iCamp - innovative, inclusive, interactive & intercultural learning campus

In the last years the eLearning market has been populated with many tools and platforms to support different types of learning communities with learning management, content management and communication tools. Whereas universities are already making use of these systems individually, collaboration across systems and across countries is still a challenge. http://www.icamp.eu iCamp is facing this challenge and has the vision to become THE Educational Web for higher education in larger Europe with a special focus on the integration of the New Member States and Accession Countries.

iCamp provides an infrastructure - the iCamp Space - for collaboration and social networking across systems, countries and disciplines. The iCamp Space builds on existing interfaces and integrate shared community features. Interoperability amongst different open source learning systems and tools is the key to successful sustainability of iCamp.

The driving principle behind the technical challenges is the innovative pedagogical model of iCamp based on constructivist learning theories. The challenge that we still face with many learning environments today is that they have been developed following the transmission model of teaching and learning, where information is transferred from experts to novices. Preparing learners to become independent and self-organised requires a facilitative rather than a didactic mode of instruction. The iCamp project emphasised "social instruction" to meet this pedagogical challenge.

The objectives in iCamp were driven by pedagogical, technical and social challenges and can be summarised.

· to investigate, develop and validate innovative pedagogical models for social instruction that support learners in achieving their learning goals in a self-directed manner and to establish social networks

· to provide a validated portfolio of constructivist learning tools that support these innovative learning models

· to provide an open virtual learning environment consisting of a network of learning tools, platforms and repositories

· to develop and describe an open source code for connecting to the iCamp network and to provide interoperability amongst different systems

· to document and describe the best practices from the validation for universities that might benefit from it in future

Team:

• Dr. Barbara Kieslinger (project leader)
• Dr. Claudia Magdalena Fabian
• Dipl.-Psych./MEd Sebastian Fiedler
• Univ. Prof. Mag. Dr. Josef Hochgerner (external Senior Strategic Advisor)
• Dr. Margit Hofer
• Dipl.-M.b. Sylvana Kroop
• Mag. Dr. Michael Ornetzeder

Section: Technology and Knowledge

Partners:

• ISIK University
• Jozef Stefan Institute
• Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
• Siemens AG, Germany
• Tallinn University
• Tomas Bata University in Zlín
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• University of Leicester
• University of Science and Technology
• Vienna University of Economics and Business
• JSI Slovenia, ULE United Kingdom, UPM Spain, VUE Austria, AGH Poland, KTU Lithuania, ISIK Turkey, TLU Estonia, TBU Czech Republic

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