Exploiting e-Learning in Future Teachers’ Education Ivan Kalaš Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovak Republic kalas@fmph.uniba.sk
Abstract Recently we have often been confronted by the question of how e-Learning could be exploited in the future teachers’ education so that their study becomes more attractive and more efficient. The question is highly justified as we want to enable future teachers to construct and support modern teaching/learning processes appropriate for the 21st century school. Such question, however, is quite unrewarding because it operates with several dim concepts: (a) different people have considerably different interpretations of the term e-Learning, (b) we are not sure what more attractive and more efficient should mean, and (c) many authorities intuitively tend to believe that e-Learning and on-line learning should not be engaged in future teachers’ education at all. Therefore we conducted a research project, which strived to cast some light on those dim concepts and decided to develop a methodology for tackling similar questions. First we clarified our perception of eLearning. Then we thoroughly identified and analyzed all teaching forms which are being applied in our future teachers’ education – we did so from the perspectives of (1) students, (2) lecturers, (3) different types of digital technologies (DT), and (4) applied pedagogy. Each of those four perspectives has been inspected through one or more indicators (variables). Within the same system of perspectives and indicators we then managed to classify all different forms of eLearning, namely on-line learning, blended learning and TEL (technology enhanced learning). Finally, in this common system of perspectives and indicators we tried to match each teaching form and each form of eLearning. Thus we managed to identify those indicators that are problematic or critical for implementing certain forms of e-Learning within certain forms of teaching. Although this methodology does not result in exact answers to the hazy questions on exploiting DT and eLearning in future teachers’ education, it definitely helps us identify productive and critical indicators for integration. In that way we managed to conclude, for example, that seminars provide enormous space of opportunities to integrate on-line education in future teachers’ education.