Description of the project outcomes and components.
OIKODOMOS is a pedagogic research project financed by the Lifelong Learning Programme. The goal of the project is to create a virtual campus to promote the study of dwelling at a European scale. The aim of OIKODOMOS, a Greek word for "to build, to construct a house", is to set an innovative learning structure in motion, incorporating on-line and on-site activities (blended learning). The first phase of the project was carried out from 2007 to 2009 within the subprogramme Erasmus Multilateral Projects-Virtual Campus. This phase of the project was executed by higher education institutions and research centers from Belgium, France, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. From 2010 to 2011, the activities of the project will continue under the support the same European Agency, this time under the subprogramme Erasmus Accompanying Measures. In this second phase, the original consortium has been enhanced with a new partner from Turkey..
The main objectives for this second period are:
- To consolidate the virtual campus methodology and digital platform.
- To expand the application of the pedagogic methodology to other institutions.
- To disseminate the results among the academic and research communities, as well as among local communities.
OIKODOMOS Virtual Campus is a space of collaboration where schools of architecture and urban planning collaborate in the design and implementation of learning activities to study housing in an interdisciplinary way with the participation of professional organizations, local communities and citizens. Its main characteristics can be summarized as follows:
- It is a network of learners (teachers, students, adult learners) and activities, as opposed to an organization of schools with shared curriculum.
- It is interdisciplinary, since the learning activities conducted by the networks encompass architecture as well as urban planning.
- It goes beyond academia, since it seeks for the engagement of citizens and professionals in the field of housing studies.
A digital platform has been specifically developed and implemented for the Oikodomos Virtual Campus to support a blended-learning pedagogic model. It consists of two environments: Workspaces and Case Repository.
This environment supports project-based learning activities, such as the development of a project -architectural and/or urban- in a collaborative manner. It facilitates the collaboration among distant learners, carrying joint learning activities in different settings, physical and virtual: design studios, seminars and courses.
This is a digital repository of housing case studies, which is constructed collaboratively by learners. Currently, it has over 330 documented cases, analyzed and commented by students and teachers from different institutions. It is used to support learning based on the analysis of precedents.
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This is the knowledge base of the OIKODOMOS project. It contains the topics and concepts studied in the OIKODOMOS Virtual Campus. Each entry is made of the description of the concepts, cases of study which illustrate it, comments by readers, and references. The entries are in multiple languages.