Abstract:

Being involved in ITEC (innovative Technologies for Engaging Classrooms, www.itec.eun.org), an EUN funded project developed from 2010 to 2014 in more than 2500 classrooms across 20 European countries, my 10th grade students (Ss) piloted a Learning Story (LS) built from three trends: collaboration, augmented reality and community engagement.

In a first step, in collaboration with SMART Tech Spain, we organized a workshop involving teachers, pedagogic advisors, parents and Ss to develop our LS: Virtual Museum (VM). Based on the trends mentioned, we designed a set of Learning Activities (LA) that were integrated into our LS on a narrative intended to serve as a guide for the teachers responsible of developing the pilots: along a term, Ss would work in teams with the common goal of building a VM to be shared with the community in order to explain (in a wide sense) topics of any subject (in the original narrative, a set of remarkable places, monuments, buildings, paintings,… on the Ss’ nearest environment, to be described, analyzed, contextualized and shared with the community through a digital tool). One of the main concerns on the design of the LAs was engaging the Ss in the learning process, from the definition of the objectives to the assessment process.

The first pilot was developed by my 10th grade Maths Ss, with the topic of Geometry: they were engaged into a research to build shareable items related with the topic starting with their own interests in real life: sports, fashion, food, architecture, astronomy,… anything was a good starting point. After a collaborative process each team had to contribute to the class VM with an augmented reality enhanced image linked to the mathematical content explained and to a blog where the whole process of creation could be followed. In order to have a complete view of the process at any moment, we tested a new digital tool provided by SMART as part of the pilot activities.

Once the teams formed, the Ss, in a collaborative process through discussion, had to agree in everything, from the topic to the way to present it, taking into account the audience, the content to be added, the use of augmented reality or the presentation tool. Through the process, they had to find an equilibrium point with all the ideas, in order to have a final unique item, agreed content to add, an image to be part of the VM, and a blog describing the process in detail.

The assessment criteria were agreed in a cooperative session amongst the Ss and the teacher, being one of the main goals the depth of mathematical content to be added and explained. The assessment process had two different parts: teacher supervision by following the blog, the collaborative workspace in the digital tool and observation on the working sessions, and peer assessment from team to team (this needed new sessions of discussion to get a single mark from each team for each item published).

The experience resulted in more engagement of Ss in the learning process, more responsibility taking (even by the students less engaged); role assumption was a soft process in every team that resulted in strengths and weaknesses self-awareness. In the final reflection sessions, the Ss commented as their preferred methodology change their access to parts of the learning process that traditionally were forbidden for them, in particular the whole assessment process.

Keywords:

Collaborative learning, assessment, students engagement, augmented reality, PBL.