Papers in PDF format

But the choice of the web is due to other important reasons too; in fact, it allows for very easy interactions based
on its multimedia interface and it allows the integration of the different Internet communication tools (e-mail,
news groups, mailing-lists, and so on) in the same interaction environment. Consequently, the user can use an
unique and simple tool to make the most of the different communication modes as established in the learning
environment general model.
This choice leads to several interesting advantages both for teachers and students. The teacher can integrate,
through the WWW, part of bibliographic material (whether directly input through the keyboard or through
scanner and OCR, depending on the size and type of the documents) in his explanations; in this way, the
teacher can build up a digital library structured according to his own needs and criteria, and which provides the
basic elements to organise guided tours through the documentation; these tours can be easily adapted, time by
time, to specific didactic contexts.
For example, in the presented learning environment, the teacher could include some extracts from the penal
code, in order to explain and comment on Court decisions; similarly, he could enclose related decisions from
different trials.
In turn, students must think about interpretations of the Italian penal code, about the technical arguments by
the accuse and the defence, and about the final decisions taken by the Court.
Note that very effective strategies for learning can be easily implemented on the opposite interpretations by
public prosecutors and defence lawyers.
The learning environment is based on real in progress cases; consequently, there are a lot of interesting aspects
to be considered both at the design phase and during the learning process:
- the course content is only partially known at the beginning of the course and it will cover only some specific
topics of the penal code;
- production and publishing of new sections of the course depend on the trial evolution, so that it is not always
possible to know when they will be available;
- lessons and lectures are discussions on specific technical aspects of the trial;
- discussions and comments on the trial are stimulated not only by the teacher (for example, by proposing
juridical interpretations of the trial or by stimulating the students to provide their interpretations), but also by
the students (for example, by asking for opinions or clarification on the trial);
- it is possible to analyse technical aspects on which the Court has not yet expressed itself, and to compare the
results of these analysis with the Court final. This approach has been proved to be very stimulating for students.
All these issues affect the organization of the course; teachers cannot prepare lessons at the beginning of the
course because they have to wait for the trial acts as starting point for their lessons; they have to prepare some
extra-lessons to keep high the attention of the during the pauses of the trial; they have to moderate discussions
among students, guiding them towards the most technical matters of the trial.
On-line courses based on real cases will become more and more effective when there will be plenty of examples
available on the Net, and teachers will be able to refer to them in order to analyse different facets of complex
problems. In our case, when a lot of trials will be available on line, the teacher will refer to several
interpretations of the same articles of the penal code, or to deepen the analysis of a juridical problem.
Let’s analyse the organisation of the learning section of the Andreotti web site; it allows for various
communication modes according to the general flexibility of CMC-based learning environment.
The first communication mode permits a teacher-student interaction based on a list of topics proposed by the
teacher. To each topic corresponds a web page and every message sent (from the teacher or the students)
regarding that topic, is added to that page. By means of this list, the teacher highlights
the most interesting technical aspects of the trials; students are encouraged to work by themselves or in group
towards an answer or simply to discuss the topic. They can talk to everyone in the virtual classroom by sending
messages through the web; their messages are automatically and immediately published in a web page reserved
to that topic.