Italiano (Italia)
Framework
Due to the development and ever increasing penetration of Information and Communication Technology in our society, the professional practices of educators, researchers and, in general, “knowledge workers” are changing. The ability to access reliable, accredited, and up-to-date scientific information has assumed a crucial role. The Science & Technology Digital Library project of the National Research Council aims to build a Digital Library offering access to all the research products, from scientific papers to datasets and from information about research activities to digitized content of historical and cultural interest. The project will also include actions to promote wide usage of this Digital Library.
The Institute for Educational Technology of the National Research Council (ITD-CNR) contributes to the WorkPackage 8 of the project, focusing on the development of online training initiatives concerning the use of the Digital Library, addressing CNR researchers in the first place and, in the future, Italian University Staff as well as knowledge workers of Italian companies.
In line with the Digital Agenda for Europe (Eu Strategy 2020), the Science & Technology Digital Library Project was created as a part of the protocol between the Ministry of Education and the National Research Council, through a Convention signed on July 17th, 2012, between the National Council of Research and the Department for the digitization of public administration and technological innovation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers -- later merged in the so-called AgID - Digital Agency for Italy.
Objectives
The project aims to develop an integrated system for accessing information on Research & Development (R & D) directed not only to the national scientific community, but also to a wider audience of users that constitute the social and productive fabric of the country (institutions, companies, civil society). The system will be interoperable with the major national and international information systems and will ensure:
·permanent, certified and effective access to the bibliographic and documentary information resources, as well as scientific, technical, statistical data, research activities or projects, expertise, etc. ;
·total integration of the management and delivery services of the library;
·integration of documentation, products and techno-scientific data made available by other institutions operating in the field of R & D – in line with the Open Government and Open Access policy;
·development of training and advanced information services according to the users’ needs;
·implementation of activities and services aimed at enhancing and preserving national scientific production (legal deposit).
In this context, WorkPackage 8 will implement a pilot on-line training course addressing CNR’s young biomedical researchers and technologists. The course aims to provide participants with some basic knowledge and skills on the world of information and communication science and to introduce them to the issues of digital scholarship and open culture. Assuming that participants are adults with reasonably high self-regulated learning skills, the intervention will be flexible and customizable, offering the possibility to choose between different training modules and approaches. The course design will also take into account the possibility of extending the educational offer to a potentially broader audience than that of the pilot initiative. The research activity carried out will concern Professional Self-Regulated Learning (SRPL), Problem-Based Learning (PBL), learning evaluation and instructional design of online training programs.
Workplan
WorkPackage8 intends to adopt an approach in which research and prototype development intertwine closely. As a result, the design, implementation and evaluation of a pilot intervention based on the principles mentioned above will be accompanied by activities of study, research and testing of methods and techniques that facilitate problem-based and self-regulated learning by participants. To this end, the use of tools for planning, self-monitoring and self-evaluation of online learning is envisaged, together with a learning environment capable of collecting data about ongoing learning processes in order to verify the effectiveness of the approaches used
Expected results
WorkPackage8 intends to achieve two types of results: training results and research results.
Training results will concern the training of a core group of young researchers in the biomedical sector on issues related to scientific communication and information, use of scientific information databases, management and dissemination of research results, and innovative practices of digital scholarship, with particular reference to the movement of open science.
The main research results will regard the design principles of online learning systems that encourage participants self-regulation, the study of the effectiveness of some tools, methods of learning, methods of validation in online learning systems.