Informatics is COOL COoperative and COmputer-assisted Open Learning Barbara Sabitzer Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Universitätsstraße 65-67 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria +43(463)27003517 barbara.sabitzer@aau.at Stefan Pasterk Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Universitätsstraße 65-67 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria +43(463)27003517 stefan.pasterk@aau.at Sabrina Elsenbaumer Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt Universitätsstraße 65-67 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria +43(463)27003517 sabrina_elsenbaumer@gmx.at ABSTRACT Informatics is COOL – as a subject and as a tool. In this paper COOL refers to three different aspects of learning: First of all, COOL stands for “cool” in the sense of interesting, motivating or fun, topics that students like to learn and methods that enhance learning, e.g. brain-based teaching. Furthermore, COOL can be the abbreviation of COoperative Open Learning, an Austrian teaching model based on the Dalton-Plan or COmputer-assisted Open Learning. This paper first describes all three forms of COOL learning and gives examples for COOL Informatics lessons. The evaluation results of two pilot projects, one in a primary school and one in a university programming course at our university, suggest that COOL is worth being implemented and refined in all levels of school and university. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.1 [Computers and Education]: Computer Uses in Education – Collaborative learning General Terms Human Factors, Theory. Keywords Cooperative open learning, computer-supported learning. 1. INTRODUCTION The term “cool” is frequently used by young people and mostly associated with something positive. It can stand for beautiful, great or anything similar. In relation to teaching in schools or universities teachers, lessons or subjects can be cool. The different meanings “COOL” can have in this context will be discussed in this paper. Firstly, COOL can describe lessons that are cool in the sense of interesting, good, diversified, and effective. The question what is necessary for learning so that students would call it “cool” comes up. What is cool for the brain of the students, can be answered by the research field of neurodidactics. Teachers should consider this information to make learning more brain-friendly and thereby more effective [1]. According to an Austrian initiative “COOL” is a shortcut for “COoperative Open Learning” [2]. The idea behind this project, which started in 1996, is to take the heterogeneity in classrooms more into account. Further, the integration of so-called “soft- skills” in school-education should be more intense. For this purpose different progressive education approaches and especially the Dalton plan from the US-American Helen Parkhurst is referenced. Additionally COOL can be interpreted as “COmputer-assisted Open Learning”. This method uses technology to increase and fa- cilitate the cooperation of students. It can be compared to “Com- puter-Supported Collaborative Learning” (CSCL) or eLearning, which have similar directions but some different elements [3]. After the introduction to COOL and its theoretical background the paper gives examples for all three COOL meanings: It talks about COOL and playful informatics in primary schools, computer- supported lessons in secondary school as well as a COOL teaching concept for a university programming course based on neurodidactical principles. 2. WHAT IS COOL? COOL lessons and methods – in all three senses – have in com- mon that they consider brain and memory functions, which im- prove the learning process. Teaching is cool when it affects the students’ innate curiosity and when they have fun, like in learning by playing as offered in the project “Informatik erLeben” (Experiencing Informatics) where children act as computer components, programs or data [4]. In this case the neurotransmitter dopamine is released, which has a reward effect and supports learning and memory [5]. Education and learning can be characterized as “cool” from different views: from students or from teachers. For teachers cool can stand for effective, e.g. by considering how the brain works. Students will describe learning as cool when they are engaged in a subject or have the feeling that learning for a subject is easy and/or fun. For most people playing games is very engaging and with every game someone plays learning happens [6]. COOL as COoperative Open Learning considers the social brain and helps to “teach” soft skills like communication competence or responsibility. This was the aim of a vocational school in Steyr, Austria, that initiated the “COOL” project with the idea of a better handling of the strong heterogeneity in the classes and the promo- tion of soft-skills. The result was a new teaching concept called “COOL”, the abbreviation for Cooperative Open Learning, which Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. WiPSCE '13, November 11 – 13, 2013, Aarhus, Denmark Copyright 2013 ACM 978-1-4503-2455-7/13/11…$15.00. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2532748.2532766