Luca Ferrari

Digital competencies have now become an essential component of teachers' continuous learning and professional development. The European Commission has introduced several frameworks to support the development of such competencies, including those required by professionals in the educational sector. With the rapid diffusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the need has emerged to update these frameworks to address new educational challenges and further strengthen teachers' design and assessment skills. What is the relationship between teachers' instructional design competences and the effective use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) systems in supporting teaching planning and enactment?

Computer Supported Cooperative Learning (CSCL) is a pedagogical approach in which learning is pursued through social interaction mediated by a computer or the Internet. Conole (2013) clearly distinguishes between “concept visualization tools” and what she defines as pedagogical planners, that is, “[environments] specifically built to guide teachers through the design of learning sessions that make appropriate and effective use of technology.” According to Pozzi and Persico (2013), however, the category of pedagogical planners (PPs) specifically aimed at supporting the design of online collaborative learning activities appears rather limited.

The need to provide adequate competencies to future teachers and socio-pedagogical educators working in schools—so that they can critically and effectively reflect on and use digital technologies in teaching and learning processes—is closely linked to the ways in which these professionals are trained to use technologies within initial and continuing education pathways. The 2014 publication of the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education reaffirms that access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can promote equal participation in learning activities for a wide range of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN), thus demonstrating that inclusive education represents a universal advantage. The international debate on the inclusive teacher has led, over the past decade, to the definition of a framework of recommendations and key competences intended to guide initial and continuing education programs- particularly regarding the development of digital competences- for this professional profile.

MOOC, an acronym for Massive Open Online Course, is one of the most frequently used terms in the academic (and non-academic) world to describe a promising frontier of distance education. Are MOOCs truly disruptive? To what extent are - or will - MOOCs be able to revolutionize educational paradigms? Chiappe, Hine & Martinez (2015) point out that, while many educational institutions debate the effects of MOOCs on their practices, the considerations being made often have little to do with pedagogy. In other words, the widespread quantitative growth of these courses is not accompanied by an adequate - and increasingly necessary - educational and instructional reflection on MOOCs.

The promotion of digitally mediated interactive processes has become a strategic element in universities for fostering active learning approaches. There is a close relationship between the teacher’s ability to formulate “good questions” and the implementation of active and inclusive teaching practices supported by student response systems. Questions represent the key means through which teachers discover what students already know, identify gaps, and support learners’ development by bridging the distance between their current knowledge and the learning objectives. Scientific literature and findings from several national experiments highlight that the recursive use of feedback during digitally mediated questioning sessions can support the transition from content-centered teaching models to strategies that foster collaboration and meaningful learning.

The term Open Educational Resources (OERs), coined in 2002 during the UNESCO Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in Developing Countries, refers to teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under open licenses allowing no-cost access and use (UNESCO 2002). Since the creation of the European Higher Education Area, European universities have expanded their activities across different areas of collaboration and cooperation related to the development of joint courses or degrees. The “open access” movement has gained increasing momentum within universities, leading to the creation of numerous repositories of open educational resources.