Modern pedagogical approaches

Constructivism is a modern pedagogical approach that applies active learning, and the uniqueness of the approach is that it enables students to acquire knowledge by actively participating in its construction, based on their own experiences, existing knowledge and reflection. In doing so, the aim is for students to select and process information as independently as possible, create hypotheses and make decisions. Within the framework of such perception, they independently discover principles and laws in the content they are learning. The teacher's role changes: he or she must first introduce the student to a new area and help them discover how to build new knowledge most easily and effectively.

According to constructivist principles, learning should involve students working independently on problems related to the material they need to master, i.e. they should solve more complex tasks related to the real world, use case analyses, work on projects, etc.

In constructivism, evaluation is based on the student's progress through the learning process, and not only on the result or the amount of knowledge acquired.

This means that:

• progress in relation to initial knowledge and skills is recognised and evaluated
• the learning process, the strategies used by the student, his reflection and engagement are evaluated.

Evaluation includes continuous assessment of the student, self-assessment, peer assessment and focus on learning progress and process, not just the result.

In an online environment, the teacher's role is to monitor and evaluate, not only "how much the student knows", but also how much their understanding, skills and ability to apply knowledge have changed.

Social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978) adds that knowledge is constructed through interaction with others, through dialogue, cooperation and shared problem-solving. The role of the teacher is to encourage collaborative learning, and the design will include pair learning, team learning and shared problem-solving. Contribution to discussions and providing constructive feedback to peers will be valued.

Although different directions have been developed over time within the constructivist paradigm, which is attributed to thinkers such as J. Dewey, J. Piaget, L. Vygotski and J. Bruner, as a whole, it nurtures the idea of the student as an individual who expands and elaborates his or her knowledge in a constructive process — constructive insofar as new information is integrated into existing knowledge. In doing so, not only has the existing structure of knowledge changed, but also the new information acquires additional qualities through this "fitting".

In other words, learning is described within such starting points as a constant process of expanding and (re)organising one's own knowledge. Constructivism introduces a new quality into theories of learning and cognition that have traditionally been dominated by the communicative metaphor. It implied that some body of knowledge, located outside the individual and contained, for example, in a textbook or lecture, was to be transferred to the student. If such communication was not successful, the error was attributed to the message (e.g., the way in which the knowledge of a particular message was organised), the source of the message (inadequacy of the textbook) or the recipient (e.g., the level of the student's prior knowledge). A new and alternative interpretation of the learning process, namely constructivism, interprets that teaching is not a process in which knowledge is communicated, but a constant and active process of knowledge construction.

The basic principles of constructivism, therefore, predict that knowledge is not received passively through the senses or through communication, but is built by an active, thinking object. Knowledge is the organised experiential world of the subject, not an objective ontological reality; it is individual, flexible and constantly changing. Recommendations for the design of educational processes arise from this definition, which instead of the traditional paradigm of teaching, i.e. imparting knowledge, require that the learner questions, checks, rejects or modifies his constructs of reality. In doing so, students are encouraged to independently select and process information as much as possible, create hypotheses and make decisions. Within such a perception, they independently discover principles and laws in the contents they learn. The teacher's role is changing: he must first introduce the student to a new area and help them discover the easiest and most effective way to acquire new knowledge and eventually make them independent so that they learn how to learn on their own (learning to learn).

According to constructivist principles, when learning, students should work as independently as possible on problems related to the material they need to master, i.e. they should solve more complex tasks related to the real world, use case analyses, work on projects, etc. (Špiranec, 2008).

Examples of the constructivist approach in teaching:

• Study of medicine: problem-based learning (PBL). A small team of students is given a description of a patient and, by activating prior knowledge, formulates what they know and what they need to investigate. This is followed by independent and team study of sources, creation of a concept map and discussion with guided questioning. It ends with a short reflection on how the new knowledge was constructed and how to apply it in a clinical decision.
• Study of computer science: project-based learning (PjBL). Students design and develop an IoT (Internet of Things) prototype for a real user. They iteratively test the solution, keep a learning journal, plan work on the kanban board and regularly do peer evaluation. Knowledge is created through design, trial and error, and public product demonstration.
• Study of humanities and social sciences: social annotation and inquiry. In a digital environment, students jointly record and comment on primary sources (e.g. text, map, artefact), compare perspectives and jointly define success criteria. From these notes, they develop interpretations and mini-case studies, which they then present and revise according to feedback. The emphasis is on joint construction of meaning and metacognition.