REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPERIENCE
Bianca M. Varisco - Padua group resident teacher
In this experience I had a twofold function. In addition of being the resident and removed teacher (with the roles of supplying guide, support, clarification, consultation, criticism) I also took on the task of "video operator" . It was in fact in Padua that the sessions were recorded. They were held in two different rooms: in the discussion room a videocamera was focused on the work group as a whole, while in the computer and modem laboratory both a camera and a videorecorder were set up, the former taking the Internet operating group from the front and the latter, interfaced with the same computer, recording what appeared on the computer screen.
Initially, four operative meetings were held: two by myself (one to administer the pre-test, in the form of a questionnaire, and the other to present the aims, offer methodological guidelines, distribute and classify the study materials), the other two by the resident technician, who initiated the students in electronic mail, navigation in world-wide-web, HTML language. The subsequent meetings were self-managed by the students. At the last meeting a post-test was administered.
I attended almost all the meetings (21 on 27) being always on hand to help in my capacity as teacher.
Since January, the 2-3 hour weekly meetings initially agreed upon by the Padua group became 3-5 hour ones, one of which coinciding with their peers’ from Florence.
The initial choice of "human material" turned out to be a functional one. Among the volunteer students, those who possessed some prerequisites useful to the forthcoming experience were chosen (one girl student teaches English in a primary school, one of her fellow students is a typical hacker -he has easily and autonomously learned and used the HTML language- another two had experienced some hypermedial production in the previous academic year). Two students were drawn for among the remaining applicants.
The level of motivation was very high throughout. Moreover, the group showed good self-management skills of their work (sharing out of tasks and materials, organization and coordination of individual, pair, and group work).
Interaction with the Florence group was mainly through electronic mail and file transfer. There has been only one experience of chat, disturbed by the interference of a group of young people from Arezzo.
Communication between the two groups has been constant, albeit with some occasional misunderstandings and omissions. Sometimes competitiveness got the upper hand, but it was soon transformed into greater cooperation with the occasional playful interlude, once the necessary explanations were given and following the setting up and/or confirmation of working and communication rules.
In Padua other forms of communications were felt necessary (e.g. telephone calls, face to face meetings), but they could only partially be realized (three phone calls were made to prompt computer correspondence and to clarify some misunderstandings, but there were no meetings between the two groups of students).
There were occasional contacts with experts. Great was the satisfaction, however, when contacts were with foreign experts, which gave the students the feeling of actually belonging to an international research community.
The amount of material to read, translate, and summarize is likely to have been excessive, as there was not enough room left to debate, compare, and search for links between articles, to organize the hypertext to implement in web, and to actually compose it (on 29 abstracts, only 9 were inserted in the hypertext network).
The experience of research-study carried out according to the logic of the community of learners was on the whole positive and achieved its best results in the organization, management and implementation of the local work.
For logistic, technical, and communication reasons as well as because of different styles and viewpoints (probably connected to the imprinting offered by the resident teachers, more technological and operative in Florence, more epistemologic-speculative in Padua) more problems were experienced in communicating and working with the Florentine peers, which, nevertheless, stimulated and furthered new forms of research-study in university learning, such as reciprocal teaching and research apprenticeship.