Virtual learning tools in Higher Education. EDIEDPAT: an interactive platform for urban heritage teaching

Abstract

The paper proposes to address a teaching innovation experience based on the use of a shared virtual learning platform. This tool links subjects from different teaching centres that deals with urban heritage issues as well as debates focused on the impact of tourism in historic areas. This experience is framed within the Campus of International Excellence Andalucía Tech, linking the Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from the Universities of Seville and Malaga. As collaborative virtual environments, EDIEDPAT is a digital bookshelf where students’ exercises are systematically collected. It serves as a platform for online discussion in real-time between students and teachers. Also, students can consult additional learning resources and share personal reflections and findings with the rest of the participants. In opposition to traditional teaching forms, in which the focus falls solely on the teacher, the model tested has placed the student at the centre of learning. Work has been carried out on the collaborative construction of the learning content through shared reasoning processes in which students can develop autonomous reasoning skills by fostering active learning. In the context of undergraduate architecture studies, the goal of this interactive teaching tool is to provide a significant heritage interchange place, through different examples, close and recognisable by all of them. Students work collaboratively, transforming the finalist product of the traditional master class in a process of individual research and shared work and knowledge. Thus, the platform would allow professors to develop reasoning capacity and critical reflection among the students. This methodology is seen as an opportunity to wide students’ perspective concerning the different ways of tackling a heritage object. The comparative analysis will allow them to assume additional concepts by not circumscribing them exclusively to their sphere of action. Finally, this paper will contextualise this initiative within a broad state-of-the-art on virtual tools in university teaching. Their general use of digital instruments is one of Higher Education’s main challenges, although the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated its implementation in many European teaching centres, such as the case presented in the University of Seville (Andalusia, Spain). Consequently, the research will analyse and reflect on the suitability of these teaching tools for e-learning experiences and distance teaching, such as those forcibly experienced worldwide during the last year.