SPECIAL FOCUS PAPER OPEN LEARNING APPROACH WITH REMOTE EXPERIMENTS: OLAREX PROJECT Open Learning Approach with Remote Experiments: OLAREX Project http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v3i4.2871 J. García-Zubía 1 , I. Angulo 1 , O. Dziabenko 2 , P. Orduña 2 1 University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain 2 Deusto Institute of Technology – DeustoTech, Bilbao, Spain Abstract—The project’s primary target groups are the European secondary schools. More specifically: secondary school and university teachers, students and managers of schools, museum employees and their visitors, and other STEM education providers. The main goal of the OLAREX project is to offer the providers of formal and non-formal education an efficient way to improve their e-didactic and digital competences. For this purpose a training program is created with using ICT-based learning materials, remote laboratories, and e-learning methodologies Index Terms—remote labs, K-12 education, distance education I. INTRODUCTION There is a widespread consensus in Europe that industry requires well educated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) graduates [1]. Since students’ motivation to learn depends upon the knowledge and skills of the teachers, teachers should have access to high quality and real-life-based resources to build their competence, to support student´s improvement, to familiarize with up-to-date research/development and industrial needs in STEM. Therefore, the knowledge exchange between school and industry through the university expertise should be established or improved. Society needs a new vision on quality and effectiveness from education and training systems to attract students to the STEM disciplines. One approach is to build up-to-date e-didactic and technology competences for professionals who pedagogically support formal and non-formal learning. Another approach is to provide the students with multimedia, interactive e-learning courses including experimental laboratories. The fundamental benefit of experimenting is motivating students into innovation and creativity. However, laboratory equipment is expensive and its maintenance is complicated. Remote laboratories reduce the costs significantly, makes lab experiments available almost at any time and everywhere, personalizing the learning pathways. Updating curricula in secondary education study programs by including new e-learning approaches is one of the key issues in the modernization and enhancing of STEM study. One of the objectives of curriculum design is to ensure the quality of curriculum parameters, as well as creating learning situations that engage students in learning and assisting them in measuring their progress or achievement. Therefore, learning environment and opportunities, pedagogical support, and methodologies that will encourage STEM learners have to be improved by updating and/or establishing new curricula of studies, introducing new practical experiences for students, linking to the innovative elements in ICT use –integration remote and media experiments. Observing the decreasing tendency in the interest in STEM studies and understanding the demand for well educated individuals for the EU industry during next 10 years, the consortium decided to reconsider new strategies in the STEM educational field: • to evaluate the curriculum needs in terms of school/university/industry requirements; • to develop e-didactic competences for STEM teachers and provide them with access to remote laboratories and remote experimentation places to deepen their knowledge and skills; • to engage the non-formal educators - museum exhibition designers - in technology/engineering/ remote-experiments activities by improving their knowledge and skills in these fields; • to motivate students using up-to-date e-learning material with remote experiments, museum provocative activities, and linkage to the enterprises. This paper will describe the objectives, the outcomes and challenges of the OLAREX project. II. OLAREX OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES The project involves 8 partners: University of Deusto (Spain), P. Andrés Urdaneta School (Spain), Europa Media Non-Profit Ltd. (Hungary), Carinthia University of Applied Sciences (Austria), BG/BRG Peraustraße (Austria), National Polytechnic Museum (Bulgary), Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Radomska Szko!a Wy"sza (Polland), and its aims are to enhance and modernize STEM curricula, foster student´s creativity and motivation, and develop professional e-didactic and technology competences and skills. To accomplish these aims, the following objectives are to be reached: • Elaborate the needs analysis report. • Develop multimedia interactive e-learning contents: At least 6 learning modules with practical tasks and remote experiments will be developed and implemented into the interactive multimedia e-materials by using the state-of-the- art ICT technology. • Provide the external tools and social networking (Facebook, TeacherTube, …). iJEP ‒ Volume 3, Issue 4, October 2013 15