WIDE Services team , led by our Head Instructional Designer, Katerina Tsadima participated in the Orwell Project, an Erasmus+ funded EU project whose main objective is to support digital writing skills in higher education: https://orwellproject.eu/
In the context of this project, the WIDE Services team together with a research team from the Universidad de Cantabria in Spain created an educational intervention to promote writing as a tool for learning and critical thinking. This educational intervention is based on two tools implemented at the University of Cantabria:
- a writing workshop that includes a virtual training in argumentative composition for the Moodle platform as well as materials to promote writing as a learning tool
- plug-in to extract and analyze information on how students use the resources in the Moodle course
All the materials created for the Writing Lab have been implemented in the Moodle platform of the bachelor of Infant Education and Primary Education from the University of Cantabria. The writing workshop consists of an intervention, videos and resources to motivate students to improve their writing by informing them of its importance. Besides, the plug-in to analyze students' usage and behaviour in Moodle will provide information about the resources they access, the time they spend on the tasks, the order they follow, etc. The project is still in progress. Currently, 65 students have completed the intervention on how to write argumentative compositions and preliminary results show that students are satisfied with the intervention.
The material developed in this sub-project will be translated into Italian and English so that more students can benefit from it. We hope that our results will allow us to share materials to promote writing as a learning tool in higher education.
The final paper will be published here: IATED Publications, entitled: "Using a Digital Environment to Foster Writing as a Learning and Reflective Tool: the Orwell Project", by Villlalon Molina R., Gallardo Gómez M., García Saiz D. and Tsadima K.
Special acknowledgement to Kyriaki Kolaini, Giannis Lagos and Panagiotis Doris , members of WIDE Services team, as well as Yiannis Arapoglou, our company’s General Manager, for their contribution to this project.
