Go-Lab Report on Implementation Activities Phase-B
Résumé
Implementation Phase-B covered the period from project month 25 to month 33, which
corresponds to 1 Nov 2014 – 31 Jul 2015. During that 9-month period partners organized
and conducted 80 implementation activities around the host countries. Of which, 35 were
training workshops for teachers with 794 participants from 340 schools and 45 were
activities with students with 1834 participants from 80 schools. The total summative
results after Phase A and B are: 1184 teachers from 689 schools attended the training
workshops that partners organized; 2394 students from 117 schools participated in the
activities that partners organized.
The document herein first presents the implementation activities in each partner country
reported for the Phase-B. It then concludes with the summary of results. This deliverable
should be considered as a continuation of deliverable D7.3 “Report on Implementation
Activities Phase-A”. In D7.3 various aspects of the implementation plan, such objectives
and general strategy, role of national coordinators, distribution of schools etc., were
presented in detail and will not be discussed here. To guide the reader only the topics of
implementation activities and reporting are briefly repeated here in the following sections.
The full list of activities and associated reports are included in the document. Summative
results are presented in tabulated format and in graphs where large variation on country
per country level is observed. This still holds after taking into account the difference in
allocated person-months per partner to conduct activities with schools, teachers and
students. The variation of achieved results is because of several factors, among others
the flexibility of the educational system in introducing innovative methods and practices,
the ICT infrastructure in schools, the attitudes, skills and interests of teachers. The most
crucial one is being the culture and attitude of teachers, and in general the education
system as a whole, across different countries and how flexible or prone they are in
adopting inquiry teaching and learning approaches, the use of online labs in science
education etc. In this context in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Estonia, the
Netherlands, better overall results are achieved compared to Austria, Germany, UK,
Switzerland.
Furthermore we observe that in most countries and cases there is large expression of
interest from schools and teachers to join the project and attend the trainings. However
they then find difficult to fully apply what they learned in their everyday teaching practice.
As a result the national coordinators and partners devoted significant effort to organize
and conduct themselves in-school activities with students. Being in close collaboration
and interaction with the teachers and their schools they identified certain areas of barriers
in applying the Go-Lab approach. Their general findings are discussed in the document.
Regarding the online labs that partners demonstrated and introduced to schools, teachers
and students during Phase B were from all three categories, simulations/virtual labs,
datasets and remote labs. These were the following, listed alphabetically per category;
Simulations/virtual labs: Bond, Build an atom, Electricity lab, Fishbowl Guppies,
Gearsketch, Geogebra, Impact calculator, PhET-Buoyancy, PhET-Density, PhET-
Balancing act, pH scale, Splash, Star in a box; Datasets: Hypatia, ESA-SOHO archives,
iSpyCMS, Sun4all SalsaJ; Remote labs: Archimedes, Boole, Faulkes-Telescope,
Radioactivity, VISIR.
The activities with teachers and students that practiced and utilized these online labs and
related ILSs were linked to various science curriculum domains and in particular to
Physics, Astronomy, Technology/Informatics/Electronics, Chemistry, Biology and Maths.
Their classification in terms of subject domain is shown in Graphs 5 and 6, for teacher
trainings and activities with students, respectively. The grand majority is on Physics (92%
and 98%) and Astronomy (55% and 33%) followed by Technology/Electronics (31% and
10%), Chemistry (18% and 2%), Biology (8% and 12%) and Maths (6% and 2%). This fact
is explained by the expertise and experience of the partners involved and also to some
extent the schools’ and teachers’ preferences and demands.
In conclusion, during the second phase of implementation national coordinators and
partners organized and conducted plethora of training workshops for teachers and
activities with students reaching a large number of schools across different countries. The
next 9-month implementation phase, Phase C, starts on project month 37, 1 Nov 2015. In
that phase the total number of schools that will participate is expected to be doubled.
Using the experience gathered during Phases B, and A, in order to be able to address the
schools’ needs of training of their teachers during Phase C partners will direct and focus
their effort of support through online means, and less through onsite trainings and visits to
schools. In this context a comprehensive collection of support materials that can be used
for online and asynchronous self-trainings were organized and provided by a user support
task force. These include video tutorials, guides of use, tips and frequently-asked-
questions, recorded webinars, etc. They are online and currently available at
http://www.golabz.eu/support. These will facilitate partners and teachers in the constant
uptake of using online labs, ILSs and tools that Go-Lab offers and will sustain its usage
during the last implementation phase of the project and beyond.
Domaines
Education
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