Pedagogical Adeptness in the Design of E-learning Environments: Experiences from the Lab@Future Project.

The concept of e-learning is increasingly being used to describe the deployment of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support educational activities in various spheres of life. As a result, ICT is being heralded as a catalyst for innovations in teaching and learning. For developers of educational technology, this perspective highlights the need to produce computer-based tools that are pedagogically adept and functionally relevant to the context and purpose of use. In practice, this entails exploiting the connectivity of psychological and pedagogical concerns whilst taking into consideration technology capabilities. These design challenges highlight the need for well-harnessed methods and techniques for incorporating pedagogy into systems design. The paper outlines methods and techniques used to abstract pedagogically and contextually adept design requirements for an e-learning environment for supporting teaching and learning in European high schools.