List of intellectual outputs

1. Massive Open Online Course “Teaching ICT with Inquiry”

A MOOC consisting of 4 modules with a peer-review final activity will be developed and offered in English to ICT and STEM teachers (both in-service and pre-service) from 20+ countries in Europe and beyond. This MOOC will be open to any interested teacher upon registration on the EUN Academy (http://www.europeanschoolnetacademy.eu/ ) – a free online professional development platform for teachers and other education professionals. The MOOC will equip participants with basic knowledge of programming languages (Scratch and Python) and data spreadsheets (Excel) that allows students to collect big data and manipulate it, the understanding of basic learning scenarios of IBSL and how to implement them in classroom activities, career advice to motivate students and explain them the possibilities of STEM and ICT related jobs. As a part of the MOOC material, methodical instructions for teachers will be produced by UPC. The methodical material will guide teachers through the preparation of inquiry-based activities and further classroom implementation, objectives of such activities, and recommendation of ICT tools to use depending on the age of students and STEM-related topics that can be used to demonstrate real-life application of ICT to students. Online career material that will be developed by UD as IO3 along with career guidance tips and tricks will be provided to teachers through the MOOC. The final learning activity will be developed in the Graasp authoring tool (http://graasp.eu/) that supports inquiry learning and teaching. All MOOC participants will be strongly encouraged to submit their final activities in the ILS repository (http://www.golabz.eu/), which is a collection of personalised inquiry-based learning resources, and share their learning material with colleagues from all over Europe. The MOOC will bring together teachers from different European countries, involve them in a dialogue on ICT teaching and build a community of committed teachers.

2. Development and implementation of learning activities

The learning activities will be based on various learning scenarios of IBSL and become ready-to-use material available for everyone who teaches STEM, and ICT in particular. A number of learning activities designed by teachers for teachers and for students will be produced in the end of the MOOC (IO1) and by 80 focus teachers during national face to face multiplier events. Organised by LMU (France), UD (Spain), UCY (Cyprus), and UPC (Lithuania) in respective languages of these countries, 4 multiplier events will involve 80 teachers in total (20 teachers per country). These 80 focus teachers will be able to confidently use the tools, resources and inquiry-bases education method used in the project in order to produce learning activities.

During the multiplier events, the focus teachers from upper primary and secondary level of education both in service and on training, will be asked to develop inquiry-based learning activities and later on implement them in classrooms. In total 80 classrooms are concerned to participate in such pilot-type phase of the project. By following up with focus teachers after the national multiplier events, we will ensure the classroom implementation of the activities and thus further analysis of the effectiveness of the IBSE with focus on ICT subjects. An evaluation will be done in order to measure the impact of such an approach (with detailed qualitative and quantitative pre- and post-implementation survey that focus teachers will complete before and after the implementation of the learning activities). This will laying the groundwork for the IO5 research based on these case studies of IBSL use for teaching ICT.

In this output, a European competition on the implementation of inquiry-based activities designed by teachers with the focus on ICT subject will be organised in dedication to the STEM Discovery Week. This campaign is organised annually by STEM Alliance (http://www.stemalliance.eu/) to celebrate careers and studies in the fields of STEM. During this competition teachers will be able to demonstrate a successful use of their inquiry-based activities for teaching ICT by providing a short description and the objectives of implemented activities, reporting how many students participated, how many educational stakeholders were involved. The winners will be awarded with certificates, and their testimonials related to successful implementation of ICT-based inquiry activities will be published in the final blueprint publication (IO5).

3. Careers presenting future jobs in ICT field

A series of ten career articles (career sheets) featuring ICT role models will be prepared in order to explain to students (especially to teenagers) what their future ICT job may look like. Every article will contain exhaustive information about the career path, the education needed and the possible career trails a person can follow. These articles will aim at encouraging and inspiring children to learn more about the computers and programming.
The ready-to-use online material developed in the project will provide students (9-19 y.o.) through their teachers with clear and appealing information on future career perspectives related to ICT field, helping teachers to encourage students to pursue STEM (and in particular, ICT careers) in future. This material will be disseminated through the national multiplier events and will be included in the MOOC, raising teachers’ and students’ awareness of what is required to become an ICT professional and promoting ICT careers as a part of a bigger-scale STEM job market.

4. Self-assessment questionnaire about the use of inquiry for teaching programming

n the basis of the surveys for focus teachers (IO2), a short online self-assessment questionnaires for teachers and students that can be used to independently assess a level of competence before the classroom implementation and acquired knowledge after the activities’ implementation will be developed as a project output.
In order to evaluate the quality of understanding the subject matter and student’ engagement in learning to program and work with data, there will be two self-assessment questionnaires – for students and for teachers to be used before (pre-questionnaire) and after (post-questionnaire) classroom implementation. The online check-box type questionnaires designed to share with ICT and STEM teachers across Europe will be first prepared and released in English. Then the questionnaires will be translated into 4 national language of partners’ countries (Lithuanian, Spanish, French, and Greek). The questionnaires for teachers’ self-assessment will be published on the mini-portal of the project.

5. Blueprint on the successful use of inquiry in teaching ICT

The blueprint will present research outcomes of the detailed surveys distributed among 80 focus teachers, through which we will assess the impact of the proposed method of learning ICT on 80 classes involved in the activities implementation. In this publication, the advantages and examples of successful implementation of IBSL for programming classes will be discussed. The pre- and post-implementation surveys will be distributed among 80 focus teachers from Lithuania, Cyprus, France, and Spain (20 teachers per country) during the multiplier events (as a part of IO2) taking place in the respective countries. The teachers will be asked to respond to the detailed evaluation survey prior and after the activity implementation in their classes, providing their opinion on what went well and which possible difficulties they faced during piloting of activities. The blueprint will be based on responds’ analysis and summarise the recommendations to educational authorities and policy makers. This publication will also include the four case studies based on testimonials from teachers – winners of the European competition organised as a part of IO2.