Do Well Science Erasmus Project

Project Title

Do Well Science

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: Pedagogy and didactics; ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Key Competences (incl. mathematics and literacy) – basic skills

Project Summary

CONTEXT
Science education is a key factor for the European economy and society’s future competitiveness.
This is why, indeed, basic literacy in STEM is a Horizontal priority of the Erasmus+ Programme and one of the benchmarks of the ET 2020 and Europe 2020 well known European Union’s strategies.

Over the past 20 years, science education has been at the top of the educational policies in most European countries.
Such policies usually have a dual purpose:
– To promote science literacy among all young people
– Attract young people to science in secondary education

In respect to this context, teachers were identified by the project partners as the facilitators to build a new approach towards scientific knowledge.

OBJECTIVES
The general objective of the DoWellScience project has been to increase secondary students learning remarussiapastacaldi@gmail.comsults in STEM (maths, physics and natural sciences).

The specific objectives were:
– Provide valuable support to STEM teachers in promoting an interdisciplinary and inquiry-based learning approach to increase students capacity in problem-solving, critical thinking, active research and curiosity towards scientific subjects
– Develop innovative pedagogies for science teaching and learning based on the use of youngsters most diffused communication and information tools as apps for smartphones and tablets and the web
– Make full use of ICT communication potential to promote among students a cooperative based and peer to peer learning practice in order to stimulate their commitment to learn scientific subjects

TARGET GROUPS
Secondary School STEM teachers
– 24 of them directly involved in the creation of the 2 Intellectual Outputs.
– 12 among them were involved in the Short-term joint staff training events
– 130 STEM teachers involved in the testing of Intellectual Output contents
– More than 100 teachers and policymakers participating in Multipliers events

Secondary School students
The project impacted on the underachieving results in STEM of a number of around 2 600 secondary school students (considering an average of 20 students per teacher) of the 30 schools involved in the project.

IMPACT
The project foresees long term impact on:

Secondary School Stem teachers
– Increasing their skills and competences to plan and adopt innovative methods for motivating students to study scientific subjects through enquiry based approaches
– Improve their capacities to make full use of ICT teaching materials to raise students achievements in maths and sciences
– Providing them with didactic contents developed through a strong cooperation pattern with academic and technical experts to ensure that the available materials are scientifically and didactically reliable and usable in their real everyday life teaching activities

Secondary school students underachieving in STEM by:
– Enhancing their pro-active attitude towards their learning process in STEM using their means of communication, i.e. Web and Mobiles/Tablets
– Reinforce their problem-solving capacities as a strategic approach to learn STEM issues and motivate them to overcome their difficulties on the matter
– Stimulate their willingness to learn through enquiry based approaches within which they are not only asked to be able to solve the problem but to share, discuss and explain the solution

RESULTS
In order to guarantee the long-term impact on the aforementioned categories, the DWS project developed two Intellectual Outputs that students, teachers and end-users, in general, can access and use for free from the project portal.

The two Intellectual Outputs are:
IO1 – STEM Teaching Package
The teaching package is a consistent, scientifically and pedagogically validated, innovative and highly transferable set of operative teaching materials. The teaching materials, available according to an OER principle both on the Web App and on 2 dedicated APPs (iOS and Android), make use of gamification methods.
Web App: https://www.dowellscience.eu/ui/en/index.html
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dowellscience/id1326841702
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.dowellscience.dowellscienceapp&hl=en

IO2 – Manual
The Manual (https://www.dowellscience.eu/project/-manual.php) has been specifically designed for STEM teachers, academic researchers and policymakers. It deals with the analysis and understanding of the obstacles that demotivate students in learning scientific subjects. It also proposes how to plan and implement effective strategies to remove those obstacles making use of the most innovative pedagogic approaches.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 297955 Eur

Project Coordinator

ISIS MACHIAVELLI & Country: IT

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI GENOVA
• SODERTORNS HOGSKOLA
• Ufficio Scolastico regionale per la Liguria
• PIXEL – ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE
• Zinev Art Technologies
• Arsakeio Lyceum of Patra
• SPGE “John Atanasov”