This is a training for interested people who intend to improve their cooperative professional practices on regular basis. The goal is to make the following practices your own, according to your job environment : participatory techniques, collaborative tools, knowledge sharing and joint approaches among many other concepts to enhance further cooperation.
The collaborative practices and tools watch can be a following further session.
New technologies, digital technologies : new issues for training
Undoubtedly, the advent of digital technology and the Internet has given the sector countless training opportunities.
The change in methods that follows goes beyond technological contributions, and the whole organization of information, space, distance and time is changed.
Factors of change linked to new technologies :
Unlimited access to resources (ITyPA! Or the Internet, Tout Y est Pour Apprendre)
Remote multidirectional interaction, the remote "presence " where the valuation of relationship is meaningful
horizontal communication network
the introduction of virtual reality and micro-worlds
the logic of participation driven by digital culture
All these items lead to foresee a new model of education:
Trainers of the Network of Remote French-speaking education of Canada REFAD have pointed out very exhaustively opportunities and challenges linked to the Web 2.0's tools :
Opportunities :
Mobility and portability and hence an increased flexibility for users which have access anywhere and anytime.
An increased motivation of at least part of the trainees, particularly the youngest, leading maybe to more persevering.
The trainee as a producer of learning contents, and thus a more visible apprenticeship leading to an improvement of his taking over of the matter, of his autonomy and of his getting a sense of responsability.
Numerous possibilities of cooperation, of socialization and exchanges and thus of apprenticeship of collaboration and team work so much for the students than for the trainers and institutions.
Theease and speed of the information's dissemination at very low cost, independent of distance, increasing its impact.
The multiplicity ou pervasiveness of tools being able to bear all the aspects of an educational experience.
Awide access to contents, to experts and trainings, constituting a factor of levelling out, in particular between regions.
New possibilities of organizing information and of creation of metadata.
An opportunity of apprenticeship of the use of media and ICT tools and of information literacy, transferable to other contexts.
Anopportunity of educational innovation, of widening to new approaches and organizational innovation, among other more personalized and contextualized learnings.
Challenges :
The need for teachers and institutions to share their power and supervision. An evaluation of authority towards transparency, from expert to facilitator, from presentation to participation.
The support to motivation and participation necessary to the evolution of the trainee's role from passive listener to active and creative participant.
A need for apprenticeship of numerous information literacies : use of technologies, informational skills, management of digital identity, etc.
Questions linked to intellectual property and to evolution in contents of producing practices and works (assemblies, cooperations, etc).
The management of immediacy of communications and fast evolution of social softwares.
Risks linked to safety of information on the Web and to cybercrime.
Choice of tools and of their integration to institutional systems or not.
The reasons to adopt new technologies are at first educational, in connection with the trainees needs.
So they can have important impacts on the design of the device and on the modalities of supervision. Here are some tips :
Motivation and participation support
Designing trainings needs to plan important fluctuations in interest and participation and to implement measures to arouse and maintain it beyond initial enthusiasm. Tools only are not enough, the purpose or direction given by the pedagogical scenario for their use remains central.
Social media play a motivating role in most educational experiences. They offer an empowerment feeling to trainees and new possibilities of socialization. They advantageously request each trainees perseverance on longer trainings.
Two items related to the motivation of the trainees are often given:
evaluation of participation : it's more a forced choice to participate than a deliberate one. It is also a risk of a minimal participation aiming only at the infringement of the evaluation's criteria. Contrary to the preconceived ideas according to which the pupils will make only the works which will formally be estimated, the absence of stiff constraints (relative to the blog e.g.) incites the pupils to blog even more. The dosage between constraint and freedom is to be found.
wide broadcasting of the contributions : opening gives visibility, pride and allows the reuse. It is thus generally seen as a factor of motivation. This practice is systematically used in Animacoop's trainings. The trainees produce diffusable contents. It is a more binding but also more appreciated work. (e.g.: http://animacoop.net/wakka.php?wiki=ContenusProduits).
Individual, collaborative or cooperative paths
The multiplicity of communication tools and the different needs lead to a diverse range of pathways. Then the good teaching position would be to vary in order to give trainees, whom have different learning styles, the possibilities of a more adapted path.
Collaborative activities, facilitated by Web 2.0 tools, have however a particular interest : they are both "a good learning vector" and a mean "to promote the development of social ties between trainees", they allow to "fight against the risk of isolation and demotivation especially in distance learning". They achieve various goals simultaneously:
accomplishment,
reasoning of higher level,
gain of working time,
transfer of learning,
motivation for achievement,
intrinsic and continuous motivation,
social and cognitive development,
interpersonal attraction,
social support, friendships,
reduction of stereotypes and prejudices,
valuing differences,
psychological health, self-esteem,
social skills,
internalization of values,
quality of the learning environment ... and many others.
However the arrival of digital technologies only reveals some hang-up of collaborative learning: sharing critical information efficiently for a joint project is an additional step that many organizations do not take, on one hand by lack of shared culture, and on the other hand because of the basic needs of individuals. The collaborative work is based, primarily, on voluntary service and can not be an obligation.
A more personalized apprenticeship and environment
The culture and the multiplicity of choices given by the Web 2.0, combined to its opportunities of directing the "I", calls for a greater personalization of paths, as indicated above, but also for methods of expression and tools. It can be a very limited personalization : profile and personal pages, photos, etc, added inside an institutional apprenticeship environment, focused on the course or the term rather than on the trainee. But more often, as said in the former chapter, we talk of a more fundamental questioning in which the trainee builds his own apprenticeship environment, from his own choice of tools, independantly from successive institutions that he will spend time in and where he will constitute the portfolio testifying of his training and experience and of his digital identity.
Active educations and more contextualized apprenticeship
More over tools of the Web 2.0 promote an apprenticeship in action, more authentic or more located. The trainee can for example build up resources reusable by the community. E.g. : articles written by Animacoop trainees are reused by trainers for the production of new courses.
Multimedia contents
Another challenge for educators presented by these tools is the trend towards less textual learning resources. Videos in particular encounters a lightning popularity.
The use of blog : it allows to leave tracks of one's apprenticeships and is excellent in the practices of formative assesment.
Wiki shows the contributions of each member to a collaborative work.
Placed in front of an abundancey of tools, the trainer must be able to choose the most relevant for the desired apprenticeship. Often, if his institution hasn't done it for him, he also has to select the software to support them. The discussions between trainers on specialized newsgroups show very well their perplexity in front of the multiplicity of offered tools and the difficulty to choose those which will fit best their educational activity.
Farther we propose you a small selection of tools classified according to their uses.
Support
To exceed the level of simple comment or formatting, to progress to a training of higher level, such as the development of argument, criticism and synthesis, a steady veducational support is essential.
The supervision of interactive progresses as those allowed by Web 2.0 asks thus not only more time, but also a steadier availability. To face this greater need for time and for availability, several solutions are proposed.
the need to establish, from the beginning, slots of availability,
the collaborative work. The supervision was assumed in team of four trainers : "This way of working favors students who receive instant answers as well as trainers who share the task of answering emails".
