General introduction presentation to the Up2University project presented at the Scuola Democratica Conference (June 06-08, 2019 Cagliary, Italy).

1. Up2University:
a European Project to integrate
formal and informal learning in
secondary schools
Nadia Sansone, Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome (IT)
Gabriella Paolini, GARR Consortium (IT)
nadia.sansone@unitelmasapienza.it

2. The project: Up2University

3. A pedagogy-driven ecosystem to bridge the
gap between secondary school and university

4. A step backward: teachers’ role in the project
Teachers
Literature
and
policy
Up2U skills
information
management
motivation
and
autonomy
critical
thinking
collaboration
creativity
language

5. To students through teachers
• Introducing technologies is not, of course, sufficient to positively
influence educational practices alone
• Rather, technology should be used as a tool to mediate the
construction and validation of students informal learning
• We stress the importance of letting teachers experience technology-
mediated constructive learning so that they can challenge themselves
in a new way of learning and teaching (Sansone et al., 2019)
• Teachers’ training: 116 Italian teachers trained to fully integrate
informal learning in formal path

6. The challenge: how to validate informal
learning
• 4 steps:
• identification of the results of learning (learning outcomes), broken down by
knowledge, abilities and skills of the non-formal/informal (Recognition);
• production of evidence on the part of the candidate (Documentation);
• evaluation of the results of learning (Assessment), or validation;
• certification of the results achieved.
• Learning Analytics can help in documentation and recognition online.

7. The Pilot
• 226 students from different
schools taking parts in the Pilot
• 44 video-based resources created
from group-works
• 197 «stories» to tell about their
informal learning

8. Obastacles and limits
• Cultural biases
• Infrastructures
• Privacy Policies
• Teachers’ training

9. Further directions
• Defining a unique assessment protocol to evaluate informal learning
• Improve Learning Analytics
• Disseminate results for policy-makers to take decisions
• Promote the «informal culture» in schools and university