GENERAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES AT MACRO LEVEL

As already mentioned above, in the process of localizing the Curriculum, designers need to make decisions about the overall learning approaches they want to implement in their context.

Basically, they will need to decide whether they want to offer f2f or online, or even blended training and what kind of learning strategies and technologies will be available for teachers to implement their courses.

A number of theories, well-established practices and patterns have been formalized in traditional and recent literature concerning the most suitable learning strategies for specific objectives or Learning Outcomes. So, any decision should be made starting from a deep analysis of the LOs.

Generally speaking, the more ‘complex’ the LOs are, the more active, situated and contextualized should be the activities performed by students to master them; besides, assessment methods, aimed at demonstrating the mastery of the same learning outcomes, should be active, situated and contextualized.

In the TEAMCARE Curriculum, Learning Outcomes are defined through 3 main dimensions: Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes.

Each dimension can characterize the whole LO in different percentages, so sometimes a dimension can be prevalent or not present.

When Knowledge is the prevalent dimension

When the “Knowledge” (theoretical and factual) dimension is prevalent in a LO, the most proper learning strategy is usually a “traditional” lecture or the individual fruition of learning materials; especially in adult learning, when time for learning is particularly precious, the individual fruition of materials is often preferred to other strategies; as to the assessment methods, traditional methods such as written exams or assignments or oral exams are preferred since they are effective and time saving.

HINTS – Designing “traditional” lectures

If you opt for f2f lectures as one of the main strategies to be implemented in the courses, remind that this implies students will need to attend them, so when the target population is composed of adults who already work, opting for online lectures can be preferable for them. At the same time, teachers at your institution will be very likely already familiar with delivering f2f lectures and they will probably have already ready materials to use. On the contrary, be aware that online lectures, that can be conducted for example in the form of webinars, need to be re-designed, as in online communication teachers will need to adopt mechanisms to keep the audience attention alive and engage them. So be sure teachers have a specific expertise on this or provide ad hoc training for them. Moreover, if you want your teachers to deliver online lectures, make sure the online institutional learning platform offers specific functionalities to support webinars or synchronous calls. You can also consider teachers to record video-lectures that can be then uploaded on the learning platform, thus allowing asynchronous fruition. This can be preferrable for students, but even in this case, make sure teachers have an expertise on how to prepare and conduct video-lectures, otherwise provide specific training. As a final remark, we should underline (f2f or online) lectures – although may be conducted in such a way to allow some interaction among students, for example by proposing discussion sessions – per se do not guarantee the creation of a Community of Inquiry, as this should be nurtured through more participative and engaging strategies (see below).

HINTS – Designing learning materials (f2f vs. online)

If learning materials is used in f2f contexts, their fruition is usually somehow guided by teachers who give indications about how to use them. On the contrary, if teachers propose learning materials within online contexts, these materials will need to be revised, to make them more ‘self-consistent’ in such a way that students can use them alone. A good practice is also to prepare meta-materials to support students during online course fruition, such as for example ‘Guides for courses’, or similar.

When Skills is the prevalent dimension

When “Skills” dimension is prevalent in a LO, active practice is fundamental and learners should be involved in activities which foster them to put in practice the addressed skills; learning strategies such as learning-by-doing, problem-based learning, simulations, drill & practice and so on, should be the adopted strategies; moreover, work based learning (WBL) is fundamental to develop practical skills (see section above). In a similar way, assessment methods should make the student put into practice the targeted skills to show their level of mastery according to the description of the related Learning Outcomes.

HINTS – Designing individual activities for skills development

Teachers at your institution very likely are familiar with the design and delivery of f2f activities oriented to the development of individual skills. These can include exercises, simulations, problem-base activities, drill & practice sessions. Be aware that there are many digital environments (apps, software, simulators, serious games, etc.) that can support these kinds of activities and can be proposed during f2f or online classes. Using these digital environments – among the others - brings the advantage of keeping track of the students’ achievements (for example through logs or learning analytics), thus providing very useful data teachers can use with assessment purposes. Assigning these activities as homework can be convenient for students, who can carry them out at their own pace and with no (or a few) constraints in terms of time, although they will be alone. Conversely, teachers can opt for ‘flipped classroom’ approaches, where the fruition of lectures /materials is assigned as homework and the practical activities are instead proposed as classwork. In this case, your institution needs to provide the necessary infrastructure (hardware and software) for all the students. When teachers opt for these kinds of digital environments, they should be sufficiently familiar with them but – even more importantly – they should be provided by the institution with some technical support, in such a way that any technical issue can be promptly solved when the environments are used by students. Moreover, it is important not to underestimate the level of familiarity students will have in manipulating simulators, apps or other kinds of hardware/software, so – especially if they are used in online courses – it is important to guarantee the proper (online) support and possibly to envisage some kind of initial technical pre-training for students before they are supposed to carry out any learning activity. As a last remark, we should underline although these activities are more commonly offered as individual activities, students could benefit from some kind of interaction with the teacher and with their peers: offering online spaces to pose questions to teachers (for example in the form of ‘online office hours’), or – even better – to discuss their doubts or results with others, can be beneficial. In these cases, providing functionalities, such as for example Forums on the institutional learning platform, could be a good solution to allow asynchronous communication and exchange, even if this alone won’t be a sufficient condition to create an actual Community of Inquiry.

When Attitudes is the prevalent dimension

When the “Attitudes” dimension is prevalent, learners should be involved in active and situated activities, possibly in groups, through collaborative or cooperative learning approaches, which are based on socio-constructivist theories of learning. This means the proposed activities should promote exchange and practice sharing among peers, possibly around concrete and ‘authentic’ tasks or problems, in such a way that they will collaboratively construct new meanings and shared new knowledge/solutions. In the same way, assessment should ‘measure’ the development of these attitudes and this should be done by assessing the contribution provided by each student to the collaborative learning process. This is because when collaborative learning approaches are used, assessing a product or a performance (for example an oral examination, or the result of a test) is not sufficient; instead monitoring the learning process during the activity will provide the necessary information to assess individual students, as well assess groups. When the attitude is articulated in many dimensions (and this is what often happens), different strategies can be integrated to address the different components.

HINTS – Designing collaborative learning activities

Collaborative learning approaches valorize the learners’ experience through practice sharing and peer discussion, so to support the co-construction of new knowledge. Strategies, such as discussions, peer review activities, case studies, role plays, critical incidents, problem-based learning activities, brainstorming, jigsaws, etc. should be used by teachers to promote practice sharing and the development of the community dimension. The possibility to rely on collaborative learning approaches can be seriously impacted by the size of classes. As working groups need to be constantly tutored, supported and monitored, institutions will need either to have relatively small classes (about 20 people that can be followed by 1 teacher/tutor), or to count on more teachers/tutors. In case you want to propose collaborative learning activities within your courses, teachers should carefully design them (micro-design). This might imply training teachers in these aspects. If you want to support collaboration and practice sharing within your courses, you could consider relying on e-learning or blended learning approaches. This will allow learners to take advantage of distance learning and – especially if courses are mainly carried out through asynchronous communication – this will allow them to learn at their own pace. In any case, you should rely on an adequate technological and /or organizational infrastructure. For example, for f2f collaboration you should provide adequate rooms and – for online - you should check that the institutional learning platform supports some specific features, such as: Wikis, Forums, groups, Synchronous video-call with break out rooms, social networking functionalities, functionalities able to support self-regulated learning, self-monitoring, planning and self-evaluation; gamification functionalities, etc.

The general EU Curriculum describes each LO in terms of the above mentioned 3 dimensions; while in some LOs, a prevalent dimension can be easily identified, other LOs are complex and articulated and do involve the 3 dimensions in the same way. In these cases, alternating and/or integrating different learning strategies could be a good solution and even opting for blended solutions (partially f2f and partially online) is an option, that of course you should consider by taking into account your local context and constraints.