CONSIDERATIONS
The “learning community “of Padova was composed of six students from the Faculty of Science of Education ( Federica, Giulia, Luca, Marco, Mario e Valentino ) .
The CIST Project (Interuniversity Community for Telematic Study) by prof. Bianca Maria Varisco and prof. Antonio Calvani from the Departments of Intructional Tecnology of the University of Padua and Florence, began as a pilot project for the setting up and study of “learning community” . Starting with given bibliography, some general imputs and the possibility of contacting experts by E-mail, the goal was to make a final hypertext on Internet, in collaboration with the community of pairs in Florence. During this work certain problems arose demanding continuous comparison and revision of the goals, lengthening the expected working time.
Final considerations of the community of learners
Relation with the Florence pairs
The relation with the Florence pairs presented some problems for various reasons :
- difficulty of telematic comunication ( only after two weeks could we send our messages)
- differing instructions about the starting standards ( for both the abstract and the hypertext frameworks)
- motivation focused on divergent goals that introduced certain ambiguity and conflict between the two groups ( we felt that Florence group was more interested practical and technological aspects and in the final test, while we were more concerned with metacognitive aspect )
- the bibliography was too extensive given the time and it precluded a little the possibilities of informal comunications; besides it didn’t allow for expanding the issues and it limited contact with experts
- also for this reason the comunications was basically characterized by technical messages
Thanks to a clarifying telephone call many misunderstandings were solved, allowing a positive conclusion of the project.
Inner dynamics of the group
The task were divided, in accordance with personal skills, in order to create parallel groupworks. During some moments the group felt frustrated because it couldn’t acquire all the skills expected at the beginning ( coding HTML, Internet navigation ).There were various partecipation levels both because of differing motivations and because of the working time was extended, that kept some of us from assureing a constant presence.
As often happens, the group suffered the lack of support and collaboration from one of the students. Finally we think that, in order to optimize the project, it is necessary to revise bibliografical load and to extend the coursetime, allowing individual students to study in further depth those subject which interest them most.