16. Tallin University, Center of Educational Technology (TLU)
Tallinn University is the third largest public university in Estonia with 7800 students in 17 research institutes and two colleges. Centre for Educational Technology (CET), established in 1998, is an interdisciplinary R&D unit within the Institute of Informatics. CET works in close collaboration with the Institute of Mathematics and Natural Science. CET staff consists of 14 full-time researchers, software developers, project managers, educational technologists, some part-time employees and a group of postgraduate students. Scientific and technological qualifications of CET staff combine deep pedagogical knowledge, technological programming and development skills, and experiences of empirical research in authentic educational and work settings in the field of ICT and science education. The main ongoing scientific research projects in CET are related to developing the new generation of distributed learning environments consisting of interoperable free social software and other pedagogical ICT applications, and self-directed learning in hybrid environments. CET has been actively participating in the European FP6 IST projects Calibrate and iCamp. Science education and teacher education serve as one of the main testing grounds of CET activities. Task allocation CET has developed several open-source software solutions that can be potentially applied in the S-TEAM project as mediators supporting the use of innovative methods in science classrooms what the project targets. These tools are: an electronic portfolio system DiPo (http://eportfoolio.opetaja.ee) for competence management and reflection upon pedagogical practices and collaborative learning resource authoring platform LeMill . Staff members who will be undertaking the work: Kai Pata, Senior researcher in CET, holds PhD in Education (University of Turku, Finland), MSc in Science Education (University of Tartu, Estonia). Her main expertise is in learning management in distributed learning environments and social systems for inquiry learning, tutoring models and scaffolding elements in web-based collaborative learning environments, and cognitive aspects of constructivist and socio-cultural learning in inquiry learning environments. She has been responsible at the 6th Framework projects (BIOHEAD-CITIZEN, iCamp) as a pedagogical expert. Priit Reiska, Professor of science education at the Institute of Mathematics and Science, TLU. He holds the Dr. sc. paed. habil. degree in physics didactics from the University of Kiel (2002). He coordinates two national research projects: The Impact of Different Dimensions of Interdisciplinary Instruction on the Development of Students` Science Literacy and Promoting teachers' understanding of the Nature of Science and its relationship with the Nature of Science Education as a step for improving student attitudes towards science. He has been involved in PISA. Mart Laanpere, Head of CET, MSc in Educational & Training Systems Design (University of Twente, the Netherlands). He has participated in a number of R&D projects in the field of educational technology (e.g. Calibrate and iCamp). His main focus in research and teaching is instructional design of online courses, conceptual design of e-learning systems and tools, and implementing ePortfolios for competency management in teachers' professional development. Terje Väljataga, Researcher in CET, MSc in geo-ecology (TLU), MSc in Educational & Training Systems Design (University of Twente, the Netherlands). Currently she is a 3rd-year PhD student in Tampere Technical University (Finland), investigating self-directed learning with distributed learning environments. She has been working as a science teacher in a secondary school in Tallinn.
ndicative Allocation of Person-Months: TLU name role PM (total 12) Kai Pata TLU Leader, NLP, design input, dissemination 4 Priit Reiska Design input, 10.2 2 Mart Laanpere Supervision, dissemination 3 Terje Väljataga Design input, 10.2 3