C ASE STUDIES

In the context of Go-Lab, the purpose of the case-studies are to collect information and evidence about the use of the Go-Lab activities in schools across Europe. WP8 is keen to understand how this experience was for teachers and students but also what in their opinion, were the benefits and drawbacks of using the activities. The outcomes and impacts the activities had on students and on teachers’ teaching methods plus the impact on the attitudes and perceptions of other parties (like parents, non-STEM teachers, career counsellors) will also be investigated.

Case studies will be launched in November 2015 and will take place in collaboration with WP7 and WP6 in a joined effort to obtain information. National Coordinators will be provided with a specific template and instructions that will be asked to share with their teachers. Volunteers will fill in the questionnaire and provide, if available, additional evidence of the implemented activities i.e. photos, videos etc.

The full case study template can be found in Appendix 1 - Go-Lab Case study protocol template.

Case studies will be collected on country level and the aim is to collect at least one case study per country that will provide us with an insight on how the Go-Lab implementation is organised within schools.

15.4 References

Samarapungavan, A. (1992). Scientists’ conceptions of science: A study of epistemic beliefs. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, April 1992.

Wastiau, P., Blamire, R., Kearney, C., Quittre, V., Van de Gaer, E., & Monseur, C. (2013).

The use of ICT in education: A survey of schools in Europe. European Journal of Education, 48(1), 11-27, 122.

Appendix 1 - Go-Lab Case study protocol template

Go-Lab

Global Online Science Labs for Inquiry Learning at School

Collaborative Project in European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme Grant Agreement no. 317601

WP8 Evaluation Case study template

© 2015, Go-Lab consortium

Legal Notices

The information in this document is subject to change without notice.

The Members of the Go-Lab Consortium make no warranty of any kind with regard to this document, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The Members of the Go-Lab Consortium shall not be held liable for errors contained herein or direct, indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, performance, or use of this material.

The information and views set out in this deliverable are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Introduction

Thank you for agreeing to participate in the Go-Lab case study.

The purpose of the case-study is to learn about the classroom use of the Go-Lab elements in schools across Europe. We are keen to understand how this experience was for you and for your students and what, in your opinion, were the benefits and drawbacks of using those elements. We are also interested in learning the outcomes and impacts this experience had on students and on your teaching work. For these purposes, we ask you to collect multimedia records, texts and other types of evidence related to the implementation of Go-Lab in your school.

General Guidelines: Taking into consideration the variety of elements that are being used in the framework of Go-Lab, different data collecting facilities available to participating schools and the limited timeline, we keep the design of case studies flexible and open for ad hoc adjustments.

There are a number of key questions/themes that a case study needs to look into, however this information may be collected in different ways. Below you will find a list of these themes as well as a brief description of what kinds of data could be gathered. This is followed by a table that lists the research themes/questions together with the suggestions of how you might capture the evidence for each of them. We leave it to you to decide what methods to use and how much of evidence to collect on your own.

Please use this table to record what evidence you have assembled and send it back to us along with the collected data.

When we receive the data that you have kindly collected, we might wish to call you to discuss your experience in detail and to fill in the missing bits of information, if any are identified.

Research themes/questions:

1. Background information about you, your school and students that participated in Go-Lab

2. Why did you choose this laboratory/ILS?

3. Did you have to adapt the ILS in any way? If yes, what did you do?

4. How did the implementation of the ILS go within your classroom?

5. How did the students behave during the whole process and what did they learn?

6. What was good about the ILS and what were the drawbacks?

7. Would you do it again and would you recommend it to your colleagues?

Evidence: The evidence that we would like you to collect may come in a number of formats:

 multimedia (video or audio recordings, photos)

Please ensure that you have collected parental consent forms for all of the students whose faces are visible on the photo or video records that you produce

 text (written narratives and quotations of students’ views )

 other evidence (samples of outcomes for students, i.e., copies of students’ work, posters, pictures of other tangible outcomes)