Innovations in STEM education: the Go-Lab federation of online labs

Abstract

The Go-Lab federation of online labs opens up virtual laboratories (simulation), remote laboratories (real equipment accessible at distance) and data sets from physical laboratory experiments (together called "online labs") for large-scale use in education. In this way, Go-Lab enables inquiry-based learning that promotes acquisition of deep conceptual domain knowledge and inquiry skills, with the further intent of interesting students in careers in science. For students, Go-Lab offers the opportunity to perform scientific experiments with online labs in pedagogically structured learning spaces. Go-Lab's inquiry learning spaces (ILSs) structure the students' inquiry process through an inquiry cycle and provide students with guidance in which dedicated (and connected) scaffolds for inquiry processes play a pivotal role. Teachers can create and adapt inquiry learning phases and the associated guidance in an ILS through a simple wiki-like interface and can add scaffolds and tools to an ILS using a straightforward drag and drop feature. Teachers can also adapt scaffolds and tools (e.g., change the language or the concepts available in a concept mapper) through an "app composer". In creating ILSs, teachers are supported by scenarios and associated defaults ILSs that can be used as a starting point for development. In addition, teachers are offered a community framework to disseminate best practices and find mutual support. For lab-owners, Go-Lab provides open interfacing solutions for easily plugging in their online labs and sharing them in the Go-Lab federation of online labs. In its first year, Go-Lab created ILSs for thirteen online labs from different lab providers, including renowned research organizations (e.g., CERN, ESA) that participate in the consortium. The design of these inquiry learning spaces has been evaluated through mock-ups and prototypes with students and teachers. More advanced and later versions will be evaluated and validated in large scale pilots. The sustainability of Go-Lab will come from the opportunity for the larger science education community to add new online labs and share ILSs. An open and Web-based community will capitalize on the "collective intelligence" of students, teachers, and scientists.

Virtual laboratories for education in science, technology, and engineering: A review

“…The Go-Lab Project (Global Online Science Labs for Inquiry Learning at School) was a European collaborative project co-funded by the European Commission (Seventh Framework Programme) (Govaerts, Cao, Vozniuk, Holzer, Garbi Zutin, San Cristóbal Ruiz, et al, 2013;de Jong, Sotiriou, & Gillet, 2014). It united nineteen organizations from twelve countries, coordinated by the University of Twente (Netherlands).…”

Guidance Provided by Teacher and Simulation for Inquiry-Based Learning: a Case Study

“…An example of software for inquiry-based science learning with simulations that can be adapted by the teacher is the Go-Lab project (de Jong, Sotiriou, & Gillet, 2014). This software implements a rich set of tools to provide different forms of guidance throughout the inquiry learning cycle.…”

Orchestrating Inquiry-Based Learning Spaces: An Analysis of Teacher Needs

“…In terms of content, we can classify these platforms in three categories from least to most flexible in terms of resource aggregation: standalone tools such as SMILE [15], which do not allow to aggregate external resources; platforms that provide a set of proprietary applications that can be combined, e.g., GreenTouch [19], SAIL [17], and nQuire [12]; and platforms that support the integration of third-party tools, for example WISE [9], SCY [3], weSPOT [11], and Go-Lab [8].…”