Mapping content plans into learning activities: Organizing a portfolio of e-learning activities for teaching emergent knowledge

Abstract

The increasing use of low-cost access to a universal communication network as a basis for teaching in universities, poses new challenges to analyze, understand and propose new educational solutions. This requires from education providers sophisticated instructional models, pedagogically advanced, aligned with new demands of educational, social and technological contexts. In such conditions, transition from traditional teacher-centered models, focusing on curricula description and content plans, to student-centered models, in which learning activities are supported in e-learning platforms, is a necessary but difficult task to resolve. An issue that becomes especially important when the knowledge is emergent, i.e. when the activities that this knowledge enables are intensively supported by information and communication technologies, subjected to rapid obsolescence. This paper presents a method for mapping a course content plan into technological mediating tools that form a portfolio in an elearning platform. The characteristics of the portfolio facilitate the mapping of the content plan to a student-centered learning dynamics. Details on the instructional model are provided; the reasons for implementing a green field e-learning platform are justified; an outline of the results obtained in a post-graduate course discipline of 293 students is reported, with significant results, particularly with regard to team-building skills, student satisfaction and training model.