MSc in Information Systems

Collaboration is an activity that is considered important during the learning process. Good communication between group members is essential to achieve quality output. Recently, virtual worlds gained excessive popularity in educational settings and more and more lecturers are incorporating live activity or lecturing sessions in environments like Second Life (SL). In this work we are investigating how students of a conventional university perceive collaboration, communication and attending lectures in a 3D virtual environment. Initial results show high perception and students’ openness to the 3D world’s experiences.

Most of the teaching time in the traditional teacher-centered teaching methodology is spent to the transfer of knowledge from the teacher, while students are passive. In this paper an alternative innovative blended teaching/learning model which combines the flipped classroom model with the differentiated instruction, implemented with the support of the educational technology. We propose a blended learning model which can provide more opportunities for active participation of students in the learning process as it responds more effectively to the diversity of the student potential of a class with the support of educational technology. This model combines the pedagogical model of the "Flipped Classroom" with the teaching strategy of "Differentiated Instruction", one of the most popular teaching strategies, which means that teachers adjust the curriculum for a lesson, unit or even entire term in a way that engages all learners in various ways. To investigate its effectiveness, an educational intervention in Vocational Upper Secondary Education was designed and implemented. The results are considered very encouraging, thus they provide the teacher with a more effective alternative way of organizing the learning process and give the students a richer educational and learning environment, adapted to his/her learning needs and experiences.