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This paper reports on a study that was conducted to explore the potential of SlideWiki for collaborative content creation in a teacher education context. SlideWiki is a newly developed platform built on the Open Educational Re-sources (OER) ethos aiming to facilitate the collaboration around educational con-tent. In this study, 134 students (pre-service engineering educators) used SlideWiki to collaboratively develop OERs in the form of WebQuests. Students’ answers to a survey questionnaire were used to address their experience, while real interaction data from the SlideWiki platform were used to determine students’ participation in SlideWiki during the development of OERs both as individuals and as groups. The study yielded positive findings regarding students’ perceptions of the potential of SlideWiki to serve as an effective tool for collaboratively developing OERs and of its usefulness and effectiveness for supporting communities of educators. Also, assuming their future role as educators, students ex-pressed their intention to utilize SlideWiki in their practice. However, a discrepancy was noticed between students’ perceptions and their actual participation in SlideWiki (e.g. unequal distribution of workload among group members) that may be due to students’ lack of collaborative skills that need to be further cultivated.

The rich repertoire of online practices adopted by educators during the Covid-19 pandemic opened up new perspectives for educational research to consider e-learning post-pandemic. Focusing on teacher education, it is worth considering the practices adopted to inform the development of future curricula that cultivate teaching competencies for e-learning. This paper examines microteaching, a well-established practice realised in teacher education as a learning-to-teach experience. As was the case with other teacher education practices, the forced online transition heavily compromised the vividness of microteaching -a technique inherently connected to face-to-face interaction-. On the other hand, this online relocation can be an opportunity to capitalise on online microteaching as a fulfilling e-learning experience in teacher education. The paper has two parts. In the first part, we conceptualise the potential of microteaching while applying Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). The second part reports our experience relocating online a mature technology-enhanced microteaching practice (successfully implemented in face-to-face settings for seven years) due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our research design utilises two implementations of microteaching practice. One was conducted in a typical face-to-face context pre-pandemic, and another was conducted in an online context during a lockdown imposed by the pandemic. On a first level, collecting qualitative data from both contexts allowed us to observe common TEL-related challenges. On a second level, we focused on identifying challenges distinct at the online context to infer and highlight the implications of the online relocation. These implications relate to (i) the organisational changes, as experienced from the instructor’s perspective, (ii) the technologies adopted for applying TEL, and (iii) the challenges that pre-service teachers (PSTs) face in the online environment. Our findings extend the previous research scope on face-to-face microteaching practice. New challenges of relocating technology-enhanced microteaching online include technical difficulties in handling technologies and reduced participation in whole-class discussions. However, challenges that remain relatively unaffected concerning the typical face-to-face practice are (i) the PSTs immersion in the roleplaying character of microteaching, (ii) the misconceptions on the principles and methods of teaching techniques roleplayed, (iii) the adoption of digital tools for applying TEL, (iv) the selection of suitable digital tools, and (v) the burden of time limitation. In conclusion, we argue that these insights reveal an unexplored potential for technology-enhanced microteaching in an online context. We discuss how the implications of shifting microteaching practise online may model future microteaching implementations in teacher education post-pandemic. We support that online microteaching, apart from providing an alternative method when circumstances impose it, should be integrated within the typical teacher education curriculum to cultivate teaching competencies for e-learning.

This paper reports on a study carried out with pre‑service teachers who first developed a course by designing it in a Learning Design (LD) tool and then implemented it as a course in Moodle. The research explores the potential of the Learning Designer, the LD tool utilized in the study, by addressing three aspects of the LD tool’s added value for teachers as designers: a) the development of a learning design, b) the reflection on a design and c) the usefulness of the LD process using an LD tool towards the implementation of a design in a Learning Management System (LMS). The findings suggest that the graphical representation of a learning design provided by the LD tool supports designers to structure learning activities. The components of a learning design incorporated in the LD tool such as the learning outcomes, the type of a learning activity according to a typology and how learners are organized scaffold the articulation of the pedagogy of a learning design. Moreover, the pre‑service teachers requested more components e.g. for organizing technology‑enhanced learning and more customizable features e.g. for defining and combining activity types. All means of design analysis, especially the graphical ones trigger the designers’ reflection on the nature of the activities included in a learning design and provoke them to improve it. The pre‑service teachers perceived as beneficial the LD process in the Learning Designer towards considering components of the learning design which are applicable in its implementation as a course in an LMS. Nevertheless, difficulties were reported concerning non‑matching and missing components leading to the reconsideration of aspects of the original design during the implementation. The conclusions drawn from the study’s findings reveal the potential of the Learning Designer to support teachers as designers and are of value both to researchers involved with developing LD tools and to practitioners interested in harnessing an LD tool to promote LD practices.

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