Inspiring Science Education (ISE)

Large Scale Experimentation Scenarios to Mainstream eLearning in Science, Mathematics and Technology in Primary and Secondary Schools

Keywords
large scale experimentations, elearning tools and resources, impact assessment, modernization of science education

The Inspiring Science Education project aims at contributing to the implementation of the “Digital Agenda for Europe” and in particular to Action 68 “Mainstream eLearning in national policies for the modernisation of education and training, including in curricula, assessment of learning outcomes and the professional development of teachers and trainers”, and to do so in line with the recommendations of the Rocard Report “A new Pedagogy for the Future of Europe”, that sets the basics for the introduction of the Inquiry Based approach in the science curricula of the Member States.

The Inspiring Science Education project will design, plan and implement large-scale pilots to stimulate and evaluate innovative use of existing eLearning tools and resources (e.g. interactive simulations, educational games, VR and AR applications, modeling and data analysis tools, eScience applications, as well as, digital resources from research centres, science centres and museums) for scientific disciplines and technology, enhancing science learning in 5,000 primary and secondary schools in 15 European Counties.

The Inspiring Science Education innovation building methodology includes evaluation metrics and benchmarking activities, on the design and deployment of innovative Science learning practice and school organization change. The project will use the proposed eLearning tools and resources, coupled with an evaluation framework, evaluating progress on learning achievements, based on the PISA 2012 Framework for the assessment of the problem solving competence of the students, teacher professional development and school organization change. This approach will offer the basis for the validation of the introduction of technology-supported educational innovation in European schools, so that piloting and field testing results can be collated and analyzed systematically and then disseminated widely, thus ensuring real impact and widespread uptake.

Main Objectives

• To support the adoption of eLearning tools
• To stimulate the demand for eLearning resources by users
• To improve their use/integration in national curricula
• Benchmarking the use of eLearning and Asses the Impact of the Intervention

Open Discovery Space (ODS)

Open Discovery Space: A socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of eLearning resources

Keywords
eLearning, learning, digital, content, user, curricula, services, pupil, teacher, teaching, multilingual, children, resources, infrastructure

Open Discovery Space aims to serve as an accelerator of the sharing, adoption, usage, and re-purposing of the already rich existing educational content base. First of all, it will demonstrate ways to involve school communities in innovative teaching and learning practices through the effective use of eLearning resources. It will promote community building between numerous schools of Europe and empower them to use, share and exploit unique resources from a wealth of educational repositories, within meaningful educational activities. In addition, it will demonstrate the potential of eLearning resources to meet the educational needs of these communities, supported by European Web portal: a community-oriented social platform where teachers, pupils and parents will be able to discover, acquire, discuss and adapt eLearning resources on their topics of interest. Finally, it will assess the impact and document the whole process into a a roadmap that will include guidelines for the design and implementation of effective resource-based educational activities that could act as a reference to be adopted by stakeholders in school education.

University of Helsinki will be organizing and taking part in the pilot events as well as the large scale validation events. University of Helsinki is the National Coordinator in ODS project. The role of the National Coordinators is considered as one of the key factors for the successful implementation of the project, as they will be invited to implement the Open Discovery Space Innovation Model in their contexts. That is, they will be in charge of driving change in the group/community by first diagnosing and understanding the context and players and then trying to “convince” them.

The pilot schools in each participating country will serve as working models and demonstrators, where the project’s activities will be realised. A series of training activities (conventional and on‐line seminars, info days and workshops) will follow, in order for the users to get familiarized with the relevant technology and to decrease their resistance to change. In the framework of the workshops the users will be informed about the project’s approach, as their participation to the project will be systematically monitored and assessed. All the proposed activities will take place in‐situ by the National Coordinator.

Overall

The Open Discovery Space project aims to accelerate the adoption of eLearning resources in school education. The project will be implemented in a network of 2000 schools in Europe. The focus of the project team is to assess the impact of the proposed scheme to the school community in order to map the change process. Additionally during these activities students and parents will be involved in the process.

Objectives

• To propose a methodology for the effective introduction of innovation in schools
• To build a group of digitally-literate teachers – change leaders who will share leading eLearning practices
• To propose the Open Discovery Space Educational Design
• To design a number of scenarios for the practical implementation of the proposed Educational Design through the use of the Open Discovery Space Portal in real-life classrooms
• Deploy an Open Learning Content Infrastructure that will aggregate various existing repositories and tools into a critical mass of eLearning content resources
• Deploy a Social Data Management Layer that will aggregate the social components of existing applications in order to facilitate community-oriented Web2.0 features related to the content
• Design, develop and deploy the Open Discovery Space socially-empowered and multilingual Web portal
• Adapt, enhance and deploy components that will allow new communities of users to easily set up and deploy their own lightweight portal versions
• To test, evaluate the effects of, and systematically validate the proposed approach
• To track trends in repositories and eLearning portals to provide information and strategies for better exploitation and sustainability of the project outcomes
• To successfully coordinate this large scale and ambitious project and to support the consortium partners to develop a shared and inspired view of their journey throughout the project