Ph.D. in Education Sciences. Researcher in experimental pedagogy at the humanities department of the University of Ferrara.
He combines university research and teaching activities in theories and technologies of e-learning, digital education, media education, cognitive processes and multimedia learning, and inclusive technologies.
The research activity has resulted in the publication of 7 monographs, about forty scientific articles for national and international journals, participation in conferences, and international research projects.
BETWEEN FORMAL AND NON-FORMAL: CREATIVE PRACTICES, DIGITAL STORYTELLING, MEDIA EDUCATION. HISTORY THROUGH MULTIMEDIA IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS
The scope of this work is the design of an active didactic experience in high schools characterized by the use of problem-solving, digital storytelling, and social media in a pathway straddling the formal and non-formal dimensions. This experience involved going beyond the transmissive lesson and promoting workshop and collaborative teaching based on the principles of learning by doing and constructivism.
The working methodology identified envisaged the creation of an integrated educational environment (school, cultural association of media education and active citizenship, territory) functional to the creation of a processual dynamism of learning thanks to the presence, in the formal didactic setting, of training practices typical of the non-formal context (Galliani, 2011). In this environment, a territorial school/association/citizen circuit, the group of students involved was called upon to solve a real problem (Dewey, 1965; Freire, 1971) using video technologies and social media (YouTube in particular): to build a place (real and virtual) functional to a participatory reflection, on the part of the school and civil society, on a period in the territory’s recent history. The main instrument of this didactic experience was the testimony, recorded through the use of video-interviews, of those who experienced first-hand episodes linked to recent history: the population of Argenta (in the province of Ferrara) was shaken by a number of episodes that occurred at the end of the Second World War, which caused several victims and the disappearance, following an almost total bombing, of the urban fabric. The most dramatic episode is known as The Battle of the Argenta Gap.
In light of these assumptions, within the project, an experiment was set up in which the narratives produced by the students, on the basis of authorial, participative, collaborative, productive dynamics, were a fundamental part of the teaching/learning process.
NEW PROFESSIONS ON DIGITAL MEDIA BETWEEN FORMAL AND NON-FORMAL ENVIRONMENTS: THE MASTER’S DEGREE IN EDUCATION, COMMUNICATION, AND DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP
The Master’s degree course in Education, Communication, and digital citizenship born from the reflection of offering the world of work professionals competent in the design and use of new media, in line with the objectives set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN) and previously by the European Digital Agenda under the Europe 2020 Strategy (EU). The University of Ferrara has thirty years of experience in the field of distance learning delivered through digital platforms and the recent pandemic situation has massively prompted a systematization of the digital skills of training at all its levels and a global rethinking of the methods of provision of the training offer – integrating ‘presence’ and ‘distance’. Therefore, we reflected on the transformation process triggered by digital and on the profound changes – of a social, political, legal order – related to network technologies, noting, on the one hand, the emergence of the request for new professional figures in the digital field – in particular in communication, on the other hand the increasingly pressing need for training, requalification and professional updating courses that use ICT. As regards the emergence of new digital professions, it was noted that the Italian section of the International Web Association (IWA) since 2014 has the objective of defining these professions, a project considered by the Prime Minister’s Office to be an innovation. In 2014 IWA Italy officially published the 2.0 version of the document containing the professional profiles operating on the Web. It was therefore decided to prepare a training project establishing a new Master’s degree course that can combine advanced training in the field of education/training and in that of communication, at the same time offering professional opportunities in the world of education, society, corporate training and communication, including cultural ones.