NEWS

Final DISTINCT Project Meeting and the obtained Results

On 11-12 September 2024 the partners of the Erasmus+ project “Digital Support in Chemistry Teaching (DISTINCT)” met at Faculty of Chemistry JU in Krakow (Poland) for a final project meeting. DISTINCT partners from  European Chemistry Thematic Network (ECTN), Jagiellonian University (JU), Latvijas Universitate (UL),  Technische Universität Wien (TUWIEN) and Vilniaus Kolegija (VIKO) summarized the results obtained during the DISTINCT project:

Result 1 – DISTINCT Platform

Since March 2020 rapid development of IT tools supporting remote lecturing has been observed. After the COVID-19 pandemic the acquired experiences should not be forgotten, but collected and developed. The DISTINCT repository will be established to collect examples of good practices developed all around the world. The initial query has been launched resulting in the collection of scientific papers published recently and dealing with the remote T&L; it will be continued covering reports, papers, notes, web pages, social media, video/youtube channels broadcasted by scientists, particularly chemists presenting their point of view, methods and methodologies supporting teachers and universities. The gathered sources will be used to setup the DISTINCT platform – a wiki-type database with open format, ready for publishing articles (creative common license at no charge to the authors) prepared by developers, project team members, and external contributors, running discussions on the forum, perform the assessment of gathered materials and offering self-learning modules to the users.

Result 2 – Remote Lecturing Support Toolkit

The Result will mainly consist of detailed guidelines on hybrid teaching and learning (T&L) activities, which will be elaborated on a collection of best practices (from literature) and also be based on direct experience of the project partners and their students, thus taking into account their feedbacks. Guidelines will be divided into modules, each covering different aspects of the T&L process:

1. Hardware equipment suitable for hybrid and/or remote lecturing and laboratory activities, in order to ensure the best possible hybrid and/or remote experience, including the possibility to stream or record laboratory experiments
2. IT tools for hybrid and/or remote lecturing, modelling courses and laboratory activities, including mobile applications.
3. IT tools for remote assessment
4. Tutoring for lecturers, students and technicians in order to gather the best possible experience from the available tools, also for modelling courses; On-line video instructions of didactics IT tools using for students and teachers.
5. Remote assessment methods, which will be developed in close collaboration with TUWIEN on the aspects regarding the grading of practical courses held in remote format.
6. Pedagogical materials for lecturers.
7. Privacy-related aspects.

Result 3 – Remote Laboratory Support Toolkit (Learning / teaching / training material – Audiovisual material)

Main outcome of this Result will be an assessment of which methods can be used best to adapt practical laboratory courses that typically involve hands-on experiments to the teaching conditions enforced by the measures against the past pandemic. Best practices will be collected, developed and highlighted as to provide a repertoire of building blocks that university teachers can use, adapt and integrate in their own teaching. Care will be taken to remain flexible in the offered solutions to the vastly different situations at European universities in terms of laboratory equipment, IT equipment, possibility for remote access, staff availability and training and of course the severity of restrictions imposed by the measures against CoViD. The work package will address both management aspects to support live teaching as long as and to the extent that this is possible under the given situation, but also will it cover alternative scenarios to laboratory-based practical teaching.

Result 4 –  Stakeholders Support and Policy Recommendations

While Results 1, 2 and 3 can be regarded as results generated by bottom-up, grassroot self-organized activities of partner institutions, the objectives of Result 4 are to:

– mainstream best-practices in improving design, management and evaluation of chemistry studies

– support institutions in formulating and/or improving strategies for risk management in the “Brave New Normal Post-Pandemic World”

– contribute to better inclusion and ensuring equal opportunities

– facilitate adoption of similar interventions to those done in the project by other institutions

In general, the result will be a set of “dos and don’ts” for academic staff, in particular for academic decision makers and user-friendly guidelines will be developed to offer practical support in dealing with such issues as: IPRs, GDPR, ergonomics of virtual environment, “netiquette”, etc.

For decision makers, the recommendations will concern systemic and structural problems of chemistry studies: various forms of learning (onsite, hybrid, blended and virtual, how to organize them in a way to facilitate switching between those modes of delivery in crisis situations and what to do, if there would be shutdown of Internet connections or electricity supply).

The project started on 01-11-2021and will end on 31-10-2024. The results will be available and used for a great number of students, teachers and policymakers keen on improving the didactic methods with the use of  Digital Support in Chemistry Teaching results.

Disclaimer: The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.