Spaced E-learning for Sustainable Education

Abstract

Abstract The objective of the research is to determine e-learning solutions for the implementation of the spaced learning in university students’ sustainable education. In the spaced e-learning method, the course content includes few-minute pauses between repetitions, during which students let their brain “rest” with different content and then return to the course. Information technology solutions are based on the identification of students’ individual and situational interests and the following promotion of students’ interests for personal development by the content of spaces. Current research is oriented to the search for benefits from synergy of the technological and pedagogical e-learning developments. The study includes three cycles of education action research. The first and second cycles aim at finding the most effective method to include content for sustainable personality development in the course. At Riga Technical University, a prototype of two blended learning Master level courses was created and approbated with Master level students. Outcomes of the research were evaluated by reflection on students’ opinions and analysis of user behavior data in the e-learning environment OpenEdX. The results obtained in the first and second cycles of the action research and reflection are the basis for the conceptual development of the Living Lab solution in the MOODLE environment with personalized content. Technological solutions for the implementation of personalized content of spaces for personality development are based on the student’s self-assessment of his/her individual interests. The research shows the potential of the spaced e-learning for instructional learning and personality development, thus leading to learning for sustainability in the broadest sense as a perspective of pedagogy with inherently sustainable nature, that we denote as “fostering” in the study. The spaced e-learning method was seriously influenced by the COVID-19 crisis due to the replacement of blended learning with fully online learning.