ALDO: An Innovative Digital Framework for Active E-Learning

In this paper, we propose ALDO (Active e-Learning by DOing), a novel, advanced digital framework supporting integrated facilities for effective, active e-Learning. The ALDO framework includes an active repository for collecting/sharing relevant materials, collaborative editing services for enriching so collected “raw” materials, and advanced data visualization tools (e.g., interactive maps, graphs, and timelines) to explore the spatial and temporal dimension of specific data contexts. Although the present research was carried out within the European Horizon 2020 Project DETECt (Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives), focusing on the specific data context of European crime narrative, the generality of ALDO technological framework makes it suitable for any type of study/teaching activity. More in details, ALDO consists of a multi-functional digital infrastructure (back-end) for the integration of collaborative editing and e-Learning activities in formal and informal educational contexts. The platform supports effective services for collecting, sharing, retrieving, and analyzing data, together with advanced online collaboration tools, an e-Learning platform and advanced data visualization tools, all made available to teachers/students through a dedicated Web portal (front-end). The design and creation of above tools and services for teaching, together with their uses, are presented and discussed through a series of real examples taken from DETECt.