14 The European Commission's support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Project Number: 2020-1-DE03-KA226-SCH-093410 may continue over a short or long period of time, and they are usually initiated or maintained by experienced participants who take control. Since all dialogues are recorded in the online environment, we can always return and reflect on what has been discussed, providing feedback at multiple occurrences. To establish an online environment that resemble real life and prepare learners for their citizenship, Herrington, and Oliver (2000) analyse the characteristics of Situated Learning Environments: • Students learn in a context/situation that resembles as much as possible the real context/situation where the acquired knowledge and skills will be used. • Authentic learning activities exist. These are based an open-ended, ill-defined problems that students are asked to solve, finding solutions (more than one correct). To achieve this, they adopt multiple roles, investigate interdisciplinary perceptions, and reflect on the steps taken over a long-term period. • Teachers guide and support students across the whole spectrum of learning, to strengthen the construction of knowledge. • Authentic assessment is integrated. These principles can be followed later, during the development of the activities to create authentic online learning environments. C. The learners. The main target audience of instruction, our students, differ with each other in terms of knowledge, skills, (socioeconomic, cultural, linguistic) background, attitudes, preferences, motivation. These characteristics can affect the process of learning. By identifying early on what students know, believe, expect, we can design an intervention that will effectively respond to their needs. We can analyse learners’ distinct characteristics by conducting informal discussions/interviews with them, interviews with their parents and other teachers, pre- exams, and gather both qualitative and quantitative data from previous school years/examinations. To support such evidence, we can consult research work from the literature that includes examples of the most common characteristics our target group exhibit (e.g., teenagers’ attitudes regarding a specific subject or homework). Identifying the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that learners should possess before the new instruction begins, allows for a smooth engagement with the learning process. D. The learning objectives. The whole aim of instruction is for the students to achieve specific learning objectives. These are the skills, knowledge, and attitude they should be able to acquire, after the instruction is completed. Even though setting objectives might seem an easy procedure, we need to be specific and clear. When forming the sentences that describe the learning objectives/outcomes, we can follow the “A.B.C.D. method” (Heinich et al.,1996): • Audience: who the learners are (who should exhibit a skill/knowledge/attitude?). • Behaviour: which task/behaviour the learners should be able to do. Based on the Bloom’s taxonomy, the skills students might possess are classified into six (6)
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