Collaborative Development of Educational Modules - E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning - page 178

INTRODUCTION people. Similarly, teachers and experts can teach

and learn at the same time in a certain field of
expertise.
The main challenge in building lifelong
learning experiences is how to provide ways to
establish flexible and high-quality educational
products, capable of stimulating the learners (and
teachers as well) and effectively contribute to
their knowledge construction processes in active
learning environments. In this scenario, collabora-
tive issues can be explored under two different
but complementary perspectives: collaborative
development and collaborative learning. In the
first perspective, the idea is to provide means
for developers from different domains, working
on multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous teams,
geographically dispersed or not, cooperate, shar-
ing data and information regarding the product
being developed. In the second perspective, the
goal is to design personalized content and foster
collaborative and cooperative activities for learn-
ers working in different places, at different times,
and with varying facilities. In the emerging ap-
proaches of learning, such perspectives are ever
more related, where the term “developer” refers
not only to the designer professional and/or to
the teacher, but also to the learner. In such cases,
collaborative development turns into collaborative
learning and vice-versa.
In this chapter we explore the collaborative
development of educational modules and its impli-
cations in lifelong learning scenarios. Educational
modules correspond to concise units of study, com-
posed of theoretical and practical content, which
can be delivered to learners by using technologi-
cal and computational resources (Barbosa, 2004;
Barbosa & Maldonado, 2006a; Barbosa & Mal-
donado, 2006b). In a very broad definition, IEEE/
LTSC states that a learning object corresponds
to “ any entity, digital or non-digital, that can be
used, reused or referenced during technology sup-
ported learning… Examples of learning objects
include multimedia content, instructional content,
learning objectives, instructional software and

Education has been through enormous changes in
the last decades. The need for a global education,
capable of crossing international, cultural and so-
cial borders in order to prepare the learners for the
global market has been rapidly changing the con-
cept of learning (Barbosa & Maldonado, 2006b).
Besides that, the fast evolution of information and
communication technologies has leveraged and
multiplied the possibilities of learning.
Several initiatives have been investigated in
order to provide new learning opportunities and
facilitate the learning process. In this evolving
educational landscape, the idea of lifelong learn-
ing has emerged - it is ever more important for
college graduates and professionals to be able to
take their place in the changing world scene and
to be adaptable and creative within the organiza-
tion that employs them (Peat et al., 2005). Also,
in addition to a diversified student population in
terms of ethnicity, social status and expectations,
the proportion of nontraditional older adult re-
entry students is increasing significantly. Higher
education plays an important role in this context,
having a mission to provide older adult learners
with re-education or retraining such that they can
be able to remain competitive in the workforce
of today's technologically sophisticated society
(Inoue, 2007).
The growing worldwide demand for more flex-
ible, self-directed, informal and formal lifelong
learning opportunities points out the need for
more efficient and productive learning develop-
ment scenarios. For instance, the changes within
education have brought about changes to the roles
of teachers and students and to the nature of the
learning process. As stated by Koper (2005), in
lifelong learning students can be (co-) producers
of course materials, can perform assessments,
and can support other students. Indeed, lifelong
learning implies on exploiting the heterogeneity
of learners by setting up learning communities in
which novices collaborate with more experienced