 Thank you everyone and welcome to this webinar of School Education Gateway. We will start in one minute or so, but in the meantime I would like to introduce myself. My name is Anna Laginia and I'm a secondary teacher and a teacher trainer. Some of you may know me already because I have moderated many MOOCs. I think we may start. There are already many teachers and maybe also school leaders connected this afternoon. We'll be starting in a minute. I have already posted, shared in the chat, the link to our first poll. We would like to ask you some questions and make also this webinar a bit interactive. Without further ado, let's get started. It's 5pm. Welcome to all teachers and school leaders that are participating this afternoon to this webinar about School Education Gateway. The topic this afternoon is using massive open online courses in schools. Together with me is also Benjamin Hertz, Senior Pedagogical Manager of the Teacher Academy of School Education Gateway. Good evening, Benjamin Hertz. This afternoon we will be talking about the opportunity of using open online massive courses in schools as a form of professional development. In order to enlarge open to a broader number, a greater number of teachers that are eager to learn more and how to set up this school-based study groups alongside MOOCs. I have already pasted in the chat, but I will do that again. Our first poll, it's on Mentimeter. If you know this tool already, just go to Mentimeter to menti.com and the code is 12 63538 or else click on the post that I've pasted in the chat, so the direct link. The first question is, have you participated in a MOOC before? I guess that many of you have. Me myself, I have taken many MOOCs by the Teacher Academy and European School Net, of course, and I've also moderated some of these MOOCs. So let's find out. Many times and the majority, a few times some other participants say never. So that's maybe a good opportunity to get to know more about MOOCs and how these MOOCs can help teachers develop knowledge and about new methodologies and so on. Okay, so they, for sure, they offer many opportunities. The second question is about studying professional development and the opportunity of doing this with other teachers. So have you ever participated in online professional development for teachers together with your school colleagues? How many times has it happened to you? It happened to me, for example, that you are attending a course and it is really, really valuable. It provides great professional development and you would like to maybe to involve other teachers. Anna, sorry to just quickly interrupt. Just to check, are we supposed to see the poll? Are you going to share your screen? Yes, I'm sharing the screen. Can't you see it? No, we can't see it. The one we can see is the slide. Sorry about that. Let me let me check it back. I am sharing the screen. Stop presenting. I'm sharing the screen. Can you give it another try? Yes, I'm not sharing the screen but screen sharing. Yes, it should be. Let me check. Sorry about that. I will do it that again. Can you see it now? Can you see it now? I see some people nodding and I can't see it yet but I think it's coming now. Yeah. We've had the technical issues the whole day also at school, you know, so sorry about that. There must be something in that connection. I don't know. So can you see my screen now? I can see it now. Okay. Right. I'm going back to show the results of the previous question then. Have you participated in a MOOC before? Majority says a few times, some say never. All right. So this is a good opportunity to get to know more about MOOCs and also on how these can be used for involving other teachers and setting up maybe a study group in your own school. So the second question is about have you ever participated in online professional development for teachers together with your school colleagues? The majority says a few times and some say 32% many times, 28% say never. All right. This is really very interesting. Let's go back to Benjamin Hertz and the teachers, this group of teachers who have participated in a two-year project moderated by Benjamin Hertz and Nair Carrera, an initiative by the School European Education Gateway that has really researched on the possibility of using MOOCs for professional development in a school environment. So I'll pass it over to you, Ben. Thank you very much. Many thanks Anna for that introduction. A very warm welcome this afternoon to everyone joining here. We have almost 300 participants and I am noticing the result, I must say, my team's application is slowing down quite substantially. So let's hope we're spared of any further technical issues. So as Anna was already introducing myself, my name is Benjamin Hertz. I'm a Senior Pedagogical Manager of the School Education Gateway, European Commission Initiative and it's a pleasure to host this webinar this afternoon. I'm joined here today by many fantastic teachers from across Europe who I'll introduce in a moment. But before I do that, I want to give you a quick background story, a bit sort of context to why we are running this webinar about massive open online courses in schools. Just a quick word regarding practicalities. So you can use the chat. Please use the chat to ask any questions, to add any comments. Anna and other colleagues will be monitoring the chat and will be answering your questions. We'll also have a question and answer session later on. So we'll be picking up some questions coming from the chat to be answered by our speakers, our panelists. What you can't do is you can't use your microphone in this in this call. So I've seen a couple of people raise their hands to be able to given the opportunity to speak. That's not possible in this webinar today simply because there's too many of us. So without further ado, let's get started. A very quick background to the Teacher Academy. So if you, well, you're registered via the Teacher Academy, so you'll at least have some sense of what it is. But just as a bit of background, it was launched in 2016 by the European Commission. And it's a platform where we offer MOOCs, webinars, teaching materials to teachers, but also to other school education stakeholders. Today, we're mostly going to be talking about MOOCs. These are the centrally organized online courses that we from the Teacher Academy team are organizing. There are many other courses that you can access via the Teacher Academy, but those aren't organized by us. Those are organized by external training providers. So on these MOOCs, we have the last four years offered 31 of these 31 courses with over 50,000 enrolments. And all the courses have been developed with the support of a pedagogical advisory board. Now, as Anna has already mentioned, we strongly believe in the potential of MOOCs as a form of teacher professional development. And we also know from the evaluation results that we get from our courses that they are highly appreciated and they also have an impact on teachers' practice. So I'm going to show you just a very few statistics from a very recent impact report. Not we ran, but actually an external research agency ran with, I think, some quite interesting results. As you can see here, a very large percentage of teachers highly appreciate the courses, the value of the courses, and then also 85% of teachers indicate that participating in the course results in some form of change in their classroom practice. So this is all quite promising in particular because many of those teachers see the changes that they implement as a long term change. And that points really to the promise that these open formats of professional development where we can have hundreds if not thousands of teachers participate at the same time. There are, however, significant challenges at the same time to this, and we're very aware of that. And that's really the starting point for our webinar today. So let me just quickly outline where we see some of the main challenges. The first challenge is a lack of awareness about what MOOCs can offer as all of the opportunities that they can provide. Sometimes simply teachers don't know that they're available, either at European level or national level. They're simply not aware of the offer that is there. But other times they might be aware, but they are very skeptical about, well, is this really something for me? Can I participate in a MOOC for an international audience organized by some organization which isn't actually in my country? So justified questions, of course. So that is definitely also out there. There's also a problem of accessibility, lack of digital competence. You do need to have some competent digital competence to be able to benefit from these courses. Of course, they are online. You have to produce something as part of the courses. So that requires a bit of technical know-how. You need to be able to regulate your own learning. There's not someone sitting next to you telling you you have to do this, this, this and that. So it's very much up to you. Often these courses are also not in your native language. So you need to be at least have a certain level of confidence and competence, of course, in the language of the MOOC. And then very importantly, of course, there is also a recognition problem. Many teachers participate in these MOOCs, but they get a badge or a certificate, and that's all nice. But often it's not formally recognized as a professional development credit that could have an impact on their career at national level. So these were some of the mean or these are some of the big challenges that we see at the teacher academy level in regards to the MOOCs. So we try to find a way how to address this. And the solution we wanted to pilot to test out is this. It's school-based study groups. So it's a blended format of professional development for teachers, but it coupled in a way the best things about the online sphere with the onsite, the face-to-face environment. So we have the MOOC. There's videos there. There's other forms of content there. There's activities there. And around that, we build an international community. If you've participated in one of our MOOCs, you'll know what that means. There's a Facebook group. There's usually quite a bit of activity from the teachers participating. So it's an international community of peers, teachers exchanging with each other. That's great. But for all those teachers who maybe lack some of the competencies I've mentioned, or who lack some of the awareness or a bit more skeptical about it is they probably wouldn't participate in this. So we need a way to pick them up where they are. And that's in school. So we thought about setting up these school-based communities or study groups which taps into that international community and taps into the MOOC environment. And this is exactly what we tested out of the last two years with eight highly engaged and excellent teachers from across Europe who are hosting with me today this webinar. And these are these teachers you'll be hearing from almost all of them in a moment. So I won't be introducing them individually now, but they're part of our panel and part of our speakers. Yeah, so it's a real pleasure to welcome all of you here to this event. And it's really nice to see this as a sort of final outcome of the work that you have been doing over the last two years. Yeah, and with that I would like to pass on to one of those teachers, Eleanor Petsi, who's a secondary teacher of Spanish as a foreign language at Lycea Larobasi in Bologna, Italy. And she does many other things. Some of these things she will now be telling you about. And she will tell you in a bit more detail what these study groups are actually about and why it makes sense to use them when learning with MOOCs. So over to you, Eleanor. Okay, so thanks. I will assume the control of the PowerPoint. So thanks a lot, Ben, and all the teams for inviting me this afternoon to share these few lines, few ideas, and basically the title, Why Learn with MOOCs and School-Based Study Groups. So the main ideas are why learn with MOOCs and why use study groups. So to explain a little bit what I did in the last two years, I will try to show you what I did both at school and at regional office, because just two lines to define my professional context. I worked both at school level, to the Chola Larobasi in Bologna, Italy, and at the regional department of the Ministry of Education. So I had the chance to experiment and to put in practice the study group at both levels. So to go, okay. Ben already said something about this slide, but I think this is the very important focus point, because as Ben has already said, there's an international community of peers represented by the MOOC, but for those teachers who don't feel at ease to plunge immediately in this huge community, a study group, a school-based community of peers, can be really helpful and it represents an added value to reach an effective teacher collaborative professional development. So this is the idea that I tried to implement at school and if I can go. So this is my experience, not only my experience, but the experience I tried to put in practice together with my colleagues and with a group of friends, colleagues, who helped me in implementing the study group. So I started at school with a group of 25, 30 teachers and the great majority of those teachers never attended the MOOC before. And the characteristic of this group was that it was composed by teachers of different subjects, more or less all the subjects taught in our schools, in our school, were represented. Those teachers were from different levels of language skill. English is not so well known among teachers, at least in my context, and different levels of ICT skills. So those were the main challenges we faced. How did we do the... It's a little bit tricky. Okay, so this is what we did. We took the project-based learning course, the MOOC, and how did we do the development of the case study was the following. We met once a week to follow the development of the four modules of the course. And during these meetings, we worked together knowing the characteristics of my colleagues. I tried to reshape a little bit of the path. I summarized the main concepts to make them more accessible to my colleagues. I tried to make things a little bit easier, just at the beginning, to give them the support to feel more comfortable and more at ease. And also I divided them into small groups, small working groups, where they could develop and do the activities proposed by the modules themselves. Another added value was that the teachers could experiment what they were learning together with their students in class. So this was a really important part of the study group. And they asked for a last meeting to share their results of the experimentation in class. So this was a plus that we added at the end of the study group. At the regional office, I did more or less the same. The structure was more or less the same, but I worked there with a group of more experienced teachers because they were teacher trainers from different schools from all over the region, my region where I live and where I work. And we took the mentoring in schools course, but the development was the same. We met once a week. We worked together. They split into groups. They did the activities and so on. So this was the basic format. So the first question, why learn with MOOCs and why set up a study group? Well, because as Ben also said, teachers, my colleagues were rather shy about writing and interacting in the large online community. Most of them were not so skilled in English, both in English and ICT or in English or in ICT. And working in small groups with other teachers was very supporting, helpful. And this way of working allowed them later to plunge into the wider community, to interact, to write in the forums, so to feel more at ease in a second step. Also having a tutor who oriented the path to summarize the main concept, who tried to make things easier, helped them and helped them also to implement in class what they were learning and they could share their experience with other colleagues. We tried to create a way of training, a peer training, and we called it the kind guests. So teachers went to each other classes to observe, to see, to share experience. Well, of course, the support from our headmaster was crucial so that we felt very supported by her and this also was very, very important. And the result was that the first group was about 30 people from my school. The second group, mixing up teachers from my school and the regional level, had more than 70 participants and it was for all of them the discovery of a new world and all those teachers could complete the course. So this was a great success for us. Let's go further. And okay, the second step was during the coronavirus time, the lockdown, but as it was so successful, the meeting, the four meetings during the four modules of the course, that we decided to move together again and to do, to replicate the same structure, but online and we did it via Google Meet. We met again once a week. The online phase, I replicate the online phase, both in March and in October. And I mixed, as I said before, I mixed up the school and the regional level. We created our regional group of teachers and digital trainers. We met via Meet. We shared presentations, padlets, learning diaries and so on. And the novelty was the creation of a middle management staff, a group of teachers who have already taken the course, the first step, the first experience. And they helped me to support, to encourage, to help those teachers who felt less at ease in this kind of situation. The other successful result was that a good group of teachers who have never attended MOOCs before, they took the first MOOC, the face-to-face and the online MOOC and the second development implementation of the study group. And then they said, now we are ready to do it autonomously on our own. And so they went on and they kept on training, training in an autonomous way. So to sum up, the keywords of our experience, a lot of opportunities, of course, a lot of challenges that we tried to solve to fix the issues that we had. No doubt that this kind of training gave us some, a lot of benefits. And at the end, also a sort of recognition. So the idea is, let's move together because, yes, we can, we can do it. And people and teachers are happier to experiment and to put in practice. Thanks a lot. Many, many thanks, Eleanor, for that excellent overview. And I can already see from the comments in the chat that colleagues are really quite excited about the ideas you've shared there. And we'll go into more details with the other teachers in a moment talking about the practicalities of implementing this. You've already mentioned a couple of points regarding getting your, the support of your head teacher. I see, unfortunately, you've stopped sharing the slides. Oh, yes. I thought I was giving you back and I stopped the presentation. Don't worry. No problem. I think you also noticed that at least my team's app is getting very, very slow. There's so many people here now. But we'll get there. So, well, let me move on to the next sort of part of our webinar now. And it's a real great pleasure to introduce three colleagues of Eleanor who I had the privilege of actually meeting. It's about a year ago now in Bologna who participated in this study group. And we thought it would be a great opportunity to actually hear from the teachers who really benefited from Eleanor's work on this and to understand a bit from them where they feel were the real advantages and what they particularly like, what was the impact. So, let me introduce you to Miriam Stagny. I hope I say that right. Miriam teaches English language at La Robassie, the school where Eleanor teaches and is the coordinator of the foreign languages department. Let me see now that we move to the right slides. So, I'll continue with you, Jojo, in a moment as our second panelist. Let me just see. So, unfortunately, it's not possible to skip to. Here we go. So, our second panelist for this very short panel is Jojo Cannellini who was also a great cook. I benefited from his cooking skills when I was in Bologna. Also, a pleasure to have you here, a teacher of English and also a member of the Team for European Project at La Robassie. And then also a Roberto Rasmini who teaches English language and is also a member of the Team for European Project at La Robassie. So, a very warm welcome to the three of you. I'd like to hear from you a bit about your experience of participating in such study groups. So, let me start with you, Miriam. Can you maybe quickly tell me what was the best thing about this study group experience for you? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, can hear you very well. Hi, everybody. I'm very happy to be here as I was happy when I met you in Bologna last year. So, well, as you can see, I'm an experienced teacher because as you can see, I'm not so young but I've been teaching for 35 years, you know, up to now. And you know what happened to me last year? I was really, let's see, without, demotivated in a sense because you tend to repeat all the same things even if you follow a lot of courses, a lot of seminars. So, when you are an experienced teacher, sometimes you tend to repeat the lesson you did the previous years. And so, I was a bit demotivated. And once I met Elena and I said, Elena, oh, I feel fed up with the whole situation. And she said, why don't you join us with the course I'm organizing now. And so I said, yes, I'll do that. And I met there a lot of my colleagues, really a lot of my colleagues. And we started chatting and working with enthusiasm. And this was the start. This was new breath for me, a lot of energy from this course. And you know, as Ben said, what I really thought about myself was that I lacked a lot of digital competence. So I didn't feel sure about myself. And so I started again, doing a lot of job and studying at home, learning at home, because I didn't want to show I was not so good at digital skills. So this was very useful for me. And then as Elena said, while we were working all together, it was a there was a lot of empathy with our colleagues, a large group from a lot of different colleagues of different subjects. And you see, it was important for me to start again. And so I decided, as all the others did, to jump into the class and to, you know, to reorganize my plan for the class. And so we started, I had an international class last year, because there were two students from Brazil, three students in mobility from Spain, and then our Italian students. So it was an international class. And so we decided Elena and I and all the group of teachers we were working during this course, we decided to do a research. And we actually did it in this class. And we planned we planned an interview with the mothers and grandmothers of my students. And actually all the students were involved. And actually, everything moved on. And it was fantastic because at the end we published our research in the school magazine. And so it had a very powerful impact on the school as well. And what I can say is that you, you, you shouldn't stop thinking that there's something new in life. And this is my piece of advice for everybody who is here, who is younger than me, of course. Our job is the most beautiful job in the world because you have to do with students. And even if you grow up, you become a bit older and older, then you meet new students who are the same age. And I work at Laura Bass in Bologna, which is a huge school, and we meet a lot of students every day. And so this is a many an enthusiastical way of restarting a career at the end of it. Okay. Many thanks, Miriam. No, I think I'm a very inspiring message there. And really nice to see this kind of knock on effect that this participation had for you and the school. Unfortunately, I do need to move on. We are already a little bit behind schedule, so I'm going to have to speed things slightly up. But many thanks, Miriam, for that input. So I want to come to you, George, and can you maybe elaborate a bit from what the impact was for you? Was there anything in regards to the classroom practice or interaction with colleagues, how this has impacted the work that you do, this participation in the study group? George, we can't see you, unfortunately, and can't hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes, now I can hear you. Thanks. Great. Hello. Good evening to everybody. Here is dark, so I think that everywhere in Europe is more or less the same time. So I just go quite fast. I totally agree with Miriam. What she said was exactly what I thought, and it exactly repeated my experience. Just focusing on what happened. First of all, the first impression I had when we had this opportunity was the fantastic interaction with colleagues that was very, very similar to what we have already talked about. It is the peer-to-peer activity in the classroom. Because in that situation, we were turned into students, and it was an extremely fruitful exchange of opinion and perspectives. When we applied all these things we have learned in our class, we had this fantastic reaction that, first of all, we saw the reinforcement of students autonomy. I tried to ask them, dividing them into group two. It was the last class, the last year in our school, and I asked them to ask their grandparents to report a historical fact, comparing it to what the official story said. It was really, really incredible discovering how the part of you was different. Another very interesting aspect of working in this way is the fact that you have quite close steps in your working, and that gives incredible rhythm not only to us as teachers, but for the students. Given this, that could be sounds negative, but it's not negative, in my opinion. A limited horizon helps you and helps the student to focus your attention on the final goal without distraction, because this is a very big problem. You don't have a huge amount of time. You are always running towards time that goes by, and so you really need to be focused on your final goal. Another really, really interesting aspect is that sharing, when you share this activity with your students, you are highly involving and motivating, because you cut the distances between you and your students, and you also melt the students, because you know that sometimes in classes you have divisions, because it's always happened. And as a final aspect, is the awareness that internet, the programs, the apps, etc., etc., are not always so easy to be fritfully used, and that they are not a shortcut to to give a final product. But they must be considered as tools for an activity, and not the final goal, and sometimes it's not so evident for us and for our students. That's what I wanted to say. It's very, very fast, because I don't want to steal precious time to my colleagues, but this was really my enthusiastic approach to this method. Thank you. Many thanks, George, for sharing your thoughts, and thanks for speeding through all the key points there. So I come to you, Roberta, now. I'd like to understand a bit from you, where you might see some opportunities for improvement. If you would organise together with Eleanor, such a study group again, what would be any recommendations or suggestions from your side, in regards to how it could still be improved? Okay, thanks for having me, and I'm obviously more than honored to be here with you and see you again. Okay, I totally agree with George what you said. I think that this kind of activity makes you reconsider a lot of things, and the triggers, the train of thoughts, and the reflections on what you do, the way you teach, and so forth. Just to tell you something about massive open online courses, I think that they usually leave you alone facing things, whereas through this kind of blended courses, the key element of companionship is granted. So you can feel able to share not only your outputs, outcomes, and takings, but also your understanding and your doubts, and your your uncertainties, and this is very supportive and important. Eleanor for us has been a very meaningful leader, and she offered the group tips and tools, reassuring us, and pacing us at the proper moments as well. That being said, coming to your question about possible areas of improvement, consider it the fact that in our school not many teachers enrolled, quite large group, but not all of us. So we can consider it a success anyway, but a possible move forward might be to get more teachers involved. How to achieve this strategic goal has to be carefully weighed, because teachers are feeling a little bit over burdened. Probably a change is on the cards, thanks to new technologies, because they are meant to be helpful and under various aspects, even cutting, as Giorgio said, the distance between us and our pupils, but they are perceived as something on top of the usual teaching learning habits, which we all agree are to be changed and remodeled and modified, not to mention some still existing technical difficulties and disruptions. So this is one, trying to get more people involved. Another possible improvement worth saying might be to form more than one study group. I mean, each one composed of teachers from the same school subject. In this way, teachers might be able to get a focus in depth into the guidelines of the MOOC they are attending by working together, of course, under the tutoring of, let's say, senior teacher, someone who has already been formed on the occasion of a previous study group and working together, prepared, tailored and targeted materials and activities for their specific subjects, inspired by what the MOOC is focusing on. What would they change next time? I would probably like a more relaxed schedule, depending on the moment of the year in which the MOOC takes place, but it's almost always like that. Teachers are struggling with deadlines and many things to do. Probably planning a meeting every two weeks instead of one would be appreciated. Many thanks, Roberto, for some quite concrete points in regards to the improvements and, of course, highlighting that really crucial issue of trying to ensure we get even more teachers. I mean, this was a pilot, so it was quite small, even though within your school, it was already a very good number. But that's exactly the purpose of this webinar is to ensure that we find more new mechanisms to get more teachers involved and more teachers engaged. And at the end of this webinar, I want to say a few words about some of the resources, some of the supporting resources that are coming out of this exercise, and hopefully that will allow more and more teachers to actually benefit from this kind of setup. So many thanks to you and many thanks to Miriam and Georgiou for sharing your thoughts on this. I do unfortunately have to move on now. We are about 50 minutes behind schedule, so quite a bit. I do hope everyone has a bit more time than 6 p.m. But we'll try to not to go too too much beyond our original schedule. So we now come to our, well, actually, if I may, Anna, I see you've been posting into the chat the poll, but out of time reasons, I suggest we skip that. I would still recommend for all the participants to respond to it. And then at the end, we can still quickly share the final result. But I suggest we move on to the second panel. If I may just say something, because in the chat, the participants are asking about the certificate. At the end of this webinar, there will be a link shared in the chat to a survey, a monkey survey. So by answering this final survey, you will be redirected to the Education Gateway website. And from there, you will be able to download the certificate. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. Okay, so we'll come to that at the end of the webinar. I'd like now like to move on to the second and really core part of this webinar. And that's to discuss with some of the fellow pilot teachers, how can this kind of setup be replicated? So how can you, the audience, replicate what Eleanor has been outlining and the colleagues have been outlining just before. And for to do that, I have on this panel, Christina Nicolaita, who's a teacher of physics from Romania, Celeste Schumeris, who is a teacher of English as a foreign language in Portugal, Mirella Radocevic, who's a primary and secondary school teacher in Croatia, Lisanne Verver, who's a secondary teacher of English in the Netherlands, and finally Guillermo Medrano, who's a teacher in secondary and vocational training in Spain. So a very warm welcome to all of you. We want to talk a bit about this key question, how can teachers and school leaders set up a study group at their school? So I want to start with a question to you, Christina. What was the first thing you did in your school to get started with this study group concept? And how did you convince your school leadership to support the activity? Eleanor mentioned already that this was really crucial in her school. Can you tell us a bit about your experience in this regard? Can't hear you, unfortunately. You are muted. Can't hear you still? Okay, if that doesn't... Yeah, now. Excellent. You can hear me now? Yes. Now you're muted again, Christina, unfortunately. I know there's a bit of a lag when you press the Unmuted Mute button. Now I can hear you. Okay. I won't touch anything starting from now. Okay. So in my opinion, indeed, the management support is very important. So the first step was to introduce the European School Gateway and our pilot to my head teacher. She is always willing to join a European project, but this time she was a little bit worried about the level of English and ICT skills required. I explained that the pilot is about creating study groups and get help from, I don't know, English teachers and IT teachers in school to help other colleagues. And then she told me not only to count on her for supporting me, but to count on her for participating in the pilot. So she was one of the participants in the course. I then introduced the pilot to my colleagues and they responded very enthusiastically. So I decided to take a step further. I introduced the course on social media, on Facebook, on our school page. And I used the Google Doc to invite other teachers to join us. And then I used a doodle to set up the meeting. So I had about 30 teachers in the first phase and all of them finished the course. Many thanks, Kristina, for that overview and really nice to hear your experience in that regard. I want to come now to you, Mirella. One of the key questions that you need to ask yourself when you start in such an exercise is what MOOC will I actually work with? And I mean, we on the Teacher Academy, we offer MOOCs, but there are many other MOOC providers also out there. So how did you actually decide which MOOC to work with? Can you hear me? I am having some... Yes, I can hear you very well. Okay, great. Well, first I recruited a group of teachers after a staff meeting, where I briefly presented the project. Then I presented the Teacher Academy itself, and teachers could see how it functions. After that, I used the Google Form with a few courses outlined in brief to see which course would gain the best interest. And almost everybody chose the open e-twinning course. So this is what we went for afterwards. Excellent. Thanks, Mirella. I think that's a really excellent way to understand the kind of needs and interests of your colleagues and to ensure that what MOOC you work with is relevant to the context of, well, your school and your colleagues. So many thanks for that. Excellent. I come now to Celeste from Portugal. Can you tell us a bit about your experience of recruiting colleagues and setting up the study groups? I'd imagine, and unfortunately we don't have the poll results. We didn't look at the poll results, but I imagine that there might be a bit of worry from some here in the audience who say, yeah, sounds really interesting, but I'm not sure if I could really convince my colleagues to join. So how did you go about that? Can you see me and hear me, Ben? Yes, see and hear you well. Okay, thank you so much. Well, I wanted to start small, but also steadily. So I chose the teachers that I wanted to involve in the project. And so I specifically invited five colleagues to do the PBL course with me. And I wanted teachers from different subject areas, and I wanted them to have different levels of English proficiency and digital literacy to get a wider range of responses to the course and the platform. So I wanted to show them, and to everybody, really, that you don't need necessarily to master the English language to do the courses. And I wanted to show that the platform is so user friendly that you can do the activities quite easily. I also wanted to include some teachers that had some kind of leadership role in school. So in order to disseminate the project and the learning involved to the other colleagues. So I had heads of departments, projects coordinators, head teachers, Erasmus Plus coordinators, and teacher trainers. As for the subjects, I chose also teachers from different subjects. So I had teachers of English like myself, maths, science, economics. And so we all worked together. We did the course between June and July 2019, so the first course, which is usually a very busy time in our schools. And we had five face-to-face meetings in order to complete the four modules of the PBL course. And everything just went smoothly, really. Excellent. Many thanks. And, you know, that's a really interesting approach and I think very valuable probably for our listeners today to understand the very important dynamic that you established by getting a very diverse group of teachers with diverse skills that complement each other to a certain extent. And as we know from your follow-on experience, that was very successful. So many thanks, Celeste. I'll come back to you in a moment. I want to now come back to Christina again. And you did mention the use of Doodle to sort of schedule the meetings. Can you tell us a bit more about how you actually went about the scheduling process and then also what did you do to prepare these meetings? So how did you go into these meetings? Did you have a plan? Okay. Thanks. I hope you can hear me well now. Yes, very well. Okay. My group was not similar with Celestis, more like Elena. So we were from my school, but also from the town and even from the villages around the town. We had a different schedule. We have different times. So we met twice a week at the beginning, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. But in time, they got more skilled and I only met those who were in trouble who couldn't find their way on the platform. So it was more like a peer-to-peer meeting. In preparation, I was attending the same course. We have chosen learning with creativity. Let the game begin. And I went through the course in advance to get familiar with the module, with the tasks required, with the Web 2.0 tools needed. So I could answer their questions or maybe to find the answers together during the meetings. Many thanks, Christina. Coming back to Celeste, can you tell us a bit about how it was for you in regards to the meetings? I mean, what happened during the study group meetings? How did you structure the meetings? Okay. So can you see me and hear me again? Yeah? Yes, very well. Okay. Sorry to ask, but sometimes this goes down. Okay. So as I told you, we had five meetings all together. The first meeting was very important because it was when I defined the action plan of the study group. So I gave important information about the pilot and the course that we were going to take. I taught my colleagues how to register and enroll. We defined the dates to start the modules and do the modules. We created learning diaries using Padlet and I explained how to use this tool to my colleagues who didn't know how to work with it. And I also created a dissemination strategy of the activity so that we could then share it with other teachers inside and outside school. So I created a shorter, credited session. We did the different modules of the course at the same time, but sometimes we did it face-to-face, so in school. And sometimes we did it at home, which allowed the participants to experience different situations during the course. So when we were working together at school, this allowed for a closer support on my part. And when they were working at home, each one of them had to take their own decisions and they only asked me or contacted me in urgent situations. So what was my goal? My goal was exactly what we do with our students. So I wanted to make my colleagues more autonomous and confident so that they could feel that, for example, even if they didn't master the language, so the English language, for example, they could still do the module and the course. And to help them, I always worked as a facilitator. So I did the modules beforehand and I would add my comments to the different activities in the learning diary so that the teachers could then have a model exactly the way as we do with our students. I also shared the links from our learning diaries with everybody so we could really follow everybody's work. So this way, I created a sort of a network that scaffolded the teacher's work. So they could ask me for help or they could ask each other for help. They could work in pairs. They could work the whole group and everybody overcame their language barriers because they used translating apps. They just asked me, asked a friend, asked each other, a son, a daughter, whatever. And the most important was that no one really gave up on the course. And this was very important and they felt that they had learned a lot just by attending the course and creating this learning community, which was really very important and a success, I must say. Many, many thanks. Interesting insights there. Now, I come to you, Lisanne. We've heard a lot of, I think, really quite inspiring thoughts and really quite positive messages in this regard. But surely this wasn't all easy to do and easy to implement and there were significant challenges along the way. Can you tell us a bit about the kind of challenges that you faced when setting up these study groups? Yeah, yes, I will. There were actually a few obstacles I had to overcome during the pilots. For me, the main challenge was definitely finding the time for the study group to meet up and actually keep in touch. And to tackle this challenge, there's a few things I would recommend. For example, talking to the head teacher ahead of time, possibly also talk to schedule maker or other administrators to make sure they understand the importance of the study group. And it is advisable to check the schedule of the MOOC ahead of time so you can plan the meetings. And I actually noticed that it was not always necessary to meet up in person. I think Celeste said that as well. You can also meet online or maybe sometimes one-to-one and you organize meetings for colleagues that might have questions, so not for the entire study group. So it's definitely advisable to check in with your colleagues from time to time. And yeah, as you know, for some teachers, the English language could be an obstacle. I think it's just very important to tell your colleagues they don't really need to worry about the language. Celeste also gave some really good tips. And keep in mind that English is the second language for most users of the MOOC. So you can definitely help out your colleagues, use tools and apps. And of course, a very good perk for the study group is you can speak your own language during the study group meetings. Many thanks, Lisanne. I'm getting quite a strong echo if you could meet yourself. Sorry. Yeah. Thanks. So yeah, many thanks, Lisanne. I think some really important point is there for colleagues who want to replicate this. So I mean, as you said, it's clear that this isn't just an easygoing thing to set up. I'm quite complex. And there are challenges along the way. But I think we can say that all of the private teachers have managed to overcome all the main challenges and were successful in implementing the study group. So that's important to add here. Now, because of the lack of time, I'm going to jump a bit ahead. And I'm going to raise the final question of this panel to Guillermo Medrano. Guillermo, you did quite sort of a slightly different approach when it came to the study groups and when it came to generally addressing the challenges of these MOOCs, which I outlined at the beginning. Can you tell us a bit about what you did to ensure that the work of people working on the MOOCs was recognized? Where do you see the opportunities to get some formal or even informal recognition for teachers participating in these courses? Okay. Thank you again for the question. In my case, I did the pilot in my school and also in my region. And because I realized that most of the teachers did the courses out from the school hours, and this is a big effort for all of them. As a Spanish teacher, one good reward for all of them should be an official certification. For the regional ministry of education, the teacher professional development is also a key aspect. So for this pilot, we join the benefits of these three stakeholders. Firstly, the School Education Gateway courses, the teacher academy, also the regional ministry of education that wanted that training, teacher training, and also the teachers that wanted that certification. So the idea was to collaborate with the ministry of education to certificate these MOOCs and to give a formal recognition. We did this pilot, and at the end we have 664 participants in the four courses that we have tried. And it was not only just to pilot one course, because at the end we gather information and some statistics for getting a sustainable way to set up the use of these MOOCs as a real training opportunity in my region, La Rioja, in Spain. Also, MOOCs completion rate is lower than 20%, but there are some studies that says that if you certificate them, you can increase about 50%. And in our region, with an online support for all the teachers that participate, we got 51% of complexion. And also in my school, with both in-person and online support, we got as 84%. So they are quite high values in comparison with the studies of the participants feedback after the course states that both the content and the online method are values positively. There were many teachers that didn't don't took courses before. And finally, in my opinion, I can conclude that it is possible to create connections and to certificate nice in a formal way. It's just collaborate among different stakeholders and then put some value in the teacher's work for their own learning and to have quality and valid online training courses. Many thanks Guillermo. And I think what you've just outlined there is a really nice example of how this kind of pilot activity really shows that we can achieve some formal recognition. And also some of the other teachers approach this recognition aspect and maybe not to the extent that you have managed to, but it is a very important mechanism that could allow us to ensure that the work, all the work that teachers do on these courses, either just in the MOOCs or in the study groups and the MOOCs can achieve the kind of recognition that it should get. And it's an area that we in the School Education Gateway continue to work on and the work that you've done in that area has been really inspiring and supportive for us to proceed on. So many, many thanks to all the five panelists today. Apologies that we've had to rush a bit through it. But I hope the ideas you've shared, the insights you've shared have given a better understanding to the attendees of this webinar today of how to replicate this idea of study groups in schools to use MOOCs. So I do want to just quickly see with Anna if there are any key questions for the panelists or for Eleanor or for the other colleagues. What's been happening in the chat? I've had one eye on the chat, but is there anything that you'd flag up, Anna? Well, there has been a lot going on in the chat. Many compliments and congratulations to our speakers and panelists today. Many participants raised the concern that, of course, challenges can arise depending on the environment, on the type of school you are in. Many are worried about their language barrier, of course. There is an interesting question that asks about if there are, Ben, maybe you can answer this question actually, whether the European Commission is taking care, is providing opportunities, other opportunities for teachers, for professional development or for carrying on this project. And I know that there are some ideas already about that. So the question is if this kind of project will continue. Yes, of course I can answer that. So not exactly in this format, but there will be some kind of mechanism that will ensure we continue the work in this area. So quite concretely speaking, we will be working with the kind of resources that were developed in this project and to turn that into, for example, the self-study module. So it's a sort of self-study course that we are going to tag on to all of our courses. So we really want to make sure that the messages that came out of this exercise and that were presented at this webinar today are enshrined in all of the courses that we offer on the Teacher Academy. There's also some other areas which I can't really say too much about right now because it's not entirely clear yet what that will entail. But for sure, it's an area that is gaining attention beyond also just the team at the European Commission working on the School Education Gateway. And it is something we definitely want to continue working on. So I can't tell you much details as of yet right now, unfortunately, but be assured we'll continue to work on this. And yeah. Any other questions? Any other key points that came up? Well, actually, well, most of the questions that were posed at the beginning of the webinar, I think that the panelists have answered throughout the webinar. So I would not highlight anything in particular. We have also posted in the chat the link to the survey monkey. So the participants can answer the final survey and will be then redirected to the School Education Gateway webinar page. And from there, if they are registered users, they can download their own certificate. And then well, then let me just say just a few more words. And I saw what there were also some comments to this effect in the chat. So I do quickly want to take the opportunity. I know we're a bit over time to flag up some of the supporting resources that come out of the work from the pilot teachers. So there's a really nice video which outlines the experiences from the teachers with a nice animation of the different steps. So you can find the link on the webinar page, or you can have a sort of short bitly link here as well. There's also a more comprehensive ebook slash report, which you can access, which really goes into detail of the experiences of the pilot teachers and outlines a step-by-step process of replicating what they did. And then very shortly we'll also be publishing a shorter version of that report, so a two-page info sheet which summarizes all the key steps. So if you found interesting what you heard today, make sure to check this out. There's also a news article which was published during the pilot early under year, which you can take a look where you can find more information. And then also next year, as I've already mentioned, there will be some more concrete resources coming out of this activity. There will be a self-study module, which I've mentioned, and there will be two further webinars similar to this one, probably structured slightly differently. That will help teachers who are interested in this approach and want to replicate it to also do it themselves. And the idea is that this will be sort of a continued activity as we move into the subsequent years. Yes, and then finally, very importantly, I think many of you have already asked about this in the chat. Certificates will be provided to those who participated here, but we would like to get your feedback on this webinar as well. So please use the link that has been posted in the chat to give us some feedback. And in order to get the certificate, you actually need to fill in that survey first. Bear in mind also, if you want a certificate that you need to have an account on the School Education Gateway platform, as Anna already said, and bear in mind that the survey has to be completed within the next 24 hours. If you don't do it now, make sure you copy paste it somewhere outside of this meeting environment. And then your certificate will become available via your School Education Gateway profile. That's it from us. A very big thank you to all the panelists, speakers and colleagues who are part of this of the preparation here. A big thank you to everybody who attended. Thanks to everybody who posted comments and questions into the chat. And I very much hope that you will take this forward. This idea is just the start of a really way to make more and more effective use of MOOCs at a school-based level. So that's it from us. Many thanks. A good evening to all, and hopefully see you soon on one of our courses. Goodbye. Thank you. Goodbye.