As the pandemic unfolds across countries around the world, the normal lifestyle and educational practices face challenges. This proposal draws upon the needs emerged in secondary school education during the pandemic outbreak. Amongst many institutions secondary schools have also shifted their base to online platforms to conduct classes online as an alternative to ordinary face to face classes. However, the teachers in many countries were not ready for this rapid change. The project builds a strategic partnership for Digital Education Readiness in the field of STEM education, aiming at reinforcing the ability of school education to provide high quality, inclusive digital education in the field of STEM with the focus on building capacity to implement online, distance teaching and learning. The proposal aims at supporting secondary school teachers of STEM subjects in continuing their teaching online. In achieving this goal, an online course with 4 projects will be developed with a focus on Physics, Math, Engineering and Programming. These projects will act as exemplary projects for online education and will come together with training materials, simulations, videos, presentations. The training materials will be tailored to the thematic of each project. The participant teachers will be trained online in these projects and will be called to use the developed resources and online methods with their students. The innovative aspect of the project is that instead of simply providing ready-made resources, it smoothly reveals the methodology (pedagogical and technical) upon which these resources are designed. In other words, the teachers not only use the resources for carrying out the 4 projects but also explore how these resources are designed. The online course that will be designed will guide them through this process. Several tools suitable for online teaching will be selected for supporting brainstorming, online collaboration, ideation, creation and sharing. Having practically engaged the teachers in the 4 projects and released the online/distance methodology, the project goes a step further by calling the teachers to design their own projects and resources and test for students them online with students with the support of the project team. In this way, the project ensures that the knowledge gained is really put into practice. Main outputs include: -The pedagogical handbook which includes the development of the online/distance methodology: project-based learning, supporting teamwork, serving synchronous teaching (live webinars) and asynchronous online classes. -The online course that revolves around the development of 4 exemplary interdisciplinary STEM projects for secondary school education. These 4 projects come together with training materials suitable for online/distance learning incl. simulations, video, presentations and how-to instructions (that will enable teachers to look behind the development of the resources). - The development of Open Educational Resources that follows the project methodology and results in STEM projects and OERs for students for online education. It is estimated that the BEREADY learning intervention will be validated with 120 students and 40 teachers through specifically designed pilot stages. Many more students (approx. 200) and teachers (approx. 600) will be involved in the project in the context of dissemination events and workshops, multiplier events and promotional webinars. Since teachers play a fundamental role in supporting students to develop STEM skills, 21st century skills and positive attitudes towards STEM, particularly in the current situation, the communication of project results and the wider adoption of the innovative and flexible training and learning scheme can benefit school communities (apart from local) at regional, national and European level. The partnership aims at promoting networking of institutions across the EU, sharing of resources and expertise, collaboration with digital technology experts in STEM Education and finally contributing to the development of online & distance pedagogical practices based on project- based learning and costructivism/constructionism pedagogy as a response to the challenges faced during the pandemic outbreak.
We wanted to have a positive impact on online education during (and beyond) pandemic - we wanted to support students by supporting teaching community and strengthening high school teachers skills and abilities regarding online teaching. We promoted use of active learning methodologies event with remote teaching, namely Project-Based Learning. Our aim: - To develop guidelines and resources for teachers to work online towards creating meaningful online learning experiences in STEM - To equip teachers with skills and knowledge (pedagogical and technical)to introduce online STEM projects through a flexible teacher training scheme that is easily replicable - To continue offering students opportunities to explore STEM disciplines and stimulate their interest in STEM even when schools are closed - To enable teachers to act as designers of digital educational content and OERs in STEM for online teaching - To plan and enact activities and workshops that promote teacher professional development and pedagogical change towards STEM teaching online - To build synergies among schools, academia and research towards ensuring the quality of the developed OERs and the wider uptake in school communities.
The Covid-19 outbreak has put new and powerful stresses on schools, teachers and students alike. It has forced schools into new modes of learning that are limiting and incomplete as teachers work at a distance (or socially distanced). The pandemic has created a need to organize entirely online the whole school education, which has never functioned in this setting before. The challenges this situation imposes on teachers include the necessity of quick development of high-quality educational content, teaching methodology adjustment, and meaningful use of a variety of digital tools. Our project focused on teacher training in both the utilization of software tools in the process of digital, educational, content creation and in methodologies of distance learning using this content. We aimed at supporting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) educators overcoming the aforementioned struggles and finding ways to fit teaching into this new reality. Our aim was to support teachers who were set in a challenging position with our academic experience by strengthening them and giving them tools and methodologies to be used in future in distance learning, also beyond the pandemic.