Results
Learn more about the FERTILE project concrete objectives and results.
Objectives
FERTILE Project
The project’s concrete objectives are:
- to develop the FERTILE design methodology for Artful Educational Robotics (ER) projects that integrate face-to-face and online activities through ER simulators and remote collaboration,
- to develop the FERTILE community platform for educators to remotely collaborate,
- to develop training materials, including exemplar Artful ER projects as open educational resources for pre and in-service teachers and academic educators,
- to train pre and in-service teachers and academic tutors in the FERTILE design methodology towards implementing the methodology in their schools or university courses on ER and disseminating it to their colleagues aiming to create an educator community that will remain after the project ends.
1st Result
The 1st result focuses on the 1st objective of FERTILE, i.e., developing the FERTILE design methodology to address digital transformation in teacher education. A handbook on the implementation of the FERTILE design methodology is developed with guidelines for educators to (1) share activities between face-to-face sessions and online ones, (2) select appropriate ER technologies and ER simulators for various educational contexts such as primary/secondary/higher education, (3) holistically cultivate computational thinking skills by integrating ER with Arts, (4) organize online interaction in a communication platform to enhance co-design and community learning.
The milestones set include:
(i) A review on the current trends in ER (Milestone 1.1)
(ii) Profiling of educators involved with ER (Milestone 1.2)
(iii) An initial version of the “FERTILE” Design Methodology (Milestone 1.3)
2nd Result
The 2nd result contributes to the 2nd objective of FERTILE towards developing an educator community and serves as a means of dissemination of all the other project results. We envision the FERTILE community platform as the e-place where educators and/or students meet remotely and collaborate/discuss and share artifacts. The teacher FERTILE platform (1) provides community features allowing online interaction/collaboration among educators/participants and promotes a sense of community, (2) provides community analytics, and (3) allows educators access to the projects’ results, including the FERTILE methodology, the training materials and the artful robotics scenarios developed during the project.
The milestones set include:
(i) the “FERTILE” Community Platform Design Requirements (Milestone 2.1)
(ii) the initial “FERTILE” community platform available at https://fertile.gsic.uva.es (Milestone 2.2)
3rd Result
The 3rd result contributes to the 3rd objective of FERTILE, i.e., to develop training materials, including exemplar Artful ER projects as open educational resources for pre & in-service teachers and academic educators. The FERTILE Training Materials supports a modular training structure and provides all the necessary content for activities taking place f2f & online.
The content developed includes individual & collaborative & peer-review activities taking place f2f, synchronously or asynchronously, exemplar Artful ER projects, presentations (ppt or video), study material & scientific papers web resources.
The main innovation of this result is the experiential training approach that the training scheme and content adopt, aiming to provide Artful ER experiences to the trainees-educators similar to those of their students.
The training materials are provided as open educational resources. The modular structure of the materials allows for adaptations to different contexts related to the level of education, the variety of robotic technologies used at the primary/secondary/vocational/university level, and the forms of arts education (audiovisual, performing, literature) adopted in various educational curricula of the participating countries.
4th Result
The 4th result aims at communicating the FERTILE results and mainly the FERTILE design methodology to pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and academic tutors. This result addresses the needs of educators to go beyond classroom-based learning and face-to-face interaction by practicing ER simulators and remote collaboration in a blended context toward digital transformation,
To this end, pilot studies for about 70 educators and multiplier events for about 200 educators are organized. The duration of these events is 20 hours and the mode of delivery is blended involving f2f, synchronous and asynchronous sessions as follows:
- Module 1: Elaborating on Robotics as an educational tool for cultivating computational thinking: project-based & collaborative learning, computational thinking skills linking ER with Arts, ER technologies for various educational levels (elementary, secondary, university).
- Module 2: Supporting educators interweave ER with Arts: the Art in the FERTILE project – audiovisual arts (animation, filmmaking, painting), performing arts (dance, theatre, music), and literacy arts (poetry, drama, prose, fiction), triggering the design of artful ER artifacts for cultivating CT,
- Module 3: Scaffolding blending f2f with online experience through exemplar artful ER projects: ER simulators, The FERTILE Community Platform, how to share outcomes between f2f & online context.
- Module 4: Promoting the FERTILE design methodology through co-designing artful ER projects. Peer review of projects developed according to specific evaluation criteria.
