Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. EDU2012-32415
Project execution: 2013-2015
Principal researcher: Manoli Pifarré Turmo.
Researcher team: Jaume Sanuy, Conxita Vendrell, Alex Guijosa, Esther Argelagós, Noemí Verdú, Laura Martí, Alba Guiral.

Summary

The main aim of this project is to design, implement and evaluate a technological and pedagogical project which uses the affordances of Web 2.0 technologies to promote creativity and collaborative learning embedded in the curricular contents.
It is ask to education that has to respond accordingly to the technological and social changes related with the global knowledge society. In concrete, it is asked that education should prepare the students to be creative and develop critical and collaborative thinking in order to be able to actively participate in the global knowledge age.
Our research project claims that the educative use of Web 2.0 technologies can contribute in students’ development of those digital competences related with participation in the global knowledge age. However, we are in a very initial stage in the use of Web 2.0 technologies as learning tools capable to promote the development of critical thinking, collaboration and creativity. Besides, there are few pieces of research that evaluate systematically the affordances of Web 2.0 for promoting better learning. Our research project intends to be a contribution to this issue and aims to gain understanding about the key cognitive processes that can promote creative thinking and collaborative learning processes mediated by Web 2.0 technologies and how to promote their explicit teaching in Secondary Education.

In this line of work, our project wants to reach the next six objectives:

1. To identify and evaluate cognitive processes included in the development of creative thinking and collaborative learning mediated by the use of social and cognitive tools (social mindtools) Web 2.0.
2. To analyse how to incorporate scaffolds in Web 2.0 learning environments in order to support and promote planning and reflection processes around collaboration and collective knowledge creation.
3. To create a collaborative research community with secondary education teachers in which develop a research methodology based on "Design-Based Research” approach in order to better design, implement and evaluate activities that foster students’ creative thinking mediated by Web 2.0 tools.
4. To design, implement and evaluate longitudinally (two years) activities that foster students’ creative thinking mediated by Web 2.0 tools.
5. To design a pedagogical model that guide the design and implementation of learning environments that foster students’ creative thinking mediated by Web 2.0 tools.
6. To disseminate the main research conclusions of our project and the educative materials elaborated in a web site (www.contic.udl.cat) and in scientific journals.