The purpose of the project is to develop teacher expertise in the use of mobile learning to support formative assessment. This project builds on previous work on mobile learning technology in education. The expertise developed through the MTTP project will provide a strong foundation for further strategies for assessment within various pedagogical contexts. Together, the partners will develop to explore good practice various mobile learning tools to develop teacher expertise which will in turn support student progress. The strategies utilised and refined as part of the project will be applicable to the various national contexts and curriculums. The transnational partners within the project bring a variety of complementary strengths that will be shared through new transnational relationships. Particiipation in the KA219 project will enable the partners to further refine, develop and share good practice within their own organisations and across national borders. Our objective for the project is to provide practising teachers opportunities to learn about, work with, and embed mobile learning within their day-to-day teaching. A tension exists between teachers’ digital competencies and students’ needs and expectations for the use of technology within their educational experiences. This project will provide opportunities for guided, hands-on training and the freedom to experiment and refine good practise, through the four teacher training activities and evaluation points. Moreover, the project will allow teachers to explore the vast potential of guided learning that takes place outside the classroom, allowing them to strengthen student-teacher dialogue beyond traditional teaching and learning situations. The project is not intended to replace traditional teaching methods but instead complement them, allowing teachers to engage and utilise student’s digital capacities. The partners have already agreed three key foci of assessment to be developed, based on transnational discussion on assessment needs in each country. In the initial stage of the project, the partners will establish a common framework for assessment and share their experiences of the use of mobile learning. A pilot project in which partners will trial the use of one app will be established and partners will prepare to pilot the project, before working with one group of students in their organisation, to explore the parameters of the project and current teacher and student competencies. In 2018, partners will collaborate to explore the use of mobile learning in peer-to-peer contexts because we believe that peer assessment is an under-utilised and under-developed aspect of teaching and learning and that mobile technology will allow for democratic and more effective work in this area. Following this, we will focus on the establishment of a creative project in which students are given opportunities to work creatively and collaboratively across the national partners via digital platforms; thus providing a clear progression and development of teacher and student skills which can be clearly evaluated and assessed. Finally, the focus of the project will shift towards the use of mobile learning and platforms in teacher-to-teacher dialogue which will offer an opportunity for an innovative and creative approach to teacher training. Evaluation and research is integral to each progression stage of the project and will ensure that impact is monitored continually. There is a clear expectation that each partner will take an active part in researching and laying a firm foundation for the effective sharing and refinement of good practice to be presented at the teacher training activities. As in the preparation stage there will be rigorous monitoring via the communication platform E-Twinning and monthly Skype meetings. The partners are confident that the project will have a significant impact on a wide range of professionals and students, both in partner organisations and beyond, therefore positively impacting student progress in a variety of curriculum areas. Equally, student competency in using mobile technologies in a meaningful way will greatly increase as a result of the project. The potential to share the findings of the project is profound: the invitation of a wide range of professionals and the access that all of the partner teachers have a wide range of teacher training opportunities mean that the spread of the findings of the project is vast. Moreover, an emphasis on sharing the project runs through the entire project: academic articles, E-Twinning, a dedicated blog and the partner schools’ websites, as well as training events unique to each organisation.
The project builds on previous work on mobile learning technology in education. The expertise developed through the MTTEP project (http://mttep.eu) has provided a strong foundation for the project and the key leader of the MTTEP project, Dr. Kevin Burden (University of Hull, UK) has contributed as the expert throughout the Moltam-project. Originally we applied Erasmus+ funding for four partners, but the UK partner Kelvin Hall School did not receive funding and eventually dropped out of the project and we became three partners: Wildermuth-Gymnasium Tübingen, Germany with Michael Reder as contact person, Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas Valencia, Spain with Pedro Barrientos-Pérez as contact person and Metis vgs Bergen, Norway with Anbjørg Igland as coordinator of the project. The purpose of the project has been to develop teacher expertise in the use of mobile learning to support formative assessment. Together the partners have explored good practice, using various mobile learning tools to develop teacher expertise which in turn has supported student progress. The objective for the project has been to provide practicing teachers opportunities to learn about and work with mobile learning tools within their day-to-day teaching. The project has provided opportunities for guided, hands-on training through three teacher training activities, the first at the LTT in Tübingen 19/2-22/2 2018, the second in Valencia 5/11-8/11 2018 and the third in Bergen 13/5-16/5 2019. Moreover, the project has allowed teachers to explore the potential of guided learning through digital devices outside the classroom, allowing them to strengthen student-teacher dialogue beyond traditional teaching and learning situations. The iPac model, developed by Dr Kevin Burden and teacher educators and academics at the University of Technology, Sidney (Australia), has served has the key pedagogical framework for the Moltam project. The purpose of the iPac model is to give teachers diagnostic feedback of mobile learning activities, the level of authenticity, personalisation, collaboration etc. Based on the iPac, the partners have established a common framework for case studies and formative assessment. At the initially stage, we trialed the app Socrative (Socrative.com) to be used for peer-to peer assessment. This app enabled students and teachers to assess each other´s work by immediate feedback. However, we realized we needed more knowledge about how to relate the iPac model to formative assessment, something that had not been explored in the MTTEP project. Since Metis was responsible for the iPac model, we invited Dr. Kevin Burden to Bergen to hold a workshop for us 2/5 2019. The topic was iPac and formative assessment and how we create meaning with mobile technology. Our colleagues from Høgskulen på Vestlandet (former partners in the MTTEP project) also joined us. Later on 15/10 2019 we invited Rebecca Kelly to Metis (Ph.D student of Kevin Burden), whose Ph.D thesis is about the iPac and formative assessment and from her we also gained useful knowledge to share with our German and Spanish partners. Dr. Kevin Burden and Rebecca Kelly joined us at the TN in Valencia 5/11 2019. This workshop allowed our Spanish and German partners to become more familiar with the iPac framework, how it can support formative assessment and learning outside the classroom.The potential to share the findings of the project has been important. At our first LTT in Tübingen, our German partners arranged an in-service-teacher event at the University of Tübingen, where practicing teachers from different schools as well as students from the university attended the workshop to learn about mobile learning. Moreover, at the LTT in Valencia, all the teachers from the partner school were invited to a hands-on mobile learning workshop and at the LTT in Bergen May 2019, the teachers from Metis attended a hands-on mobile learning workshop. As for publications, the Spanish partners have published articles about the project on a Spanish educational platform (see link padlet Project Results platform) and Metis has an agreement with Lektorbladet to publish an article about the project after the final report has been submitted. The Spanish partner has created their own Erasmus+ folder on their school´s website with information about the Moltam-project (http://www.marianistasalboraya.es/?s=Erasmus%2B) and on the Metis website we have a folder for Erasmus+ projects with information about the project in both Norwegian and English (https://www.metis.no/vgs/bergen/info/erasmus). We have also created our own Moltam website (http://moltam.eu). This helps to spread information about the project to students and parents and other people, nationally and transnationally, who are interested in getting in touch with us. The eTwinning platform has been used to share documents and results on Twinspace so that there is evidence of our project and our results and reflections can be reached by other colleagues within the eTwinning platform.