proceedings of Student Mobility and ICT: Can E-LEARNING

Figure 3. A content page of the Technikum Wien Wiki.
Moodle
This year the open source E-Learning platform Moodle was launched at the FH Technikum Wien.
This platform allows lots of learning and teaching methods including all above mentioned techniques. As
Moodle is brand new at the Technikum Wien there does not exist many experiences so far.
Best Practices of Teaching Methods
Using computer supported teaching methods differs completely from traditional teaching methods.
It is absolutely necessary to work out a concrete concept of the planned lecture. Some best practices of the
authors especially in using Wiki systems are mentioned here.
Group puzzle in combination with a Wiki system
A group puzzle is a self organized learning method where the learning content of a course is split
up in parts an worked out by student in teamwork. A group puzzle is operated in two phases. Phase one is
called the research phase and phase two is called the explanation phase. In the first phase, students form
groups. Each so called “expert group” has to do a specific topic, which means reading articles and research
books and the internet on that subject. The result is a compendium of the important facts for a topic which
will be used in the following phase. The second phase is characterized by reorganizing the groups. Every
new formed group must contain at minimum one member of every group of the first phase. Based on the
documentation done in the expert phase a representative of each phase one group explains his research
topic to the other members of his new group. All members explain their specific research topics.
The crucial points of this method can be summarized as:
• Deep understanding of research topic
• Good documentation of essentials of research topic
• Concrete explanation in phase two
• Willingness of discussion
Some of the points can be supported easily by the lecturer except for the quality of documentation
– a fact that leads to poor learning outcome. As a consequence it is very important to get the students to
prepare high quality documentation in the expert phase. A solution can be found by forcing the students to
write the actual state of research into a Wiki system. At any time everybody can look at the current state of
documentation. Lecturers can evaluate the quality of Wiki entries and can give direction quickly.
Conference proceedings of Student Mobility and ICT: Can E-LEARNING overcome barriers of Life-Long learning?” 169