CNR-ITD

The Special Interest Group Narrative and Learning Environments (SIG NLE) of Kaleidoscope focused on questions regarding the application of narrative in learning environments. Narrative is a natural way for people to communicate and express themselves, to organize and represent knowledge, to analyse and give meaning to experience. The increased possibilities to create multimedia stories offered by ICT has added further learning potential to narratives, giving rise to a wide variety of computer applications in different research domains.
The SIG NLE aimed to help develop this research and applicative field, which is still in its infancy, by bringing together expertise in narrative theories and their applications on learning environments. Its main goals were: to foster the educational use of narrative in learning environments; to promote the link between education experts, narratologists, researchers, teachers and learners as concerns the application of narrative in learning environments; to contribute to the development of a classification for this kind of environments. To reach these aims, several activities were (successfully) undertaken:

1. Implementation of a rich web site, that could work as a reference point for the SIG members and support their activity, with collections of bibliographical material and information on applications, projects and conferences.
2. Organization of workshops, to give an opportunity to people with different background to discuss issues and compare points of view, in relation with NLEs:
   1. 1st workshop on NLE (Lisbon, PT, June 2005);
   2. 1st AIED Workshop on NLE (within the AIED Internat. Conference, Amsterdam, NL, July 2005)
   3. 2nd workshop on NLE (Palermo, IT, June 2006);
   4. 2nd AIED Workshop on NLE (within the AIED Internat. Conference, Marina del Rey, CA, USA, July 2007);
   5. Symposium on “Learning through storification: Enhancing narrative learning environments with technology” (within the EARLI Internat. Conference, Budapest, August 2007);
   6. 1st online working conference on NLE (September 2007).
3. Organization of 2 online courses on NLE, addressed to PhD students, within the Virtual Doctoral School of Kaleidoscope, involving students and experts from many universities across Europe, as well as some students from overseas (Australia, USA, Canada); (October-November 2006 and March-April 2007).
4. Edition of the book “Technology-mediated narrative environments for learning”, including contributions by the SIG members. This book, the first on Narrative Learning Environments ever issued at international level, was published by SensePublishers, Rotterdam (NL) / Taipei (Taiwan).
5. Edition of a special issue of the international journal IJCEELL (JCR).
6. Preparation of 13 deliverables deepening different aspects of NLEs and of the SIG activity.
7. A number of publications on NLEs, among which it is worth mentioning a contribution for Kaleidoscope’s Legacy book, that collects Kaleidoscope’s scientific legacy (published by Springer in 2008).
8. Extension of the possibility to become members of the SIG NLE to people outside Kaleidoscope, in order to continue its activity of this group beyond the duration of the network.
9. A wide dissemination activity, presenting the SIG NLE at a variety of conferences and contributing several times to Kaleidoscope newsletter. For this dissemination activity the SIG NLE coordinator, Giuliana Dettori, received the Press and communication award from Kaleidoscope.

Project steering committee:

For the whole duration:
CNR Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche / Italy (Giuliana Dettori)
INESC-ID /Portugal (Ana Paiva)
For some year during the project duration:
Universitée de Liège / Belgium (Françoise Decortis)
Universität Köln /Germany (Karl Steffens)
University of Twente (Bregje de Vries)

SIG members varied from 70 in the first year to 118 at the end, from 42 institutions across Europe. Many of them actively took part in the SIG NLE activities.