Session 3 – 11th April – 15.45 – 16.35

Title of Presentation: Content Mining for E-learning

Presenter:                       Jana Kapounova

Name of Organisation:   University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

Summary:

Allow us to start with following assumptions (morphing in facts slightly)

• e-learning is shifting from an extra phenomena to a standard pedagogical way of educating pupils, students and adults
• e-learning elements are becoming a standard part of face to face teaching, even at schools.

Naturally, there are some critical points in e-learning, we can see them in

• accessibility of a high-quality content and its connectivity with the educational potential of e-learning environment
• teachers’ readiness to design and manage instructions in both directive and constructive concepts implementing the educational potential of e-learning environment.

ad 1. We have done some experiments on the possibility of using existing pedagogical methods in an e-learning environment. We found out that it is possible and useful but to be successful, the following transformation are needed:

• resources mapping and describing them through metadata
• procedures for transforming media
• procedures for transforming learning aids into their multimedia form
• experimental checking
• copyright issues solving.

ad 2. We have gradually included in future teachers’ studies such components as

• instructional and constructional design, learning algorithms and heuristics
• instructional technology focusing on multimedia operational objects design and development
• building learning units using learning objects and e-learning elements
• designing learning using the project management methods.

Our recommendation is:

One way of fulfilling the lack of appropriate e-learning content and e-learning teaching methods is

• to prepare teachers for e-learning content development
• to teach them how to use and transform existing learning aids into e-learning environment
• to prepare teachers on how to implement appropriate learning strategies into e-learning.

In this way the potential of Internet and multimedia will not be wasted and e-learning becomes the new hope on how to improve the educational process.