Which is the most useful component of the Go-Lab portal for science teachers and why?

In this open ended question, teachers had the opportunity to provide us with information regarding the most useful, based on their experience, component of Go-Lab. Most of the teachers avoided to provide a clear answer and expressed their satisfaction with all components. From the ones that they clearly expressed their preference the most useful components are:

 Repository of ILS

 Authoring tool

Some interesting comments and reasoning can be seen below:

 “Online labs. They are the more versatile component: they can be used and adapted in millions of ways and can fit to any class.”, Portuguese teacher

 “Graasp offers the possibility of building content for all learning stages. The different steps to provide students who approach them with insights to inquiry concepts and teach them ask questions, a much needed and neglected skill.”, Spanish teacher

14.4.9 Which is the least useful component of the Go-Lab portal for science teachers and why?

In this question the majority of teachers agreed that there is no Go-Lab component that it is not useful. Nevertheless, many teachers found in this question the opportunity to share a number of issues that they seem to prevent them from taking full advantage of the Go-Lab tools. The most common of these issues are listed below:

 Technical problems i.e. broken links, compatibility issues

 Lack of localised content i.e. need for ILSs in all languages

 Coverage of all subjects i.e. ILSs on mathematics are missing

Another interesting remark that is worth mentioning is that according to some teachers the existence of many Go-Lab sites (project site, lab repository, tutoring platform) is confusing.

A better and more obvious connection among the different tools is essential in order to improve the flow of visitors and ensure a smooth user experience.

14.5 Conclusions

The main goal of the evaluation exercise was to monitor the impact of the use of Go-Lab tools in teachers’ technical skills, IBSE knowledge, use and understanding of online laboratories. The conclusions of this section are spread over the previous sections and provide us with some first indications regarding the impact the use of Go-Lab tools has on teachers around Europe.

More specifically:

Teachers’ profile: A close look at teachers teaching and technical skills reveals that a large percentage of the teachers that are interested in the use of online laboratories have quite developed pedagogical and technological skills. Thanks to the diversity of options that the Go-Lab tools offer, teachers with less experience have the possibility to start discovering the tools by using the repository and identifying labs, apps and existing ILSs that fit their needs.

Knowledge of IBSE: Most of the Go-Lab teachers have some knowledge of IBSE. The majority of teachers seem confident in teaching IBSE to their students and to design related activities. What is interesting though is that there is still a significant number of teachers that do not feel confident using IBSE and consider that they still lack skills in order to successfully apply it. Go-Lab is contributing to teachers understanding of IBSE but continuous support, good practices and training are needed in order support teachers interested in IBSE and help them fully develop their IBSE skills.

Teachers’ technical skills: When it comes to their technical skills, teachers are quite confident to use online laboratories and repositories. The use of authoring tools though, is a big challenge for most teachers which also affects their intentions and ways the use the Go-Lab tools. At the end of Pilot phase B we can see a change in teachers’ technical skills with a significant rise in the numbers of teachers that are stepping up and dare to use the authoring tool. The development of the tutoring platform, the various supportive materials that were made available in the course of the previous year and the training sessions that took place all around Europe, have definitely played their role and contributed to this

change. Despite the above and as stated in the ICT in education survey, support is still needed in order to encourage teachers with less advanced skills to grow and develop.

Despite having access and positive attitudes towards implementing ICT in teaching and learning, teachers often find this difficult and require support – not only technical but also pedagogical (i.e., IBSE). Increasing the training provided by school staff and others to teachers of all disciplines should therefore be encouraged, including subject specific training on learning applications. (Wastiau, et al. 2013).

Use of authoring tools: The use of Go-Lab helped teachers to gain familiarity with the basic principles of authoring tools that they can use in producing their own ILS. As a result we can see a great shift regarding the use of Go-Lab. While in the pre questionnaire teachers were appearing reluctant to produce their own ILSs, in the post questionnaire we can see a large number of teachers producing ILSs and not only looking for online laboratories.

Need of training and support: The introduction of new tools in combination with IBSE, require training and support in order to provide teachers with the necessary background and skills.

Finally, regarding the response rate, additional actions need to be taken it order to motivate teachers to fully participate in the validation process. Incentives, rewards, connection to certification are just some of the suggestions and possible solutions that will be considered.

Part 3: Evaluation of the