Research in Europe

European Union project on
"Innovative Technology for Collaborative Learning and Knowledge Building"

Project Summary:

The ITCOLE Project will develop innovative pedagogical models of collaborative knowledge building, along with design principles for technology to support these models. The project has three key scientific and technical objectives:

	To develop pedagogical models of collaborative knowledge building for primary and secondary education throughout Europe. This will review and build upon existing studies of collaborative learning.
	To design and develop a modular knowledge building environment to support collaborative learning. This will incorporate ideas from previous software systems such as CSILE/Knowledge Forum, BSCW, FLE, JLE. Successive versions of the environment will be made available for free as open source.
	To evaluate, test and disseminate the software environment in hundreds of schools in Finland, Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Greece. This will develop and disseminate meaningful pedagogical practices that advance the use of collaborative learning technology in typical schools.

Project Partners:

UIAH: University of Art and Design Helsinki, Media Lab, Helsinki, Finland

UH: University of Helsinki, Center for Research in Networked Learning, Helsinki, Finland

HC: Helsinki City Education Department, Helsinki, Finland

UvA: University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Amsterdam, Netherlands

KUN: Katolieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands

GMD: GMD-FIT and Fraunhofer Institut, Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik, Bonn, Germany

UM: University of Murcia, Department of Computer Science, ANTS Research Group, Murcia, Spain

UNISA: University of Salerno, Dept of Educational Science, Salerno, Italy

UR: University of Rome La Sapienza, Dept of Psychology of Developmental & Social Processes, Rome, Italy

UoA: National & Capodistrian University of Athens, Dept of Philosophy & History of Science, Cognitive Science & Educational Technology Lab, Athens, Greece

Software Prototypes:

BSCW: Basic Support for Cooperative Work, http://bscw.gmd.de

FLE: Future Learning Environments, Developed at UIAH, http://www.mlab,uiah.fi/fle

JLE: Java Learning Environment, Developed at UM, http://www.jle.net

This page is under construction stay tuned for further details as the project gets underway.

This page last modified on January 05, 2004