E-learning: a key tool for educational cooperation with universities
- Paper number
IAC-05-E1.2.03
- Author
Mr. Jose Sanchez Troncoso, European Space Agency (ESA), The Netherlands
- Coauthor
Mr. Guerric Pont, Kayser-Threde GmbH, Germany
- Year
2005
- Abstract
For three years, ESA’s International Space Station Education Team has been cooperating with 5 European universities (University Pierre et Marie Curie Paris VI, France (coordinator); University of Sassary, Italy; Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain; University of Bonn, Germany and the University of Nottingham) in the programme “Life in Space”.
“Life in Space”is a Socrates Erasmus Programme sponsored by the European Commission. Hosted annually at the Arago Laboratory in Banyuls-sur-Mer, France, it consists of a two-weeks course during which around 35 European students learn about space-related biological disciplines through an intensive agenda of lectures and workshops.
ESA’s collaboration in the past has been mainly in two areas:
- ESA experts have given some of the lectures during the intensive course.
- ESA has facilitated the use of a set of e-Learning tools provided by one of ESA’s ISS User Centres, the Erasmus User Center at ESA’s site ESTEC (The Netherlands).
In 2004 ESA and the five universities involved in this course have agreed to expand this course with a series of online activities to be implemented during 2005 with the goal of facilitating the attendance to different lectures to a larger number of students geographically distributed in the six institutions involved and also learn how to teach and learn within a new context: e-Learning.
The necessary changes involve a large effort from all the parties to adapt themselves to new methodologies. For this reason, it was decided to begin with activities that could show to all the participants both the advantages of this new approach but also the inconveniences.
The main goals of these year activities are:
- Firstly, become accustomed to a new environment and therefore a new way of learning.
- Secondly, to explore its potential and detect the problems and their possible solutions as a preparation for a more complete future programme.
The e-Learning tool provided by the Erasmus Center consists in a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous ICT tools. This allows the users to combine different activities based on different pedagogical approaches:
- A more ¨classical¨ one consisting of online sessions, in which attendants can follow an oral lecture webcasted from one of the institutions. This lecture is supported by some visual material -slides, pictures, etc-. Attendants in any of the institutions can ask questions, talk on line, etc.
- Asynchronous online debates and discussions, in which the students can participate without the constraint of being connected at the same time. The students can discuss around a specific topic -presentation, paper, etc- and an expert moderates the process. All together can create new knowledge.
It is also possible to create a virtual class, record and replay lectures, etc.
Using this environment, ESA and the various universities can more actively cooperate, facilitating the access to ESA’s expertise to more students, with different backgrounds, profiles, cultural behaviors, etc. It is also another step towards the integration of ICT tools in general, and e-Learning in particular, in the educational activities promoted by ESA.
In this paper we want to describe the environment and the tools used, to present the results of this first year of activities and also and more importantly, to analyse their results as the basis for future e-Learning activities.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-05-E1.2.03.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
To get the manuscript, please contact IAF Secretariat.