Exploiting transmedia skills and informal learning strategies to improve formal education

Project Information

TRANSLITERACY

Grant agreement ID: 645238

DOI

10.3030/645238

Project closed

EC signature date 18 December 2014

Start date 1 April 2015

End date 31 March 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 1 066 492,50

EU contribution

€ 1 066 489,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TRANSLITERACY (Exploiting transmedia skills and informal learning strategies to improve formal education)

Reporting period: 2016-10-01 to 2018-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The technological transformations experienced in recent decades have promoted changes in the way in which people are taught, informed and entertained. The knowledge economy is a new socio-economic order in which new technologies are the drivers of knowledge production and application. However, it is not easy for traditional institutions –like the schools– to manage the transition to this new social and cultural environment. The TRANSLITERACY project has the aim to bring these two worlds through the production of a Teacher's Kit for teachers and professors to facilitate the introduction of new teaching strategies and activities into the educational institutions.

The TRANSLITERACY project is important for the society because it has a direct impact on formal education. The project goes beyond the scientific outputs and offers teachers and professors a set of strategies, activities and examples to be applied inside the classroom. Therefore, it aims to go beyond speeches and provide real tools for promoting educational change. In fact, the outputs of the research could be also exploited in future policy and regulatory agendas.

The overall objective of the project has been to understand how adolescents are learning transmedia skills outside the school. Once identified the informal learning strategies and practices applied by young people outside the formal institutions the team has ‘translated’ them into a series of activities and proposals to be implemented inside the schools. The project has produced a Teacher’s Kit so facilitate the renovation of pedagogic practices in the school.
The objectives of the project were the following:
 To better understand and analyse how teens from eight different countries develop and share their transmedia skills in informal learning settings
 To identify the transmedia skills and informal learning strategies developed by teens in transmedia practices
 To identify the problem-solving strategies developed by teens in video gaming
 To identify the practices of content creation, production and sharing strategies developed by teens in fan fiction
 To identify the dynamics of content creation, production and sharing strategies developed by and teens in social media
 To create a map of transmedia skills, protocols and strategies – found on the real processes implemented by teens - that can be applied into the formal education institutions
 To generate an open, adaptable and customizable Teacher’s Kit based on the outputs of the research with recommendations, learning strategies and activities to be developed with students inside the formal education system.

The objectives have been fully achieved.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Beyond the modifications realised on the dissemination strategy and different deliverables of the first period of the action (required by the reviewers and the PO), the research followed the sequence of activities of the DoA. The Deliverables were uploaded to the Portal according to the schedule accorded in the second Amendment. The tasks performed during the action are listed below:

- Creation and managing of the website;
- Reorganization of the Consortium;
- Creation and management of the ethical protocol-data management protocols;
- Design and testing of the methodological protocol;
- Management of the NVivo platform;
- Fieldwork in eight countries;
- Data processing and analysis;
- Design and creation of the teachers Kit;
- Testing of the teachers kit;
- Creation of the YouTube Channel;
- Organization of the transmedia Literacy International Conference in Barcelona;
- Organization of the transmedia Literacy Seminar in Uruguay;
- Conference presentations;
- Media dissemination;
- Elaboration of the Book;
- Elaboration of the White Paper;
- Elaboration of more than 20 articles focused on the project results;
- Coordination of a special issue on the journal Comunicación y Sociedad.

Finally, the main academic results of the project focus on the creation of a map of transmedia skills and informal learning strategies. More than 200 main and specific transmedia skills have been identified during the research. The transmedia skills have been organised in n. 9 dimensions, each one of them including n. 44 main skills, in a second level, and n. 190 specific skills (more information in D4.2).

The non-academic output of the research is the Teachers Kit. It provides teachers with accurate information, educational tips, and concrete tasks to map students’ communication culture and abilities, and take them into concrete formal learning activities. It (http://transmedialiteracy.upf.edu) also endows teachers with the resources to propose activities and give lessons that engage, motivate and improve students’ learning outcomes.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The Project has contributed to the understanding of the informal learning processes and transmedia practices of teens outside the school. The impact of the project has gone beyond the scientific outputs and has offered teachers a set of strategies, activities (learning cards) and examples (videos) to be applied inside the classroom.
The expected impacts of the project and the activities carried out to fulfil them are the following:

- To increase understanding of youth culture in different social and cultural contexts.
- To increase understanding of collaborative cultures, user-generated contents, and transmedia practices.

To achieve the first two expected impacts, interdisciplinary research has been carried out in 8 countries of Europe, Latin America and Australia. Different documents (presentation papers, articles, books and book chapters, etc.) have emerged from this research.

- To reduce the gap and create tighter links between the educational institutions and the real life of young people.
- To innovate the teaching-learning strategies inside the school.
- To define and diffuse new pedagogies based on the transmedia skills developed by teens outside the school.

To achieve these expected impacts the team has created a map of transmedia skills and learning strategies that teens learn and do outside schools with the objective of introducing them into the schools. It is composed of a series of learning cards which are complemented by videos that explain how to apply the cards in formal education contexts. The team has also carried out a diffusion strategy to spread these new pedagogies through presentations in conferences and seminars as well as workshops for teachers and education professionals.
Different educational institutions have also shown interest in the project outputs.

Secondly, in order to achieve the expected impacts, the research team has carried out a series of measures to maximise the impact:
Planning of dissemination and exploitation of results:

General information
- The website exceeded the team’s expectations of visits, reaching more than 10,000 visits in the last months of the project.

Scientific outputs
- More than 20 publications are under review in different journals and 5 documents have already been published;
- A White Paper has been published;
- A collective book has been published;
- The team is organizing short seminars to present the project;
- The team has presented the projectin more than 50 conferences and;
- A international conference was organized in Barcelona;
- A seminar was organized in Uruguay.

Educational Outputs
- The production of the Teacher’s Kit in 5 different languages. It has received 1,122 visits in two months.

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