| Abstract (english) | The basic human rights have been established by the international legislative whose basis is
the International Charter of Rights, within which, namely in the General Declaration on
Human Rights, education is proclaimed to be the basic right of every human being.
Education is guaranteed to everyone in accordance with the Constitution of the Republic of
Croatia and in line with the Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities (The
Government of the ROC, 2002.) and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (The
Government of the ROC, 2008.) and the right is exercised and developed as well by the
national minorities members within the major population.
In the Republic of Croatia, the Roma national minority lives in relatively hard and poor
conditions and they have problems with employment. Moreover, the majority of the Roma
feel the negative attitudes coming from the major society as well as a direct consequence of it
– a wide range discrimination.
The research into education and the integration of various minorities into the life of the
community done up to now show that similar problems do exist in other countries as well.
Presently, for many a reason, the classic e-learning design methods are neither flexible
enough nor fast enough whereas the newer methods, despite iterativity, collaborativeness,
efficiency and manageability, are not agile enough for special cases.
It is obvious that the process of learning/educating as a whole should be adjusted to the needs
and abilities of the minorities. The traditional methods follow the previously defined
curricula, whereas the alternative agile approach – namely, by means of the most utilized
scrum method – provides for an iterative and approximate assessment of e-learning, the
approximate performance plan, risks and strategies for the purpose of implementing the
planned didactic objective. The agile method should lead to the objective as soon as possible
(using the minimum of other resources) with the keyrole played by teachers who are willing
to work in teams in the new culture of learning and teaching aimed at creativity and
innovations.
The use and deployment of the IC technology is the most important factor for the successful
teaching and educating processes.
Regarding a series of unknown factors when educating the Roma minority students via e
learning, by means of the scrum agile method the difficulties faced by the Roma students are
identified for the purpose of adjusting, monitoring and transparency of the e-learning teaching
process. This kind of “self-organizing” empirical process leads to utilizing the agile method
within the special problem domain – the electronic teaching of national minorities.
Adjusting the teaching process through agile methods increases the efficiency of the teaching
process and e-learning and the level of communication and cooperation in students, i.e. the
level of understanding their needs.
The instructional design of the kind offers educational contents of a better quality and the
consequent better knowledge acquisition. The efforts of the students are directed to discussion
groups (e-mail, chat, forum), i.e. to social networks with the objective of amending the
contents proposed by LMS.
The adjusting of the educational contents while taking into consideration the abilities
limitations within the Roma national minority population and while prefering their individual
learning style, the previously acquired knowledge and personal motivation contribute to a
cooperative surroundings for implementing the IC technology. The motivation and partaking
on the part of the students in creating the content and the empirical guidance aimed at
enhancing the educational contents provided by teachers should provide for preserving the
cultural and traditional features of national minorities.
The conceptual framework of the agile methods provides for a dynamic, spontaneous and an
intuitive ambiance that in turn provides for a flexible deployment and use of the adjusted
techniques in shaping the multimedia contents.
The problems faced at online courses by some national minorities (the Roma one in this case)
depending on the peculiarities of a particular group of students, the language barrier of the
minority members, the technology at disposal, the culture and tradition of minorities, the
learning style (previously acquired knowledge), the social interaction, the approach to
knowledge and the current surroundings, all of which influence the future education process,
are possible to be resolved by using the agile methods regardless of educational diversities.
It was a challenge then to use the agile method for the specific needs of national minorities at
designing e-learning, which presents a scientific and social value although it has not been
researched scientifically and has not been resolved in a systematic way up to now. Some e
learning processes are adjusted to a certain population of students that feature various
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previously acquired knowledge and the processes use a wide IC technologic range
(multimedia, social networks, web pages, online knowledge assessment testing, web 2.0 tools,
m-learning etc.).
The agile procedures and the immediate partaking of the Roma national minority students in
the creation of contents may influence positively the efficiency of education and reducing the
difference in successfulness of education between the major population and the Roma
minority while, at the same time, diminishing as well the feeling of the social
distance/discrimination in the Roma national minority. |
