Educational audiovisual text design: empirical evidence and new research perspectives

The article presents a systematic analysis of international literature concerning the design of educational audiovisual texts at university level. The theme appears very important in light of the extensive use of these cognitive artefacts in flipped, blended,Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) teaching processes. This is even more important in the era of health emergency that has led to the use of audiovisual text as the main teaching medium at school and university. The aim of the work is to provide a contribution to research on educational technologies for the purpose of identifying new instructional design principles that support multimedia learning. The analysis highlighted new research directions, such as the significant role of the camera point of view in learning complex manual procedures, new design elements on the ways of representing the teacher and his/her communicative attitude, and the increasingly close relationship between educational sciences and neuroscience. The result may be useful, on the one hand, as a stimulus for an in-depth study of the new lines of research identified, by researchers on educational technologies, and on the other, for a more informed evidence-based use of audiovisual texts in teaching practices.

Design for learning in the third space: opportunities and challenges

Many educational agents offer paths that allow school to turn itself into a ‘third space’. Caritas Ambrosiana, based on a ‘pedagogy of facts’, proposes interventions to promote soft skills in schools. This non-formal education agency committed Research Center about Media Education, Innovation and Technology (CREMIT) of Catholic University for a project to improve their school programme and training effectiveness. We chose the participatory action research paradigm to verify how to design an educational path by applying third-space principles in the school context and how digital media can be embedded into the practice to enable a more porous exchange of experiences and expertise between students, educators and the school curriculum. The accompanying plan was designed on the basis of the initial questionnaire data analysis: sociomateriality was the main focus because it was considered by Caritas educators as one of the least important elements to include in the design process. The second reason is the need to rethink on-site training formats to face the challenges of the Covid-19 emergency. As expected, after the training intervention, sociomateriality had a significant growth in the design practices. The other third-space pedagogy elements (peering, experiential orientation, motivation, pleasure of making together) are maintained and reinforced, thanks to digital literacy.

Blended learning design for teaching innovation: university teachers’ perceptions

In the Italian university context, almost all universities offer blended degree courses, digital environments and e-learning systems. In many cases, dedicated centres also provide technical support and, less frequently, teaching and methodological support. The development of digital learning environments often does not correspond to the spread of an effective culture of educational innovation in university courses. The research examined the experiences of instructional design among 44 university teachers of blended degree courses at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The analysis focused on teachers’ level of satisfaction and the processes of teaching innovation linked to the blended methodology, investigating also the possible criticalities and strengths related to the process of (re)design and innovation. The activities of training and design for teachers contributed to the dissemination of good teaching practices and professional development. In line with what emerged from the research on blended learning, it seems necessary to build a framework for the adoption and implementation of ‘blended learning’ strategies at the institutional level, starting from the construction of a concrete agenda setting shared between the actors of the innovation process.

Teaching digital skills to future teachers: a distance workshop experience

In the school year 2020–2021, the Covid-19 pandemic imposed distance learning (in Italian, the DAD acronym is used). Therefore, the Degree Course in Primary Education Sciences of the University of Perugia has proposed an innovative programme for the training of future teachers by developing a distance learning laboratory focusing coding and computational thinking applied to teaching in kindergarten and primary school. During the educational technologies laboratory, held by Prof. Floriana Falcinelli, the students experimented coding both without computer (unplugged) and using the Scratch software. The programmed animations and video games were in direct connection with the Lifelong Kindergarten of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, where Scratch was created. The highly innovative aspects concerned both the proposed contents and the dimension of interaction and collaboration as entirely developed in online environments.

Visual communication in research: a third space between science and art

Ample scientific literature recognises the role of visual thinking in the constructive process of ideas and mental images and the function of visual intelligence in the communicative processes. Starting from the sectoral studies, we have turned our attention to the visual communication of the results of scientific research, relating it to some characteristics of artistic communication to find a shared ground, that is, a third space inhabited by common languages and competencies. In so doing, we have overcome the traditional antinomy between humanists and scientists, starting instead from the results of a recent study that has shown how such an opposition does not find real confirmation in the sector of science communication. We have thus analysed three case studies (graphical abstract, augmented reality, audiovisual documentation) on the grounds of a 10-year long experience of research in the field of visual communication (iconography and iconology, art teaching, video research) to acknowledge visual thinking and graphical/artistic competencies, situated in the third space between didactics and art, a fundamental role in the formation of a scientist and a researcher.

The academic use of plagiarism software in Physical Therapy educational research: a case study

Recently, cases of plagiarism in education have been on the rise with the underlying causes of their appearance being numerous. Due to the large extent of this phenomenon, specialised software has been developed and is available for users to check the presence or absence of plagiarism. The purpose of this paper is to study cases of plagiarism in education, as well as the available plagiarism software. Also, this case study presents a practical example of the implementation of the control process using plagiarism software, as well as its results, in an already published article. This case study points out the importance of performing a further quality control to those parts of the text where a textual coincidence was spotted by the plagiarism detection software.

Educating to corporeity in DaD: the formative and expressive potential of the body in movement

The present contribution aims to reflect on the fundamental importance of the promotion of corporeal education in educational contexts, in the light of adoption of distance teaching, due to the current and dramatic pandemic emergency. In rethinking and redesigning teaching, increasingly digitised, the fundamental question refers to the impossibility of thinking of a contemporary teaching that does not make use of technology and, at the same time, make use of a technology linked to the traditional principles of pedagogy and teaching. Research was conducted on a sample of 78 children between the ages of 9 and 11, first through a bodily meaningful approach to promote the involvement of online students, resilience, motivation and then through the administration of the questionnaire Physical Activity Enjoyment Scale (Carraro, Young & Robazza, 2008), to confirm the role and importance of practice and pleasure in motor and sports activities. It is necessary to think of new models of teaching, mediated by technology and corporeity, which becomes a playful educational medium that allows education, logical and analytical thought to be able to best deploy its potential (MIUR, 2018).

Distance education and cultural heritage: transformations in the post-literacy age. The case of MArTA

The age of literacy, also known as modern age, was based on vision, regulation and control, whereas the post-literacy age, characterised by the advent of digital technologies, is based on an immersive, multisensorial and participatory approach. The ICT provide new opportunities to rethink and redesign the ways in which cultural heritage has been imagined and enjoyed. Participation and connection, on the one hand, and personalisation, recontextualisation and immersive interaction, on the other hand, are the key elements of the change that is involving cultural heritage and related institutions, including education. After analysing the central role of media literacy in digital humanities, the article focuses on a best practice from the MArTA Museum in Taranto and on innovative strategies to discover and launch new educational opportunities through heritage. The general aim is to design online and offline educational opportunities in order to revive local cultural traditions and generate cultural, social and economic opportunities.

Emergency Distance Learning in the Italian University

The suspension of face-to-face teaching activities, due to the pandemic emergency, led universities to rearrange their teaching strategies using online learning environments and video-conference tools as a temporarily replacement of classrooms, without an accurate attention to training strategies. In this scenario, there is a need to reconsider current practices in order to determine the appropriate development strategies of academic policies to address the future of innovation of higher education. The purpose is to develop a training system that could adequately integrate users’ needs, capitalise good practices and provide a boost in innovation caused by the distance learning experience. A right step in this direction is to develop a higher education context marked by high level of learning environments’ hybridisation that could flexibly answer users’ needs and meet increasing demand for professionalism in the work marketplace. In this paper, a documentary research of university Emergency Distance Learning practices is presented. The aim is to draw the profile of current situation in order to reflect on future development trajectories of higher education.