' skills, expertise and wish to cooperate, as it happens in the proposed approach.

Such approach is divided in three steps: firstly, team definition and management through Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based adaptive testing techniques; secondly, each team faces the studying material the teacher has prepared beforehand; thirdly, the actual class takes place, as it happens in flipped learning.
The idea is to maintain teamwork as the basis of the in class activities as well, so to transform lessons in a sort of laboratory activities.

In this paper an architecture is proposed for the selection and management of students who must take part to groupworks in a flipped approach to classes. The main goal is to strengthen through serious cooperation the preliminary phase of study before the actual lecture is faced.

The considered scenario involves on-site activities within a laboratory or other kinds of studying spaces, as well as remote cooperation through e/m-learning communication facilities and heterogeneous devices.

The goal is to select participants whose profiles (including skills, learning levels and targets) can come alongside with profit, so as to optimize groupwork itself as well as personal achievements and to face the actual lecture properly and in a cooperative way.

In this way, courses are transformed in projects and can also help to face the market world more properly.

The proposed approach is based on a double-purpose architecture that can be used both at school and at home, in case of periods of isolation. As a matter of fact, the considered environment is designed in such a way that every activity can be shift from the ordinary in presence modality to a fully virtual one.

At the basis of such possibility are advanced ICT environments for cooperative work, assessment, tutoring and laboratory activities.

Keywords:

COVID, isolation, teamwork, flipped lesson, AI techniques.