Speakers
Dr Elena Railean
Professor at the European University of Moldova
Biography
Dr. Elena Railean is a researcher in the field of applied learning theory and design. She was graduated in 1987 from the State University of Moldova. During her doctoral research Elena Railean participated in JTEL Winter School (2010), and continued to investigate learning theories and design patterns of the textbooks in USA with the Fulbright Scholar fellowship (2011). In 2012, she was awarded her PhD on the topic of psychopedagogical fundaments of digital textbook (published as Psychopedagogical bases of electronic textbook development, by LUMEN in 2015 as an award of Minister of National Education, Romania). She was interested in EAPRIL conferences, where she participated in 2011 and with a workshop in 2013. In the following years, she worked as an Erasmus IANUS postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sciences of Education, Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania, and then as a Senior Lecturer at the European University of Moldova. During this period, she developed the author book Psychological and Pedagogical Considerations in Digital Textbook Use and Development (published by IGI Global, 2015), and led the development of the Handbook of Research on Applied Learning Theory and Design in Modern Education (IGI Global, 2016). Through her postdoctoral studies, Elena Railean has been actively involved in various scientific activities (conference participation, publication, reviewer, member of the scientific committees, international expert etc.) of various international academic communities, such as Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology (2014); Handbook of Research on Pedagogical Innovations for Sustainable Development (2014); COST expert (since 2015); Scientific Committee of International Conference on Sciences of Education ICSED 2015 and others. She has been an associate editor of eLearning Romania since 2014, Problems of Education in the 21st Century (2015), Excellence in Research and Innovation for Humanity (2015), and others. Elena Railean has published three edited books, more than 70 scientific papers, and about 20 book chapters in international recognized books.
Research interests:
Theories and models of applied learning theory and design of the student-centered learning environments, including digital textbook use and development.
Presentation Abstract
Psychological and Pedagogical Considerations in Digital Textbook Use and Development
Globalization and ICT have generated changes in all aspects of learning & textbook theory, including use and development of the digital textbooks. Technology jumps from the margins of education to the mainstream, from informal settings to formal ones, and from small projects to large supported initiatives. Digital textbooks have been widely used in all educational systems. Despite global challenges, teachers are the main pillars of education, and students—the lifelong learners and the digital textbook—are the coherent product of the author and content’s users. Theoretically, the postmodernism values the writerly text instead of readerly text; the mechanism for the production of knowledge derived from a dialogue pedagogy instead of narrative knowledge; quantum relativity instead of Newtonian mechanics; qualitative methods instead of quantitative methods and others. Practically, in many educational systems digital textbook is viewed only as a digitized content of existing printed textbook. These challenges cause the philosophical and methodological contradictions between theory and practice.
The innovative way, MetaSystems Learning Design of digital textbooks relies on post-modernism philosophy, quantum psychology, cybernetic pedagogy, and knowledge management, and develops original metasystems principles and norms, which emphasis the importance of metacognition and metacognitive skills as a base for the integrative savoir structure of competence and instructional dynamic and flexible strategy. Thus, the new psychopedagogical principles are: the principle of self-regulation (the automatic regulation of learning processes through activation of metacognition using didactical and psychological methods, cybernetics techniques and management systems); principle of personalization (the individualization of learning objects through increased formation of the individual as a self and as a member of global learning community); principles of feedback diversity (educational context needs to be evaluated through immediate and delayed feedback); principle of clarity (the formation of structural skeleton content with powerful interconnected concepts); principle of dynamism and flexibility (the learner’ active inclusion in elaboration); and the principle of ergonomics (digital learning is guided by ergonomic interfaces and ergonomic places of work).