Rete Telematica per l'innovazione didattica delle Scuole di Roma e provincia

Online asynchronous peer tutoring experience

Paola Ebranati, MA Psychology – Liceo Italiano in Istanbul – Istanbul - Turkey

Brunella Pellegrini, MA Physics – ITIS Albert Einstein – Rome - Italy

Case description

The following case is an application of  ITC – assisted cooperative learning as designed and implemented in an inter-class activity time-lapsed over  4 months within the SCOUT project.

The theoretical framework is rooted in constructivism and the aim of the activity is to attempt to transfer learning behaviours typically situated in cooperative groups to a  group of learners who have never been exposed to any form of cooperative learning.

Such transfer of  learning behaviours is to take place exclusively telematically, i.e. through ICT.

Two parallel classes  are involved in the study: one consisting of 18 students aged 18, (16 boys and 2 girls) from IT IS Albert Einstein, Technical School for electronics and telecommunications based in Rome (curriculum in Electronics), and another class of 25, 18-year-olders, (5 males and 20 females) from Liceo Italiano in Istanbul, a secondary school for General Sciences and Humanities (curriculum in Turkish and Mathematics). This latter is an Italian government-funded school established in Turkey as early as 1888 and holds the status of private school for the Turkish Government. 87% of the students are Turkish citizens and receive tuition partly in Italian and partly in Turkish. Italian is a cross-curricular language and is taught as a second language, together with English. The pages devoted to the description of the activities are at:

http://www.liceoitaliano.net/didanet2003/interazioni.htm#0

Aim of the activity

Transfer cooperative behaviours in learning from an experienced group of students to an inexperienced group of the same age and of different socio-cultural and curricular background. This activity  is being carried out in the frame of the DidaNet project, headed by IT IS Albert Einstein in Rome, which is in its turn boxed in Pitagoras

End outcome of the activity:

sets of simple web-based hypermedia on  the following content areas:

-         food

-         learning

-         technology – man-machine interfaces

Actors

Work organization: group formation

Materials and Methods

In order to justify  the hypothesis of a marked difference between the groups as regard to their concept of  learning, a 27-item interval-scale questionnaire was designed, whose items were statements on learning viewed as part of peer cooperation (constructivistic view) randomly mixed with statements on learning viewed as a teacher-centred product (behavioristic view). Both classes (the Turkish and the Italian) were administered the questionnaire in order to ascertain which views appeared to be most common in each of the groups. As expected, the Turkish students appeared to view learning as the result of direct instruction, imitation, repetition, memorization and total compliance with top-down orders and requests from the teacher alone, whereas the Italian students seemed to exhibit a more flexible attitude, whereby learning is viewed as a cooperative ongoing process, with teachers seen as a variable of a process which may take place mostly in relationships, confrontation and exchange of ideas.

A second checklist of  technology-handling skills was made by the two teachers.

Checklist of main differences in terms of: communication – production – technical skills between the Turkish class and the Italian class, as assessed by the two head teachers:

Yes = relatively present     NO= entirely missing

p://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/3d4d4c/

The challenge of the activity was to see whether at least some of the behaviours and skills present in the Italian group could be somewhat be induced/transferred in the Turkish group, using distance cooperation.

Models used: cooperative learning with embedded peer-tutoring organized according to what we termed: “table tennis” strategy.

Environment: //it.groups.yahoo.com/group/3d4d4c/

Since the Turkish students were not familiar either with cooperative activities, or with hypertext building, or with concept-mapping, we thought it would not be advisable to plunge them directly into an activity which per se required a high level of autonomy. Therefore  a number of structured phases were designed, gradually progressing from teacher-centred assignments to more autonomous activities. The students would therefore pass from complying to the teacher to acknowledging the authority of a peer-coordinator, to negotiating solutions with their peers on an equal opportunity basis.

Phases:

A post-activity re-administration of the questionnaire will be carried out only on the Turkish students to see whether any change has occurred with respect to their concept of learning.

Additions

Topics covered

Graphic representation of the model

Phase 1

Phase 2

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