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METHODS OF DEVELOPMENT
OF TEACHING CONTENT
ON THE BASIS OF COLLABORATIVE
WORK OF INTERNET NETWORK COMMUNITIES
N.N. Gorbachev
The development of information and communication technologies (hereinafter referred to as ICT) and deployment of Web 2.0 tools have resulted in the broad use of collaboration in the creation of teaching materials. In many cases, these are the result of collective efforts of not only many teachers, but also of other actors in the education process (pupils, students and trainees) who improve the teaching content in the course of learning by pointing to inconsistencies with other information resources and proposing alternative sources of knowledge. The continuous exchange of data, information and knowledge in the course of communication between all actors of the educational process has led to an increase in the amount of content which can be potentially used in the process of learning, and represents promising information reserves.
This paper discusses an example of efforts undertaken by teaching network communities to develop professional competencies in teachers by working toward the use of interactive media in the learning process in secondary schools (implementation of Moodle and SharePointLMS, with methodological and technical support from the Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics and Informatics (MESI), Minsk Municipal Institute of Education Development, and BelITsoft). Intensive development of educational technologies causes the need for improving the skills of both those studying (pupils, students) and teaching (teachers, professors). Modern information and communication technologies enable the development of personal knowledge through the creation of network communities and use of the concept of social networks for exchanging experience. The project “Creation of a teaching network community for the use of interactive media in the learning process” was developed as part of the competition IT Region: MINSK.EDU.BY.
Participants of the teaching network community encountered a number of limitations of the Moodle distance learning system in the course of their work, and as a result selected SharePointLMS developed by BelITsoft as a backup platform. The main reasons for switching to SharePointLMS include the following:
(1) Moodle offers limited means for the development of teaching content. The purpose of the competition is to use the best practices to develop e-courses with updatable content which can be used for training of teachers. Development tools such as WordForce, PowerPointForce and QuizForce (which can directly interface with the SharePointLMS) helped to automate and in many respects simplify (by converting prepared content to the SCORM format) the creation of teaching content, in particular, that to be used with an interactive board;
(2) Moodle has no full-fledged system for conducting webinars and web-conferences. When exchanging practices in the use of interactive tools, the participants faced the need for online recording of webinar presentations and broadcasting of desktop images. In 2011, the SharePointLMS tools were used to
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conduct nine model lessons devoted to the use of interactive boards in teaching Informatics, History, Russian and Belarusian Languages and Literature, Physics, Biology, German Language and Mathematics;
(3) The opportunities for combining SCORM objects with the Moodle LMS are limited. It is impossible to integrate specialized, higher-level courses into SCORM packages;
(4) The SharePointLMS distance learning system provides capabilities for analyzing the activity of the teaching community members on a broader basis (analysis of the use of various tools, such as advertisements, document posting, participation in surveys, forums, chats, videoconferencing, and general activity of groups). This helps identify the most active community members taking into account the variety of educational and methodological content generated by the community;
(5) The SharePointLMS distance learning system has a multilevel organizational structure enabling a community member to act either as a tutor using their “advanced” competencies, or as a learner in the fields where they seek new or additional skills, and other opportunities arising from switching to the SharePointLMS.
The efforts of the teaching network community implemented on the Microsoft SharePoint Portal platform (SharePointLMS) provided an opportunity: (a) to manage the collaborative creation of content, (b) to discuss the best practices in using an interactive board in secondary schools, (c) to conduct model lessons and master classes with international participation and discuss them during web conferences, and (d) to exchange free content designed for the interactive board and improve it through the collaboration of the teachers' network community.
The creation of teaching network communities on the basis of the SharePointLMS for the development of individual competencies of teachers has proven to be effective. Nevertheless, further research is needed in order to develop tools geared towards social networks. The main areas of such research include the development of analytical and visualization tools for assessing the effectiveness of collaborative efforts within a network community; community content management tools on the basis of a subject field model; personalization of tools for individual competency mapping; evaluation and monetization of the content arising from activities of a teaching network community.
References
Горбачёв Н.Н., Гринберг А.С. University Knowledge Domain Application for Educational
Content Updating. // Экономика, статистика, информатика. Вестник УМО. - 2010. - №3.
С. 141 - 147.
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