Haridustehnoloogia keskus

Tallinn University is the third largest public university in Estonia with 7800 students in 17 research institutes and two colleges. Centre for Educational Technology (CET), established in 1998 is an R&D unit within the Institute of Informatics. CET is one of the leading R&D centres in the field of Educational Technology within Estonia. CET is hosting an interdisciplinary e-learning research group Knowledge Environments Research Group that involves researchers and doctoral students from the departments of informatics, educational science and library & information sciences in TLU. CET works in close collaboration with the Institute of Mathematics and Natural Science. CET staff consists of 14 full-time researchers, software developers, project managers, educational technologists, some part-time employees and a group of postgraduate students. Scientific and technological qualifications of CET staff intertwine deep pedagogical knowledge, technological programming and development skills, and experiences of empirical research at authentic educational and work settings in the field of ICT and science education.

The main ongoing scientific research projects in CET are related with developing the new generation distributed learning environments consisting of interoperable free social software and other pedagogical ICT applications, self-directed learning in hybrid environments, and the integration of bottom-up and top-down ontologies for the selection of activities and learning resources. CET has been actively participating in European FP6 IST projects Calibrate (federated learning object repository LeMill for teacher collaboration in the development of learning methods and material) and iCamp (creating an social software based infrastructure for collaboration and networking across systems, countries, and disciplines in Higher Education) and regional research initiatives (OPAH – application of ePortfolio DiPo in professional teacher education and practice). Science education and teacher education serve as one of the main testing grounds of CET activities.

CET has developed several ICT solutions that can be potentially applied in the project as mediators supporting the use of innovative methods in science classrooms what the project targets. The tools that have been used in Estonian teacher education are an electronic portfolio DiPo for competence management and reflection upon pedagogical practices, an international multi-language learning repository and peer production environment for teachers LeMill, and the social software based distributed learning management system technology, which has been used both in teacher education, as well as, with the basic and secondary level students for developing inquiry practices and information skills.

LeMill

(http://lemill.net/) is a shared community-based content repository developed in participation with CET. LeMill is an international Web community for finding, authoring and sharing learning resources: activity descriptions, learning materials and descriptions of learning tools. Currently the community involves more than 3000 teachers from 40 countries and 13 languages. In LeMill teachers can interact with each other creating learning resources or activities collaboratively or they can redevelop the learning resources made by other teachers from different countries or schools. LeMill setting can be used for binding real school activities, artifacts needed in these activities and the development of virtual collections of these artifacts. The main interest in using the LeMill in the project can be identifying how members of the science teacher community use and modify innovative teaching methods and related artifacts, how they form communities, and how they start collaboration for making resources for real-life activities for schools. Currently there are courses held for the inservice teachers to popularize the LeMill environment. Participants of such courses can be monitored over the periods of time. The data can be collected from LeMill environment log-files, interviews with teachers and observation and recording their lessons in which the LeMill resources have been used or from which they were created.

DiPo (http://htk.tlu.ee/dipo) eportfolio system is provided as a free service to all teacher students, in-service teachers and teacher educators nationwide in Estonia. DiPo has been integrated with social learning object repository LeMill (http://lemill.net), social bookmarking tool Del.icio.us, photo sharing tool Flickr, and some other social sofware tools. DiPo is The DiPo software is built as an add-on module for Plone CMS (http://plone.org). DiPo integrates personal ePortfolios and the community portal at organizational level. Personal ePortfolios are used for storing individual data, evidences of person’s competences and EuroPass-styled Curriculum Vitae. The owners of DiPo portfolio can reflect regularly on personal learning experiences using blog-based Diary tool and get feedback from the mentor or peers. All knowledge-objects in DiPo are tagged and can be linked to certain competency in the professional qualification standard. The institution- and community-based functionalities of DiPo are different retrieval and aggregation tools for knowledge-objects, persons and networks. Within DiPo system, teachers can form virtual communities that are based either on institutional hierarchies (e.g. teachers from one school), job profile, geographical location or even hobbies. DiPo has been used nationwide in Estonia as a support system for cross-institutional learning in the context of all three levels of teacher education: pre-service studies in the university (especially school practice), induction year and continuous professional development of in-service teachers. DiPo has been systematically implemented in the context of teacher education, having almost 1000 registered users (about 7% of all teachers in Estonia). The implementation of DiPo comprises the possibility to provide the ICT support for new teachers adopting the innovative methods at science classrooms. The tool can be used for intermediate communication between the teachers’ community, as well as, for reflective activities of teachers’ and teacher training organizations. Potentially the tool enables teachers to evaluate their competences related to innovative teaching practices.

Distributed learning environments – with the arrival of Web 2.0, the social software and services and social media tools have become mainstream technologies in the web environments and can be effectively used in science teacher communication and in the reflective and argumentative inquiry practices at schools. CET has been investigating the applicability and interoperability of social media tools as distributed learning systems in teacher education in national and cross-cultural international settings and in the inquiry practices at basic and secondary schools. The distributed learning management systems can be used as the democratic and user-managed medium for teachers’ collaborative action to implement inquiry-based innovative methods into science classrooms and enhancing dialogic teaching and self-reflection practices of teachers and students.

Key research staff in CET:

Kai Pata has the background of science teacher education and ICT in learning. She holds the PhD degree in Education (University of Turku, Finland) and MSc degree in Science Education, University of Tartu (Estonia). Her main expertise is in learning management in distributed learning environments and social systems for inquiry learning, tutoring models and scaffolding elements in web-based collaborative learning environments, and cognitive aspects of constructivist and socio-cultural learning in inquiry learning environments. She has been responsible at the 6th Framework projects (BIOHEAD-CITIZEN, iCamp) as a pedagogical expert. She holds the ESF project of Teaching for conceptual coherence in environmental education. She is currently holding the senior researcher position of Educational Technology in CET. Her research interest are related with the design and implementation of hybrid learning environments, ecology of social software, embodied knowledge etc. See her research blog at tihane.wordpress.com

Mart Laanpere has the background of mathematics and physics education and ICT in learning. He studied at Master’s Programme Educational & Training Systems Design at the University of Twente (The Netherlands) and obtained MSc in 1997. He is a founder of the CET. He has initiated and coordinated a number of R&D projects in the field of educational technology (eg.) He has been a workpackage leader in FP6 IST project iCamp. His main focus in research and teaching is instructional design of online courses, conceptual design of e-learning systems and tools, ePortfolio as tools for competence management. He is working as the researcher and director of CET. His research interests are connected to the design and application of ePortfolio in providing the ICT support for new teachers adopting the innovative methods, facilitating the intermediate communication between the teachers’ community, as well as, the reflective activities of teachers’ and teacher training organizations and supporting teachers in evaluating their competences related to innovative teaching practices.

Terje Väljataga has the background of science teacher education and ICT in learning. She studied at Tallinn University master program of geoecology, holding the MSc degree in geoecology (2002), and finished the Master’s Programme Educational & Training Systems Design at the University of Twente obtaining the MSc in 2004. Currently she is a postgraduate student of Tampere Technical University, investigating self-directed learning in distributed learning environments. She holds the position of researcher in CET and has been leading one in the WP2 in FP6 IST iCamp project. Her main research interests are related with the use of distributed learning management systems in the teachers’ collaborative action to implement inquiry-based methods bringing innovative methods into classrooms and enhancing dialogic teaching and self-reflection practices of teachers and students.

Hans Põldoja holds the master degree in information system development from Tallinn University (2003). He is currently the postgraduate student at Helsinki School of Media and Design where he has been involved in the development of LeMill learning environment, which enables teacher’s collaboration on the development of learning methods and resources. He hold the researcher position in CET. His research interests are focusing on the collaborative production of educational resources in LeMill.net.

PhD students working in CET: Vladimir Tomberg, Martin Sillaots, Kairit Tammets.

Software developers: Meelis Mets, Aili Madisson, Pjotr Savitski MA

Graphic/Web designer: Priit Tammets, MA

Web designer: Lili Kesa

Centre for the Educational Technology, introduction (PDF)

General contact information

Telefon: +372 6409 355
Fax: +372 6409 355
Skype: haridustehnoloogiakeskus

Adress: Room T-511
Narva road 25
10120, Tallinn, ESTONIA

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