196,010 research outputs found
Fare didattica con le storie locali: pratiche didattiche per lo studio dell'internamento fascista
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Transforming future trachers' conceptions of Educational Technology: the role of Thinking Routines in the Educational Ecosystem
No full textEducational technologies (Rivoltella & Rossi, 2019) are integrated into contemporary learning contexts with a renewed logic: no longer merely as tools supporting or integrated into the teaching-learning system, but as a structural element of the educational process, within an ecosystemic dimension (Walcutt & Schatz, 2019; Ellis & Goodyear, 2019). This logic must become a posture in the design practices of future teachers, for whom it is necessary to provide training that goes beyond the knowledge or instrumental use of devices and tools, but activates a transformation of ingenuous conceptions related to digital worlds and the idea of the construction of third learning spaces (Wanlin et al., 2019).
Transformativity is an essential aspect of learning, particularly in professionalizing training courses (Balas & Touzet, 2023) as this acts on implicit and embodied knowledge patterns and beliefs (Pentucci, 2018). Highlighting change is a crucial aspect of professionalization, which can be made evident through reflective and metacognitive devices.
This is the background to a university didactic experience carried out with Primary Education Science students that involved the design of a Digital Learning Ecosystem (Jeladze, Pata & Quaicoe, 2017) in which the actors, tools, resources and interactions between all elements could be captured in a dynamic and transformative logic. Thinking Routines (Ritchhart & Church, 2020) conceived within the "Visible Thinking" framework of Project Zero were used in the course for their potential in promoting critical thinking and active involvement of students in transformative processes.
In particular, in order to capture the transformativity of the concepts on educational technology, we chose to analyse the data from students' voices using Braun and Clarke's (2019) model known as reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) in order to develop, analyse and interpret patterns across a qualitative dataset
Peer feedback and peer review in higher education: mirroring and transformative practices in active learning processes
No full textTo develop feedback literacy (Laici, 2021; Boud & Molloy, 2020) in university students, we need to design learning paths in which feedback becomes a continuous and recursive element. The aim is to activate a learning posture in students, linked to internal feedback (Carless, 2019): a conscious and embedded feedback mode.
To achieve this, we need to work on two aspects of higher education:
- Learning design (Laurillard, 2014; Rossi & Pentucci, 2021); it, in contemporary contexts, is reified in the structuring of complex training ecosystems in which students can directly experience devices designed for reflexivity and metacognition. The alignment between teacher and students obtained through generative and recursive feedback (Rossi et alii, 2018) and the sense of self-efficacy and self-awareness, obtained through peer feedback are two of the aspects that the teacher designer must pay attention to when preparing a design based on feedback processes (Boud & Molloy, 2012).
- Student feedback literacy (Laici, 2021): peer review and peer feedback strategies on learning practices support processes of distancing, reflection, restructuring and improvement, not only in a cognitive but also in a social and intrapersonal dimension (Fishman & Dede, 2016), through mirroring in the action of others (Winstone et alii, 2021).
In this contribution, therefore, we would like to present an example of a Peer Review (Mulder et alii, 2014) carried out within two university courses in the pedagogical-didactic field, conducted using the Ladder of Feedback tool (Perkins, 2003; Wilson et alii, 2006). This device proposes an in-depth analysis of the work of peers, through clarification questions, articulated in four phases: Clarify, Value, State Concerns, and Suggest.
Peer review is a reciprocal process whereby students produce feedback reviews on the work of peers and receive feedback reviews from peers on their work. Producing feedback reviews engages students in multiple acts of evaluative judgement, both about the work of peers and, through a reflective process, about their work; it involves them in both invoking and applying criteria to explain those judgements; and it shifts control of feedback processes into students' hands (Nicol et alii, 2013).
Through a final questionnaire on students' perceptions, we wanted to investigate the issues of reciprocity, mirroring, and activation by trying to answer the following questions:
- Is giving feedback to peers useful for reflecting on one's own practices and developing metacognition?
- Does reviewing the other's artefact activate transformative and improving processes in one's own work
Hybrid analysis in education: comparing ChatGPT and human thematic analysis of teachers' responses on technology use in schools
No full textThis article aims to explore the potential of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support analysis methodologies. The conversational process with data (Panciroli & Rivoltella, 2023) can reveal conceptual themes that might elude human interpretation. In the complex contexts of the post-digital era (Jandric et al., 2018) and the post-human paradigm (Bodén et al., 2021), it is timely to reconceptualize educational research as a hybrid system of interactions involving both human and non-human agents (Pentucci, 2022).
We aim to gather teachers' perceptions regarding the use of technologies in classrooms. The questions focus on both the potential for integrating digital resources into classroom teaching and the strategies for addressing the challenges it presents at the secondary education level. The research is guided by the idea of determining whether the integration of digital and virtual elements into daily life, which is increasingly normalized, is also reflected in school contexts, and whether this hybridity can be a valuable resource for educational purposes.
In line with the topic, we intend to apply the principle of hybridity to our research methodologies. Specifically, we will compare two modes of analysis applied to a corpus of N=1023 teachers' responses on digital education: Reflexive Thematic Analysis according to Braun and Clarke’s model (2022), and an automated analysis conducted by a pre-trained generative system (ChatGPT - OpenAI). The latter involves structuring a prompt to extract main themes from the corpus (Wang et al., 2023).
Our objectives are twofold:
a) to employ the chatbot as a research assistant (Davies, 2023; Kooli, 2023) to reduce time and complexity, and to provide a confirmatory function for our analysis;
b) to explore the possibility of partially revealing the subjective influence of the researcher’s biases in the grounded analysis process (Chello, 2023; Glaser & Strauss, 2009)
REIMAGINING LEARNING IN THE POST-DIGITAL ERA: STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF SCREEN-MEDIATED TEACHING
No full textThis study explores student perceptions of screen-mediated teaching in higher education, focusing on the opportunities and challenges of hybrid learning ecosystems in the post-digital era. Drawing on data from 274 undergraduate students enrolled in educational and pedagogical programs, the research employs a Structural Topic Model (STM) to analyze 1,354 open-ended responses, identifying key themes in their experiences. Findings reveal three macro-themes: the reconfiguration of physical and digital learning spaces, the dynamics of virtual relationships and community-building, and the role of feedback in fostering engagement. Students highlighted the benefits of flexibility and accessibility afforded by remote learning, such as the ability to revisit recorded lessons and participate more comfortably. However, they also noted significant challenges, including the lack of face-to-face interaction and the emotional and relational barriers imposed by digital mediation. Notably, students leveraged informal tools to recreate a sense of community, underscoring the transformative and hybrid nature of contemporary learning environments. The study advocates for the design of flexible, inclusive, and ecosystemic approaches to higher education, integrating both digital and analog dimensions to support meaningful learning experiences. These insights contribute to ongoing discussions about reimagining pedagogical practices in a post-digital world
Developing university students' feedback literacy through peer feedback activities
No full textIn order to make feedback become a process leading didactic practises it is necessary to overcome the static and single-directional vision linked to providing and receiving feedback and to go towards an interactive and generative feedback, foreseeing some peer feedback moments, some self-evaluation and self- regulation. In this paper we would like to describe a didactic path focused on feedback, activated in two University courses in different Universities with the following aims: activating subsequent feedback spirals (Carless, 2019), first between Professor and students, then between peers, to get to a self-awareness interior process, that is an incorporation of reflexivity on one’s own practices. Promoting feedback literacy (Carless and Boud, 2018) in the student through the experimentation in the practice. In particular, we will account for a peer feedback process realised in the following steps: a) the group production of a learning design; b) the peer review of the colleagues’ designs, through the “Ladder of Feedback” protocol, with a following sharing of the reviews; c) the subsequent reflection on the activated processes through a questionnaire on the students’ perceptions. The analysis of those productions enables us to reflect upon the sense of effectiveness granted to the peer feedback, on the differences between the Professor’s and the peer feedbacks, on the comprehension of the role of the peer feedback within the training process
REFRAMING FEEDBACK IN HIGHER EDUCATION: FROM TEACHER COMMENTARY TO DIALOGIC AND TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE
No full textThe paper explores students’ beliefs and perceptions about the role of feedback in contemporary teaching-learning processes, framed by an emerging epistemological paradigm based on networked knowledge and continuous interaction. It presents a teaching experience carried out with students enrolled in the Primary Education program at the University of Macerata, within an integrated digital learning ecosystem that fostered dialogic and transformative feedback practices. Tools such as the One Minute Paper, Mentimeter, and the Ladder of Feedback protocol were used to promote real-time feedback, peer review, and critical reflection. Through a questionnaire incorporating the "Evaluating Your Beliefs About Feedback" tool by Winstone and Carless (2019, p. 179), this study analyzes students’ beliefs about feedback and their positioning in relation to either a transmissive model of feedback or a participatory, learning-centred paradigm
Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: A Research Pathway with ChatGPT for Learning Design, Feedback, and Professional Development
No full textThis paper explores a research pathway that leverages an AI-based conversational tool, ChatGPT - OpenAI, to enhance essential competencies in future teachers and educators, with a focus on self-reflection and feedback literacy. Conducted within two pedagogical courses, the activity involved peer feedback on didactic design tasks, fostering students’ agency and metacognitive reflection. By using ChatGPT as both a design and feedback agent, students evaluated its effectiveness, strengths, and limitations. Reflective questionnaires allowed them to assess the tool’s potential integration into their future professional practices, addressing the broader applicability of AI in educational contexts
Feedback to align teacher and student in a Digital Learning Ecosystem
No full textIn this paper, we present an example of a Digital Learning Ecosystem, set up during the first period of the pandemic emergency and then remodelled and re-proposed for hybrid didactics provided afterwards, involving five pedagogical-didactic courses of two universities in central Italy.
The central device in this Ecosystem was recursive feedback, which in contexts of didactics mediated by screens can anyhow activate discursive, adaptive, interactive and reflexive dynamics.
In order to understand if these aims were pursued, we administered an open-ended questionnaire to 274 students, which was not intended to measure their enjoyment of the method and the environment, but their perceptions regarding the effectiveness of the system on their learning processes, not only at a cognitive level, but also on at an interpersonal and intrapersonal level.
The analysis was conducted according to the Structural Topic Model, which allowed us to re-read the responses as a unique corpus of reflective writings, generated by the students after the input provided by the assigned task
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