Abstract:

Scientix, the Community for Science Education in Europe, includes since January 2013 the Scientix Observatory. The aim is to provide overview on a number of topics related to Science education projects and initiatives carried out in Europe. This paper concentrates on online training courses developed by the STEM projects; in particular it looks at the format and delivery of the courses, taking into account several criteria (language, certification, synchronicity, technical platform used, etc.).

Analysing the projects included in the Scientix project library (more than 200 STEM projects carried out over the past 8-9 years: http://www.scientix.eu/web/guest/projects), several tendencies can be identified:
(1)The majority courses offered are asynchronous (albeit with some exceptions), placed on the borderline between a course and a learning resource.
(2)The most popular delivery platform is Moodle;
(3) only a few courses offer certification.

The recent phenomenon of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), and the growing number of dedicated MOOCs platforms has the potential to affect significantly the way online teacher training is delivered. However, it is too early for any discernible trend to emerge.

Keywords:

Teacher training, science education, projects.