SOLE PROJECT SUMMARY: Social Open Learning Environment (SOLE) is a two-year strategic Higher Education (HE) partnership under the framework of Erasmus+ programme, which started in October 2014. SOLE is a multi-sectorial partnership that combines new technologies with education and ecotourism as the main field of study. Students, faculty, young entrepreneurs and social agents from eight different countries are involved in the creation, development and active utilisation as well as promotion of SOLE network. This provides them with the opportunity to learn collaboratively in a co-operative environment. Furthermore, the Social Open Learning Environment (SOLE) is an interdisciplinary site that encourages active methodology and the use of modern Open Educational Resources (OER) to develop a community of learning. It is an open educational space for students, educators and anyone interested in improving their knowledge. It is a dynamic site where discussions take place in an environment of a supportive community that brings people closer together. The title “SOLE” can be interpreted in multiple ways: social, open, learning and environment(al). It was for us of great importance to create an easy name, which could be remembered easily and which would include the ideas of a “social” and “electronic” network - therefore "SOLE" appeared to be suitable for this purpose. The fundamental objectives of the project are to implement the concept of innovation in Higher Education (HE) by means of using social networks to learn and to teach. Moreover, our goals are to create different Open Educational Resources (OER) in Eco-tourism and Geo-parks and a pedagogical guide of the SOLE social. Over two years, students from Spain, Russia, Poland, Italy and Austria have been experimenting with learning possibilities in a collaborative environment in SOLE using a wide variety of resources and teaching proposals. During this time we were working constantly with the feedback on the technical utilisation and content and were adapting and developing the platform to the user needs. Social networks play a vital role within the education sector of the 21st century. Hence, our partnership makes the most of a creative and innovative social platform with great benefits for its members. The potential users are mainly high education students, professors and users from the field of Eco-tourism activities. SOLE is an opportunity for the next generation of academia. Social media, in the context of higher education, is about the value of collaborating, networking, sharing and generating knowledge and content. This platform shows a great potential for game-changing impact in the sphere online education and collaboration. The SOLE social has been intended to deep into the variety of eco-touristic activities that are organized in different contexts in Europe. Eco-tourism involves the idea of visiting natural areas in order to learn, study or carry out activities in an environmentally friendly manner. The SOLE social gives the opportunity to have experience with nature without moving from your home. SOLE allows people from different sectors (academic and professional) to access information about Eco-tourism in today's world, provides information and allows communication by provoking informal learning. SOLE users can: • create an individual profile • upload pictures, videos and links to websites • post, comment and geo-tag their information • share materials and resources • create and work in groups on interdisciplinary topics • collaborate on co-authored documents • chat and socialise with other users • work in groups • discuss about common experiences and share information about Eco-tourism and Geo-parks. build relationships between SOLE members in different countries communicate in different languages and improve their foreign language knowledge reach out, attracting and get prospective audiences interested in Geo-parks The innovative concept of the platform and adaption of it to a specific sphere of education, such an environment, makes it unique and adaptable at the same time to other spheres. It promises to enable international and even intercontinental networks and connecting opportunities.
This project is intended to develop an innovative methodological approach for distance learning studies and also for High Education learners combining face to face lessons with virtual environment. The SOLE project offers a maximum of opportunities for students and course participants of high professional studies and higher education. It is a versatile service for Higher Education Students that acts as an umbrella for various types of good practices, tests, contents, digital learning materials, open resources. Furthermore, SOLE offers space for social networking between high education students, teachers, and various types of experts in which users can establish working groups, share files, engage in discussions, send messages, take tests, undertake surveys, create assessment tasks and rubrics, learn at their own pace and find a great variety of OER. The site shows great potential for innovative learning: team teaching allows collaborative planning, working together and sharing professional development strategies. It offers interdisciplinary themes based on students' interests and useful online resources to access according to the students' own timetable. The acknowledgment of importance of open materials inclusion in the fields of GeoTourism, Geoparks and Sustainable Tourism is shared among all partners. In the context of knowledge, appreciation, enjoyment, respect and preservation of nature, while biological aspects have gone already quite far, geological, and in general Earth Science issues, have remained behind. Only recently new concepts like those of geosite, geodiversity, geoparks and geotourism have been defined and have begun to be used by the scientific community. However, they remain almost completely unknown to larger publics. WHO: This partnership involves institutions providing Higher Professional Studies, VET, representatives of working life, and non-profit organizations which focus on innovation for public benefit. Main target groups are teachers, trainers or other staff from the mentioned organizations, specifically Higher Education students and staff. WHAT & HOW: This project will create an online tool with OER in the field of sustainable tourism, using the language of today’s students. Nowadays, students are used to utilise the web and social media channels for information and interaction, but it has been showed, that they do not often find results of quality. There is a huge amount of information on the internet, however, if you are not an expert, it can be difficult to distinguish the good from the bad quality information.This project is developing a virtual social environment promoting active methodologies and a type of flipped classroom approach. It will enrich teaching in universities and colleges by providing a social media tool that is safe to use and easy to implement. It is a recognized feature of the partners that work in collaboration with European organizations, which provide distance learning and ICT-based methodologies. The platform has benefits not only in the short term, but also in the long term perspective by changing students' and teachers' ideas of education. In this project, the teaching-learning process of the target group will undergo an expected change. The students will take the responsibility of their own learning process and together with the trainers, they will develop materials and tests. Through the benefits of social networks and an active methodology, the students will learn at their own pace, speed up their progress thanks to the provided content, review content, share knowledge, share opinions and discuss the content and their learning process. This project will create visual representations as OER and is a test maker tool providing benefits to high education students and other students' engagement. One of the partners will be responsible for technical implementation of the virtual environment. Besides that, participants will make observations and facilitate research on good examples organised in partner countries. At the end of this project the participants will have prepared the SOLE online tool for higher educational purposes applying a change of methodology in high education, increasing interactions and communications as well as providing active feedback. A test piloting will be finished by the end of the two-years project involving real students (200 in total) in order to observe the increase of opportunities for feedback and the improvement of the student learning and the level of engagement. Moreover, it is intended to organize conferences and seminars with the support of the Regional Government of High Professional Education in Valencia, exploiting results and disseminating the good practice and outcomes. Participants will go beyond this project and its results will be used accordingly. A memorandum of understanding has been signed between all partners in order to follow up and update the multimedia materials for further utilisation of SOLE social