The PS Department was honored to have Dr Manoli Pifarre Turmo and Ms Andreea Cujba from University of Lleida to deliver two research seminars entitled “The Use of Interactive Technologies to Promote a Dialogic Space for Creating Collaboratively” on 8 October 2018 and “Unpacking and Teaching-Learning to Learn Together Skills with Technology” on 10 October 2018.
The seminar on 8 October covered the theoretical framework of socio-cultural theory and the dialogical use of interactive technologies and dialogic technology-enhanced pedagogy. It discussed the four dialogic applications of technology for co-creating and finally the implications regarding the design of more effective technology-enhanced dialogic pedagogy to connect learners with their creative potential.
The seminar on 10 October talked about Learning to Learn Together (L2L2) skills, which is acknowledged as one of the most essential 21st-century skills that enable learners to be equipped for the fast-paced digital society. This talk reported findings of an empirical study with primary school students who worked in two different modes of interaction (face-to-face in-pair discussion and on-line wiki-based between-pair discussion and identified the key features of four L2L2 skills: distributed leadership, mutual engagement, group reflection and group assessment, all of which emerged to a similar extent during the wiki project. The speakers emphasized the need of having a more effective technology-enhanced pedagogy, creating an environment that encourages all students’ engagement, having sufficient time allocation, coordinating between the researchers and teachers, and schools’ level of involvement in project-based learning are the essential factors of making L2L2 successful.
The two seminars were successfully held and fruitful Q & A sessions were given at the end of the talk.
