Content development within a European e-learning project: Guidelines, results and reflections

Abstract

UNITE is an e-learning research project (partially funded by the EU, under FP6), where a number of elearning scenarios have been developed, covering different educational contexts, pedagogical concepts and subjects (e.g. Environmental Studies, Mathematics, Information and Communication Technologies, and many other), bridging thus the gap between formal and informal learning settings. The various scenarios have been designed by secondary school teachers (with the help of the project's domain experts) baring in mind the corresponding diverse cultural and educational backgrounds of the school environments they would be implemented in. All scenarios were supported by relevant electronic resources, material, or in other words content that was either developed from scratch, or adapted from existing sample resources. There were two consecutive e-learning scenario implementation phases in the project. After both implementation phases, the teachers were asked to complete questionnaires in order to capture facts on the one hand and their personal beliefs on the other. Therefore, this paper constitutes a study of the entire content development process within the course of UNITE, presents a summary of the guidelines that were given to the participating teachers and examines the results of the process separately in the two scenario implementation phases, comparing the two, presenting findings and drawing conclusions. Special emphasis is placed on the factors that might have influenced the teacher's performance in content development.