ARTIFEX Erasmus Project

Project Title

ARTIFEX

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; ICT – new technologies – digital competences

Project Summary

Short summary
www.teachstem.eu is an initiative developed under the ARTIFEX project, co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the EU. Its aim is to provide support and resources for STEM teachers to improve their practices and methodologies, further the specific STEM partnerships at schools and communities, and provide insights to policy makers with regard to the existing models and the challenges we all face in re-shaping our education and training systems and strengthening them with STEM-competences.

Description.
STEM is a very large field of work and exploration. With the ARTIFEX project and through the learning platform (see link above), the project attempts to help educators identify their personal strengths and weaknesses with regard to teaching STEM, and to assist them in improving their skills and competences by providing ready-to-use practical workshops. The learning platform offers the following components.

Self-assessment tool for teachers and educators
Our ARTIFEX SAT was built and tested by university researchers of Antwerp University and Karlstad University and it helps teachers and practitioners who wish to integrate STEM in their classes and workshops better understand their strengths and weaknesses with regard to teaching STEM in relation to the 21st Century Skills. Based on a short questionnaire, the tool will recommend personalized workshop scripts and instructions tailored to the specific competences and activity areas which an educator chooses to improve. This tool is available in different languages.

Workshops
Developers in Belgium (Stedelijk Onderwijs Antwerpen and Artevelde Hogeschool), Italy (H-Farm), Sweden (Karlstad University, teacher learning department), Greece (Ellinogermanika Agogi) have designed and tested a collection of STEM workshops. Each workshop comes with a set of instructions – difficulty level, group size, materials, activities, timing. All workshops were peer reviewed and tested on their impact by several dozen European schools. Their comments and additions have been included in the workshops as inspiring practices for their colleague teachers.
STEM is a fun way for students to learn an important set of skills and be better prepared for their future workplace. With the help of the Assessment Tool and workshops, teachers can improve their competences.

Best practices, some ideas for policy makers
Successful STEM education typically requires cooperation between schools, teachers, students, local authorities and communities, and the business. The University of Antwerp has collected on www.teachstem.eu interesting cooperation models from different EU countries to help policy makers understand the variety of possibilities when designing STEM policies on a local or a regional level.

Insights
Read what people who currently hold STEM-related occupations say about their work, their vision for the future of their jobs and sectors, and the challenges ahead for education. Or go to www.teachstem.eu to read about the ARTIFEX research. In a collaboration between the University of Antwerp and the University of Karlstad, Belgian and Swedish teachers were asked about their feelings of competence, and their concerns regarding working in a high-tech informal learning environment.

Reach
All elements of the tool and project are freely available on the learning platform www.teachstem.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 449023 Eur

Project Coordinator

AUTONOOM GEMEENTEBEDRIJF STEDELIJK ONDERWIJS ANTWERPEN & Country: BE

Project Partners

• H-FARM EDUCATION
• ARTEVELDEHOGESCHOOL
• ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI SCHOLI PANAGEA SAVVA AE
• KARLSTADS UNIVERSITET
• Euroface Consulting s.r.o.
• National Training Center
• UNIVERSITEIT ANTWERPEN