Increasing Self-regulated learning with Technology-Amplified Learning for ALL: Educators going digital
INSTALL-ed
Funders
Project information
Project duration
-
Funded by
Other International
Project funder
Funding amount
32 370 EUR
Project coordinator
VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Unit and faculty
Contact information
Project leader
- PhD
Contact person
Project description
The COVID-19 pandemic has thoroughly disrupted the organization of daily education in recent months. The mandated closure of schools in the past months has presented teachers of all educational levels with great challenges. The switch to online and distance learning imposed new technologies and online tools on teachers and students. Concurrently to the practical and content-wise modifications, teachers were expected to support their students from a distance. Students need more than ever before self-regulated learning (SRL) skills in order to successfully adapt to new instructional approaches in which students have increased autonomy. Especially in online settings in which often teacher presence is low, students need effective SRL skills to be successful (Broadbent, 2017). The availability of SRL skills to students greatly impacts their learning. We believe the timing is right to help
teachers support students’ SRL, especially during online education. The project aims to deliver theory based user friendly solutions for online, hybrid and blended learning that teachers and students can use in their everyday school to make learning and teaching more efficient and enjoyable. Therefore, this strategic partnership aspires to support teachers in adapting to the new ways of teaching, with specific attention for students’ SRL in these online learning environments.
The partnership, where University of Oulu is represented by the Learning and Educational Technology Research Lab, will adopt a holistic, multi-stakeholder approach to enable effective systemic impact in primary and lower secondary education. The overall aim of the INSTALL-ed project is to strengthen primary and lower secondary school teachers in consciously using digital tools to support all students (self-regulated) learning. The first objective is to design professional development for teachers focusing on SRL and digital pedagogical competencies. A second objective is to strengthen teachers’
skills to digitally support students’ SRL with concrete yet transferable materials. A third objective is to tackle macro-level obstacles experienced by teachers when digitally supporting students' SRL by 1) directly impacting the edtech ecosystem and 2) educational policy.
Project actions
A practice framework
The practice framework consists of a position paper and visuals that explain the why, what and how of our project. The output aims to gather, (1) knowledge of the key factors in our project; technology-enhanced learning, online learning formats and SRL promotion, (2) the knowledge and some specific results from the previous projects tMAIL and SLIDEshow focusing on bringing SRL into the classroom and (3) new knowledge of research regarding COVID-19 and education. Output 1 targets teachers, other educational stakeholders and educational researchers.
An online teacher training
The training aims to enhance teachers capacity to analyze how they currently support SRL skills; train teachers how to analyze their digital practices and learn them to identify their struggles concerning the use of digital tools and promoting SRL; show them whether and how digital tools may help them; train teachers to use the patterns and consequently use the tools and platforms in such a way that it supports students’ learning. Specifically, teachers and other educational stakeholders (such as school principals, ICT coordinators) are targeted.
A repository of templates and examples
A central aim of the INSTALL-ed project is to create an answer to the question: What can teachers do to support specific aspects of SRL with tool X,Y, ...?. This is done by providing various templates of already tested prompts and scripts for SRL that can be adapted for various educational settings. Next to these patterns, practical examples for teachers are paramount, showing them how to use digital tools/platforms, and what they can do with them, to ultimately show how they can support their students’ SRL development.
User stories
Output 4 aims to produce some recommendations for edtech companies. Specifically, Output 4 will design some user stories and design principles which edtech companies could use in designing future (SRL-proof) tools and platforms. Specifically, the output aims to increase the knowledge about SRL skills, give insight in ideal teacher and student experiences when using digital solutions to support students’ SRL and offer concrete (plans for) improvements of software in favor of SRL skills. A service-design trajectory will be adopted in order to develop output 4.
A guide for policymakers
For policymakers in particular policy recommendations evidenced from the INSTALL-ed project will be produced in Output 5. Recommendations on the local/regional level and on European level will be formulated.
Project results
The main objective of the current project is to strengthen primary and lower secondary school teachers toward conscious and critical learning-centered adoption of digital tools that enable the support of all students' (self-regulated) learning. This objective is two-fold in its aims. On the one hand, INSTALL-ed involves showing teachers how specific technologies can be used to foster students’ SRL development. Secondly, it aims to offer teachers practical and concrete examples of how and what SRL can look and feel like when integrated and experienced in diverse learning settings: online, blended, and hybrid.
Specifically, the INSTALL-ed project has the following expected results:
1. Develop teacher professional development opportunities with a focus on SRL and digital pedagogical competencies: This project wants to give teachers a clear understanding of how digital educational tools (can) promote students’ learning and in specific students’ SRL. This expected result is specifically linked to output 2 (O2), the online teacher training that aims to show teachers how specific tools can be used to support SRL development and output 3 (O3), offering teachers actionable examples by co-designing practices with teachers to showcase how and what SRL in a blended/distance learning climate looks like.
2. Strengthening teachers' skills to digitally support students' SRL with concrete, yet transferable materials: Closely linked to the first expected result, this result aims to provide teachers with patterns/steps and practical examples showing them how to use tools/platforms, what they can do with them, to ultimately show how they can support their students’ SRL development (O3-O4).
3. Tackling macro-level obstacles experienced by teachers when digitally supporting students' SRL through 1) directly impacting and working with the edtech ecosystem and 2) educational policy. This result aims to formulate policy recommendations for policymakers on the local and European levels (O5). Regarding local level policymakers, such as school principals, we want to increase school leaders’ educational leadership and knowledge of SRL and help them theoretically underpin their choice of ICT tools, influencing their professional development policy in their schools. Regarding policy makers on a European level, we will link the results of this project to the DigComp and LifeComp framework.
Furthermore, edtech companies are targeted.
Many teachers who transfer to more innovative, student-centered, classroom practices find it challenging to use software that was often initially designed to ‘digitize’ traditional
classroom practices, rather than to support innovative classroom practices. Despite edtech companies’ attempts to continuously improve their software to the needs of teachers (e.g. see Google Education’s current user experience survey), this growing group of innovative educators and schools continue to experience difficulties when searching for educationally- conscious and SRL-supportive software. Hence, within INSTALL-ed teachers, SRL experts, and edtech stakeholders will co-create and/or further refine and iterate existing edtech. The aim is to inform software companies about the ideal scenarios in which software can help teachers to equip students with the necessary SRL skills, and help students grow in these SRL skills (O4). The project therefore also directly aims to have an impact on the existing and emerging educational software market.