Professor position call: digital ecosystems

Institute of Informatics, Tallinn University, ESTONIA*

The Institute of Informatics invites applications for a position of
Professor of Digital Ecosystems.

Deadline of applications: June 10, 2010.
Expected start of the work January 1st, 2011.

The employment period for the position is for 5 years and shall undergo re-elections after that. Tenure at Tallinn University can be achieved after two successful periods. The new position has been established with a significant financial contribution from European Social Fund.

The Institute of Informatics has undertaken a major development by evolving international programmes and research groups in ICT.
The significant part of ongoing research in the institute is focusing on social media ecosystems in the context of e-learning, e-governance, e-participation and network enterprise. Our international R&D team is using mainly participatory design research approach and intervention studies to envisage and develop prototypes of the next generation social media tools, with the special attention to their semantic interoperability, identity management, user experience design, activity pattern mining and semantic annotation for metadata.
The successful applicant for a professorship is expected to make a significant contribution to the development of the Interactive Media and Knowledge Environments master curriculum as well as of the Information Society Technologies PhD curriculum. (S)he is also expected to supervise PhD and master students, to be a mentor for less experienced teachers of the institute, to develop new initiatives and to start a research programme related to the field of professorship.

Applicants should possess:
1) A PhD degree in a field related to the professorship;
2) An outstanding international reputation for excellence in scholarly research;
3) Demonstrable ability to teach effectively at both graduate and undergraduate levels;

4) Excellent oral and written communication skills in English;

5) An understanding of and commitment to the role of the University to the world innovation stage, experience in cooperating with the industry is particularly welcome.

iCamp project results

I have been part of iCamp Europaean 6th Framework project pedagogical workpackage team from 2006. In this project we conducted three trials of teaching with web 2.0 tools in cross-institutional settings.

Our final pedagogical deliverable provides the new model how to support self-directing, collaborating and networking competences with new media environments in institutional settings.

Fiedler, S., Kieslinger, B., Pata, K., & Ehms, K. (2009). Camp Educational Intervention Model. iCamp IST 6th Framework Project Deliverable 1.3. URL: http://www.icamp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/d13_icamp_final.pdf

ICT-use surveys in Georgia and Estonia

Tiger Leap and Deer Leap are two organizations that coordinate ICT education in partnering countries – Estonia and Georgia. As an additional task i have done this year some surveys and book-writing related to ICT teaching.

Last month we handed over the survey (in estonian) how teachers use ICT as an integrated topic in their lessons. This can be viewed from: http://www.tiigrihype.ee/static/files/49.Labivteema.pdf

Today i ended the survey of Georgian ICT use (in english).
After adding some introduction and inferences part we can hopefully make it available in net.

In Estonia the most useful method of implementing ICT into subject lessons for teaching ICT competences is individual projects. Quite some schools use it as a form of exam. We envision that the rising trend of evaluating ICT-competences in Estonia will be portfolio-method.

We are currently developing a new distributed learning environment model in which teachers and learner’s individual portfolio and collaborative resource sharing environment will be interoperable and used for various projects like the teacher and students plan.

Most interesting trend in Georgian survey was that Georgian teachers are very positive about cooperation and sharing, they are very active in using LeMill.net collaborative sharing environment for learning resources. It seems there is an explosion of collaborative project-based learning in Georgia.

Quite a lot of sad results appeared too, in spite of wish to teach ICT, teachers definitely lack of competences what and how to do in their particular subjects.

This year we wrote for Estonian teachers a book (in estonian) that is in wiki about various methods, emphasizing especially the Web 2.0 trends.

Book can be viewed http://htk.tlu.ee/tiigriope/

Intervention model components in eLearning

Analysis of iCamp project’s three cross-institutional case studies enabled to model the necessary components of an intervention model at institution, facilitator and student levels:

Intervention model: institutional level

Intervention model: facilitator level

Intervention model: learner level

In the application of an intervention model, facilitators and students have a crucial role in changing institutionally accepted practices.

Two Ed-media08 papers

This year Ed-media 2008 conference takes place in Vienna. Although i am not able to be at EdMedia this year, since i go to iCalt conference, i really regret since there will be a very interesting community meeting.

The Personal Learning Environment PLE issues are discussed at the symposium: How Social is my Personal Learning Environment (PLE)? with the participation of:
1. Sebastian Fiedler
2. Tarmo Toikkanen and Teemu Leinonen
3. Stéphane Sire et al.
4. Liliane Esnault, Denis Gillet and Annick Rossier Morel
5. Colin Milligan
6. Graham Attwell, Margarita Perez Garcia, and Steven Warburton
7. Barbara Kieslinger and Kai Pata
8. Bernadette Charlier and France Henri

Our paper with Barbara Kieslinger is:
Am I alone? The competitive nature of self-reflective activities in groups and individually

Abstract: Although it is not yet common practice, the use of personal learning environments (PLEs) has started to enter formal higher education by a number of early adopters. Some lecturers facilitate their students in making use of social software tools and networked resources for learning activities. In our contribution observations from field research that has been conducted in the context of the European research project iCamp are discussed. On a conceptual level iCamp intends to develop a learning environment design model that provides more autonomy to the learner, in terms of activities tools and resources. In the field trials students were guided towards self-reflection and self-direction activities by making use of their personal learning environments, while at the same time they were prompted to perform collaborative activities in distributed shared learning environments. Thus students and facilitators were challenged by the competitive nature of self-reflection done in single PLEs against the other-directed reflective activities done in distributed shared learning environments. This article elaborates on why collaborative activities might be hindering the individual reflective activities, and how this can be overcome.

Besides symposium, we have another paper where we elaborate the self-directing aspects in social learning environment using the data from the master course of web 2.0 from Tallinn University.

Tammets, K., Väljataga, T., & Pata, K. (2008). Self-directing at social spaces: conceptual framework for course design. Proceedings of Ed-Media 2008. Vienna: AACE, 2008.

Abstract: This paper examines the use of social spaces in order to foster self-directed learning activities in higher educational institutions. It argues that current instructional design models need to be adjusted with respect to self-direction according to the continuously changing processes in post-industrial society. Based on empirical research conducted with master students it attempts to design a conceptual framework for course design with the emphasis on self-direction in social spaces.