Presentación

Presentation

The GIEL-ELIT Research Group was established in 2004 around a central core of research work: e-learning. GIEL in Spanish means Grupo de Investigación en e-learning (E-Learning Research Group in English), with its equivalent in Basque being ELIT, e-learning Ikerkuntza Taldea.
 
e-learning is an area of activity injected with tremendous vitality by the rapid changes that characterise it; being a meeting point of old research traditions in the field of Social Sciences in relation to learning, and new trends such as the Information and Communication Technologies, e-learning is, necessarily, a multidisciplinary area where traditions and new tendencies go hand in hand. GIEL is a multidisciplinary group that addresses some important areas in this field.
 
GIEL seeks to find answers to such questions as:
 
  • How do people learn in virtual environments?; what are the similarities with face-to-face learning and what are the differences?; what are the main processes and their characteristics in terms of human interaction, which take place in learning in virtual environments?; and in terms of man-machine interaction?
  • What are the most appropriate resources to enhance virtual learning?; in particular, what is the role of learning objects in virtual learning?; and what about Learning Design?; how to build repositories that offer the best functionalities for their potential users?; what qualities should virtual learning management platforms have?; and what about authoring tools to facilitate the construction of materials for virtual learning?
  • What impact do the different technologies, the way in which they are used, and their characteristics have on people's learning?; in particular, what is the impact of web 2.0?; how to organise virtual learning in web 2.0 environments? What is the role of Personal Learning Environments?, can they serve as organising nuclei for learning on web 2.0? How to move from traditional virtual environments mediated by conventional platforms, to environments in which social networks are the motors and centre of human interaction?
  • How can we ask the web in order to obtain intelligent information? And more specifically, how to use the resources of the semantic web to refine the interaction with the web towards a more intelligent interaction? How will this affect learning?
  • What is the meaning of quality in e-leaning? What are the essential indicators of quality? How can they be evaluated?
 
One of the areas GIEL pays special attention to is participation in education activities related to the group's subject matter. GIEL researchers:
 
  • Collaborate in several doctoral programmes in which they teach topics such as e-learning: measurement and evaluation.
  • Are involved in the teaching of several postgraduate programmes; recently, the group has participated in the organisation of  the 1st Postgraduate Course in Learning and ICT of the Group 9 of Universities.
  • Have organised a number of summer courses in e-learning
    • e-learning, present and future (22nd edition of the UPV/EHU Summer Courses and European Courses, Donostia 2003)
    • Internet and the training of professionals (5th Art and Culture Meetings, Bilbao 2004)
  • Are currently involved in a Tempus European project for the implementation of e-learning scenarios in the Eastern Mediterranean area.
  • Participate in various faculty training programmes and initiatives on the use of ICT as a learning tool in university scenarios within the convergence process in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and in non-university environments.
  • Collaborate with a number of organisations and institutions: SPRI, Basque Government, etc... in the implementation and creation of e-learning resources.