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Introduction

15 January, 2016 - 09:48

Due to their dynamic and motivating nature, e-Learning tools provide academia with powerful mechanisms to alter the potentially inertial passivity that in-person learning at a physical campus may sometimes bring to students. These tools also try to promote communication and to actively involve students in their learning process. Moreover, they foster interdisciplinary collaboration among academics as well as the dissemination of experiences. 

Since its foundation in 1542, the University of Zaragoza has been adapting to changes insociety and to in-fashion educational practices. During the last decades, the use of emergingtechnologies such as e-Learning tools have revolutionized the way teaching-learning modelshad been understood and implemented and they have promoted the Continuous ProfessionalEducation (CPE) or Life Long Learning (LLL) and/or the Collaborative Learning (applicationsharing, discussion threads, etc.) (Perry, 1995). Due to this fact, the University of Zaragoza developed its own Virtual Campus, a section in charge of the online offerings of theuniversity where college activities can be completed either partially or wholly online. TheVirtual Campus at University of Zaragoza (Spain) is known as “Anillo Digital Docente"(ADD) (http://add.unizar.es Anillo Digital Docente, Universidad de Zaragoza, n.d.) and itcomprises a number of technical software systems and even hardware devices that supporte-Learning, such as Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS) like Moodle (Dougiamas& Taylor, 2003) or Blackboard 9.1 (http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Overview.aspxBlackBoard e-Learning Platform, n.d.), and more recently also Clickers and Opern CourseWare (OCW) Alternatively, some colleagues at the institution have also been utilizing theirown collaborative workspace software systems or groupware such as Basic Support forCooperative Work (BSCW, also known as Be Smart - Cooperate Worlwide). All of themcontribute to create a complete learning management model, which is focused on the learningprocess rather than on specific technologies.

The aforementioned LCMS support and manage the creation, edition, storing and delivering of e-Learning content and assist with the creation of integral teaching-learning environments (Laviña-Orueta & Mengual-Pavón, 2008). However, as discussed in the 4th Conference on Learning Innovation of the University of Zaragoza (Zaragoza, Spain, September 2010), different uses of the LCMS within the institution can be observed:

  • a use that exploits LCMS to assist the in-person learning in the physical campus, or even combining on-line learning activities (asynchronous) with in-person learning activities (synchronous) –a learning model that is often known as b-Learning (Wolfe, 2001);
  • a use that exploits LCMS to assist the on-line learning courses in a completely asynchronous way.

In this Chapter, we describe the evolution and experiences of the University of Zaragoza Virtual Campus, ADD, and we present and analyze official statistics about the courses, number of students and academics that have been involved with e-Learning activities. We highlight the efficient use of these emerging technologies as the foundations of most innovative teaching initiatives. We support the thesis that states that the e-Learning model not only must be technology– and contents– centered, but also oriented to learning quality, processes and contexts. Thus, e-Learning technologies should enrich academics in their role of knowledge builders rather than just merely knowledge providers. In short, we believe that e-Learning promotes an important methodological change where active methodologies go beyond knowledge transmission. In this context, where technology and teaching methodologies co-exist, we present three selected real case studies undertaken in our institution where the role of e-Learning technologies in the development of a number of different methodologies is analyzed. In particular, we analyze the application of e-Learning tools to tutorship, collaborative work and laboratory assessments.

The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: initially, we overview the technological environment of the University of Zaragoza in Technological environment at the University of Zaragoza. After that, we focus on the three selected real cases. The first study case examines the tutorship in the contexts of b-Learning and in-person learning and the technological tools that support the tutorship between academics and students (for more details see Case study 1: Online tools for tutorship in technical and scientific courses). The second experience is focused on the advantages of collaborative working and the need for adequate technology for implementing this model (for more details see Case study 2: Technological support to collaborative work management). In the third case, we highlight the effectiveness of the management of last generation LCMS such as Blackboard 9.1 compared to a number of ad-hoc developed scripting tools in order to automate the assessment of laboratory lesson sat a number of courses at the Computer Science Department (for more details see Case study 3: Assessment of laboratory lessons at programming courses at the Computer Science Department).Finally, the conclusions and future work are given.