The OCW project, like many other educational projects, was born under innovation initiatives by professors and teachers. Nevertheless, the importance and growth of innovation in an educational institution usually depends on a strong institutional support. The University of Zaragoza has been heavily promoting innovation projects in higher education and e-learning by funding them during the last years. This support has led into the creation of innovation groups and interdisciplinary networks oriented to deal with different educational topics among professors specialized in different areas and with different backgrounds. A great percentage of the Innovation Projects are focused on the use of new tools based on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) but there also exist projects whose research pursues to create models and methodologies for teaching-learning activities with ICT. In the last academic course (2010-2011), 482 innovation projects were developed and 1,237 professors participated in them.
Regarding the efficient use of ICT in a blended learning model, in most innovating initiatives it is agreed that the mere use of a technology does not constitute an innovation process, since the technology by itself is not enough. We think that the use of ICT must mature. The learning scene that is constructed usually starts from a model centered on the materials, which is always possible if an appropriate infrastructure is available. In this process of maturity, this model must be developed considering the applications, platforms, portals, and finally end up in what we could call the service management, which will imply the real and effective implementation of the methodologies.
In consequence, we think that the role of technology in that evolution, and in general in e-learning, must be focused on both the technology and the contents, but oriented towards the quality, the processes, and the learning environments, enriching the role of the academics as facilitators of the learning process to generate (and not only to deliver) new knowledge in a teaching approach based on the student, his/her context, and his/her previous outcomes.
Furthermore, the use of ICT as dynamic and motivating tools succeed in breaking the inertia and the passive attitudes of students, highly increasing their interest in their own activity and education, encouraging their participation, etc. Summing up, ICT are very good instruments to improve the communication in education.
In addition, the use of ICT as a support in this process favors the interdisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration, motivating our colleagues and improving the dissemination of experiences, in a way that it is possible to share the benefits and the good results obtained, the weak points observed in the development of the activities, and the implementation of the activities.
From all the experiences conducted in our university, we can conclude that ICT are essential to perform the methodological change that is completely introduced with the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), based on the use of active methodologies that go beyond the mere transmission of knowledge. With this approach, traditional classes are reduced by fostering students’ participation, the collaborative work, and the tutoring. In this context, the use and diffusion of multimedia materials is encouraged, but tools such as webfolios, chats, blogs, forums, and the Web 2.0 itself, are also of great importance. All these options, platforms and tools favor also the acquisition of competencies. In this sense, a good educational tutorial action for the students is essential.
Nevertheless, we also want to emphasize that, despite all the possibilities offered by ICT tools, current platforms are still frequently used as simple repositories of information. In any case, the cultural level and the computer abilities of students entering the university after leaving the Secondary Education keeps improving, although there is still a need of initiation courses for the acquisition of ICT competencies.
The final efficiency, not only for handling ICT tools, but in all the educational dimension of the repositories of materials, depends on their configuration as reusable learning objects. These objects should follow open standards, that should be easily interchangeable, allowing their use and querying, which could even enable the creation of a common repository of resources. Finally, besides training in the use of tools for educational innovation, in order to enable their effective use in a virtual learning environment both educational and technical support is required, which calls for appropriate funding.
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