 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Benjamin Hertz. I'm senior pedagogical manager at the School Education Gateway. It's a real pleasure to welcome you to tonight's webinar on building school based learning communities for MOOC based learning. Let me tell you a bit of a back story to this webinar before I introduce the two speakers. As you will surely know on the School Education Gateway we've been offering MOOCs, massive open online courses for teachers for several years now. Back in 2019 we felt we need to do a slightly better job in ensuring that these MOOCs become a bit more accessible and available to more teachers. We know that they have a lot of benefits. We can reach many teachers through them. It's a great opportunity to create an international community of teachers etc. But we also were very aware that there are many teachers out there who struggle to really benefit from these courses. Especially if you're maybe not so confident with your English language skills or your digital competence then it can be quite daunting to participate in a course. So we felt we had to do something about that and we wanted to find a good mechanism to ensure that we help teachers who don't have that type of confidence and competence to get on board and benefit from the courses. And for that purpose back in 2019 we launched a small pilot with eight teachers from across Europe and these teachers investigated how to really address this problem. And one of the key things that they did and they tested for the last two years was to try out implementing study groups in their school that would take the MOOCs together. So it was bringing the international or the European element of the MOOC into the local context of the school and making sure that those two dynamics work well together. And out of that work quite a few interesting resources have come, a lot of interesting insights have come and that's the purpose of today's webinar to share that with you. And before I pass on to the two speakers today I just quickly want to mention also that we have recently launched a self-study module which in a way addresses the same kind of topics that we will be covering in this MOOC in this webinar. So if you are still interested in finding out more information and accessing all the resources coming from this little pilot then I highly encourage you to take a look at that on the School Education Gateway. So enough from me, I do now want to give the opportunity for our two speakers to explain a bit about their experiences of participating in this pilot and it's a real pleasure to welcome Eleanor Petsi from Italy and Christina Nicolaita who were both very active in this pilot and very successful in setting up study groups at their schools, inviting their colleagues to learn with them and help them to learn using the MOOCs. And actually both of them have progressed much further than what we had originally in mind and I'm sure they'll be telling you also quite a bit about that. Final word, we are about to launch a continuation of this pilot in the context of the E-Twinning Schools initiative. So keep an eye out for a call for applications and if you're interested in participating this in the future then yeah this is a good opportunity. More on that right at the end of the webinar from my colleague Effie. So without further ado over to you Christina and Eleanor. Thank you very much Ben. Eleanor if you can go to the next slide. Hello everybody my name is Christina Nicolaita. I am a teacher in Giorgio Magheru School, Caracas, Romania and I will start by pointing out this new opportunity for you all participating in this new self-study module on the School Education Gateway Teacher Academy. It is a module that we are participating in this webinar for so our webinar is presented to you under the frame of this self-study module and it tries to help teachers and the school management to improve the professional development of their teachers using these great MOOCs. They are free, they can be studied in your own pace, so it is great for all schools and all teachers to join it. But before we start presenting you our experience in this pilot project and in our results maybe it is great to know who is here with us today. So please if you can join our Slido on slido.com you can use the code 21621 and please answer those little questions about you and your experience with MOOCs. So the first question is where are you from? We are waiting to see the countries you are joining us in this webinar this afternoon. We are hoping you are, oh Germany is the first one, welcome Germany in joining us today. We are very happy you are interested in our webinar, Turkey also. We know Turkish teachers are very active and they are taking part in many courses and many projects, Portugal, Romania, welcome Romania. We are hoping more of you can join Spain, North Macedonia, welcome today, Sweden, Spain. Great variety of countries, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Although I see our friends Tunisia, Greece, thank you all very much. Elena if you can go to the next question. Oh even Rome Italy, welcome. Yeah Christina I don't think it allows me to go. I've tried to. Okay. I don't know if you can do it yourselves. Okay the poll asked you two more questions you can go and I will access it and I will tell you later on the answers to the questions. Yeah so for the moment so for the moment 37 answers and they are still growing in number 39. Okay maybe we can go back to the presentation and I will access it from my phone later. So I will introduce you now the context of our project of our pilot project on School Education Gateway Teacher Academy, which is as you can see a place for teacher and school staff to learn about and get interested in the European action for schools. The two great sister platforms, School Education Gateway and Detwining help all teachers both in engaging in European projects but in growing in their professional development. What are the main action a teacher can do on these two platforms? On School Education Gateway they can get informed about educational policies and also make their opinion count by responding in surveys about their opinion. And in On Detwining platform they can join the greatest European teacher community and take part in projects, find detwining partners, get guidance from the network of ambassadors and from their national support. About the professional development on School Education Gateway teachers can join the webinars, the online courses, they can find the on-site courses and mobility opportunities, they can use the resources and publications but also on Detwining there are online seminars, learning events, moderated thematic groups, professional development, workshops and conferences and more of that their work can be valorized with detwining quality labels, detwining awards and detwining school labels. Elena? Yes, I hope you can hear me. Yes. Yeah, okay. So, to, well, first of all, hi everybody, I'm the second presenter for today. I'm Emily Petzzi, I work and I teach Spanish in a secondary school in Italy and together with Christina and the other members of the group that you can see here in the picture, I took part in the pilot that Christina has already explained. So, to go further a little bit deeper on the context of the pilot, you can have a deeper understanding by reading the article and you can find it on teacher academy within the portal but just to briefly sum up the idea, the rationale of the pilot is the idea was to have light on how online courses can be used more systematically at school level and also, as Benjamin said at the beginning of this webinar, not only at school level but in some countries at a broader level, the regional level or even national level, to support a teacher's professional development. So, it has been a great adventure to understand and to try to find solutions to involve more teachers to get familiar with MOOCs and to take part in MOOCs in schools. Christina? Thank you. Thank you. I have checked again the slide though. We have 65 answers already. Many other countries joined us but unfortunately the second question doesn't appear so we will ask you to answer about your experience in the next slide where Elena has some paddlets for you. She prepared some great paddlets to ask about your experience. About the pilot project coordinators, you have already met Benjamin Hertz. He was one of the coordinators together with Nair Karrera. They are great professionals, experts in their field but they were like part of the team. They were like team mates for us and the guy did us through the work in this pilot project. We are very happy that the results were great. If you can go on, Elena? Thank you. So, at the beginning there were 10 teachers in the pilot project from 10 different countries in Romania because the pilot project needed more of educational systems, parts of Europe, teacher development strategies in different countries to see if teachers from different countries have different interests in professional development. So, we started as a great hard-working team. Many of the teachers in the pilot had great, great results and we are introducing now part of our experience. Yeah, the experience, as you can imagine, had before and then after. The time of pandemic of coronavirus supposed a great change in the pilot itself. So, we can summarise it as the face-to-face phase, the step versus online phase. So, what we are talking today is both experiences. What happened in 2019 where face-to-face meetings were allowed and what happened in the next two years, one year and a half in 2020 and 2021 where and when just online meetings, online training is allowed. So, Cristina, thank you Elena. It's yours, I knew it myself because of this. Okay, thank you. I will start with the first step in our experience, the face-to-face phase where I started with promotion, asking for head teacher support and the press survey to find out about my colleagues' interests in the themes they wanted to attend in the MOOCs offered by the School Education Gateway. Then I assisted my colleagues with registering and surfing the portal to get familiar with it. Organised group studies during the modules with my colleagues, both in school but online, although the face-to-face meetings were allowed, but because of the school schedule we couldn't find out an appropriate time for all the teachers involved in the courses to meet. So, I organised two meetings per week, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but my colleagues could always reach me through social media, through WhatsApp group of our school. So, we organised school study groups. At the end of the course we collected the outcomes, the lesson plans created by the colleagues to use them in other contexts, to implement them during lessons, and we have a post-survey and open-door lessons where teachers shared their experience and presented how they can apply in the class what they have learned during courses. What worked well? I can tell you head teacher support was essential. I am very lucky to have a great head teacher with a very open to all European projects and experiences. So, my activity was well supported. Also, I used social media, that was for me a great help. We used collaboration and group management tools like, I don't know, Google, Docs, Zoom, Meet, we used the Doodle to set up the time for the meetings. It was great to work together with colleagues by step module, by module, and I also collaborated with other English and IT teachers in school, as I'm not an English teacher, I am a science teacher, so sometimes I needed help, and sometimes when my colleagues couldn't find me they asked for help for other colleagues, English and IT teachers in school. And what didn't work so well? Of course, every teacher knows that there is always lack of time, or maybe sometimes lack of time management skills. IT and internet surfing skills were needed for taking part in MOOCs. It was also a language barrier because English was not my colleague's strong point. Many of my colleagues are better in, I don't know, French language or Italian language, and English was for for they a little bit hard, but they could find help even from their children and or from their students at school. And because of a lot of media other duties at school, some colleagues lost their motivation, their self-motivation. Every teacher at some point feels a little bit overwhelmed with all the duties in the school. So this was my experience during the face-to-face phase. Now Elena. Okay. Elena, we don't hear you. Yep. It's you're still muted. Well, I hope. Now you're back. No, actually. Elena, can you hear us? Can you speak now? And sometimes the teams react very slowly. So maybe you're clicking twice because you can't, it's a brief moment where we can hear you and then it goes back to mute. So just try to click once on the microphone button and then just wait. Now we can hear you Elena. You can go on. Really? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I'll try. I don't click any longer. And I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but the problem is that it's very hot here in Italy in these days and my computer is suffering so hard for the heat. Yeah, you're very likely. We can't see the same in Brussels, so you're very scared. So I try to, yeah, to put it on presentation mode and I hope keep my finger crossed that you can hear me from here and forever. Well, as Christina said, well, I took the, well, I worked on this pilot in my school too and my experience is more or less the same experience as Christina with some little difference. The first big difference is that I implemented the school-based case study at Lava Bassi, which is my school, but also I implemented the case study at regional level. I work, well, I work both at a secondary school and at the regional office of the Ministry of Education in Italy. So with my colleagues in school, I work with them, I talk with them. This MOOC, Introducing Project Based Learning in your classroom, that was an already existing MOOC, a closed MOOC. So what we did at school was to take a MOOC, which wasn't really and effectively running, but the result was the same because I did more or less, I took more or less the same steps that Christina took and the main challenges I faced were the same challenges. The first one was time. Teachers were very busy at the moment when we took the MOOC, but I have to say that there's no good period of time to take a course, to take a MOOC. My colleagues said, well, yeah, it's a very busy period, but there's no good period. So the problem was the challenge was that they couldn't do the homework, the activities that the MOOC had and promoted. As for Christina, English is a problem. For a lot of Italian teachers, English is not the most favorite language. Not for everyone, of course. The younger teachers are quite familiar with English, but not the older. So they had this problem and also ICT was a problem. I have to say that we took this course in 2019, so before pandemic, before distance learning, and I have to say that at that time, ICT was a bigger problem than now, but at that period of time, at that moment, yes, ICT was a problem. So how could I do? So I tried to face and to find solutions to these challenges, and the first one was to create a group of teachers who worked and did activities together. During the onsite meetings, we organized four face-to-face meetings to take the four modules of the MOOC itself. This solution, of course, led to the need for reshaping of the path, because I had to summarize the main concepts I had to provide time for reflection on the topics, and I had to give time to teachers to develop the activities during the meetings themselves. And also, the solution to meet together and to take the MOOC together was that meeting face-to-face helped the teachers with less language and or ICT skills, because there was always someone who could give a hand, who could translate some difficult passages, who could help those teachers with less ICT skills. So what worked well for me, the same as for Christina, this is the real voice of my fellow colleagues. My colleagues said that it has been important to meet together to follow the course. Why? Well, because, of course, working together is much more enjoyable, but it is also true that it is much more productive, because working together obliges you to go further, and you cannot give up so easily. And, of course, having a tutor who helps you and guides you throughout the course is very useful. You can always address to the tutor, you can always ask the tutor to explain, to clarify, to help you. And another very strong point, positive point, is that my colleagues said that they appreciated a lot the use of short videos that helped the reflection. In a short time they gave useful food for thought, or they illustrated how to use some educational tools. So these were the main positive aspects. But, of course, as Christina said, not everything went well, and the biggest problem, as I've already said before, is time. Time constraints, both at school, at a personal level, prevent the completion of the activities. But I have to say that thanks to this way of taking the MOOC, the course, we reached the percentage of more than 50% of teachers completing the course, which was something very positive for us. All the teachers participated in the meetings, in the activities at school, but only, which is not only, in my opinion, more than 50% completed the course. And, to be specific, I've already said about it. So, as Christina said before, now you've got the floor. And you can say, European, your thoughts, your idea about taking online courses with other colleagues. So, if you want to write down something on the padlet, you've got here the address, the link to the padlet. It's very easy, and you can write down your opinion. You can see here the padlet. Please do tell us your experience if you have ever taken an online course with other colleagues. If you would like to try this way of training, and if yes, what would you like to find in such an experience? Have you ever thought about taking a course, an online course together with your colleagues? So, please do tell us your opinion, your experience. I don't know if someone has put the link. I did that enough. Yeah, okay. So, if you want to tell us, right now, your opinion about taking online courses together with other colleagues. Don't be shy. We are very looking forward to hearing and to listening and to reading from you. If I may say, Elena, from the chat and from the comments I see on the chat, I think that participants indeed have joined the online MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, and they really like this self-paced element, the fact that you can develop yourself professionally in your own pace. So, I'm sure they have something to say on that. Yeah, I'm sure too. Well, as we can come back to this padlet at the end of this webinar, I invite you to write something there, and perhaps we can come back to our presentation and see the results, see the opinions of the participants quite at the end of the webinar. Okay. So, here you are, and the floor is yours, Christina. Thank you, Elena. I will share now with you the experience in the second phase, the online phase that started with the period of the pandemic, of the COVID-19 pandemic. I must confess, we couldn't work at all during the first period. I don't know in April, May, June of 2020, when all the teachers were like in a shock because the pandemic and the changes they needed to do to move the school online. So, not many of them were interested in online courses at that point because they were overwhelmed with all of the changes, at least that was the case in my school. But starting September, all teachers got well rested during the summer and they realized that the courses can help them to organize a better online space, a better online school for their students. So, we joined again courses on School Education Gateway Teacher Academy, but this time as we couldn't meet in school, I have created a Facebook group. It was more than 100 members, not only from my school, but when I started working with my colleagues, more teachers from different parts of Romania and even in Republic of Moldova were interested as we were talking in Romanian language and we did some Zoom meetings. I registered some video tutorials for them in Romanian language. Every week on Monday when a new module started, I went through it through the content I pointed out when they needed to take part in a webinar like this one or what they have to do for the tasks in that module. I helped them with using the padlet or other tools that were needed for the modules in the course. I used the Facebook group for announcements and polls for news and articles for questions and answers for my colleagues. So, I can say the Facebook page was also a great one. About 57% of the teachers involved in studying for the MOOC in our Facebook group were successful. They finished the course and obtained the certificate for it. So, it was a different experience but not a very bad one. It was also a good interaction and we worked together very well. Of course, I needed help. I have two colleagues that were administrators of the group together with me and when I couldn't be available, they helped other colleagues. It was also a teamwork. Okay, so my experience was more or less the same again because the first months were really shocking but thanks to the platform we use at regional level to deliver courses, we decided to go online and to MOOC together and to take MOOC together via Google Meet. Google Meet is the tool we use, the platform we use to deliver courses, to do video conferences and this time we took another MOOC together but this time it was a real MOOC, an effective running MOOC, always about project-based learning, project-based learning to enhance key competencies and we took it at the end of September and the result was really, really encouraging because if I've said before that thanks to the face-to-face meetings to take and taking the MOOC together, we reached more than 50% of teachers completing the course. In this case, more than 80% of teachers could complete the course. They were very happy, you see here, well I said please smile but they really, they were really, really happy to with this new way for them to try and to take MOOC and thanks to this regional platform as I said before, I can reach a regional group of teachers and digital trainers and so I could create a sort of middle management staff who could implement this course and could replicate this way of training of taking professional development and meet environment. The audience was broader because we could reach a broader audience, a broader number of teachers and I repeat above all digital trainers. So as Christina said, we shared presentations, outlets, learning diaries, learning outcomes, so the interaction was really, really positive and productive and another added value of this implementation, this kind of activity was that starting from the beginning of this year, our regional office decided to officially recognize any MOOC of Teacher Academy, European School Net Academy, it winning any MOOC taken by teachers from our region. We decided to create a sort of pathway, another sort of course, which is actually a tutoring, a facilitating and an accompanying pathway for teachers who are taking any of these courses. So we try to combine both aspects of taking MOOC together, but as the experience is growing very, very fast, we are trying to realize this sort of tutoring to help teachers to take the MOOC autonomously, but at the same time having someone, a tutor who helps them, accompanies them in the pathway, in the progression of the course itself. And well, I don't want to spend much time on this, but I think that the presentation will be shared after this webinar, and if you want to listen or to read the opinions and the reflections of the participants in this experience, well, you can have access and you can easily see what they have said and written. Christina. Thank you, Elena. On this slide, you can see some advice from both of us, from our combined experience during the pilot project. So what advice for other schools we have, start with a survey on the school staff needs on professional development. This way, you know which course is more interesting for your colleague. Designate a responsible person to monitor the whole team's progress in the course development. Together, everybody achieves more. Set up group studies as participants can support and motivate each other. Be very careful with time management tasks and deadlines for the course chosen and create repositories with the material created in order to make use of them in other educational contests that can be very valuable for the whole school. I can tell you we could use the materials and also the new pedagogical methods. For example, we also participated in a project-based learning course and in learning with creativity. And what we have learned there, we could use also in our is Erasmus Plus project. We would use in extracurricular activities, but also, as I said, in setting the online lessons and in face-to-face lessons in class. So we could use in a lot of context what we have learned during the months. Yeah, and as I said before, now it's time. I've seen that you haven't been so shy at the same time at the beginning, and you have written quite a lot. Yeah, and some of you are, as Evie said before, some of you are quite familiar with MOOCs, and yeah, I saw in the chat also that some of you said that the best and the most positive aspect is the peer review. And actually, working together with a group of colleagues, with a group of teachers from your region, from your country, already gives you a sort of peer review. So I think that this case study has been a great opportunity to test with our colleagues the importance of working together, of having a peer review, and try to learn new ways of training and to taking professional development. So yeah, and some comments here at the beginning, it was it was impossible to add posts. So a lot of colleagues, participants put comments that yeah, you see yeah, the idea is go through all the possibilities, the opportunities, both from technology, ICT point of view, and also, and of course, methodological point of view. So I think that the idea is of interest for a lot of you. Okay, so we can come back to the slide, to the presentation, and as Benjamin and Evie and Christina said at the beginning, I think that taking this MOOC, it could be a good opportunity to deepen, to reflect on this way of learning together. And from a personal point of view, I must say to you that I'm a little bit, well, I'm proud of this course also because the picture of the cover of the course is the group of my colleagues taking the MOOC together. So I have to say a big, big thanks to them because without them, the experience and the pilot wouldn't have been possible. So thanks to all my colleagues. And this is a part of my school to sum up. The idea that we had is let's MOOC together because together we can, just to paraphrase another much more important personality. Many thanks, Elena. Many thanks, Christina. Thank you both for sharing this experience you had. It's very interesting to see. I would like to invite participants to post any questions they may have in the chat for you so I can address them. I have also one question myself actually. I would like to ask you if you saw, probably you saw, but I would like you to hear from you. What was the difference that you saw in the school culture because we joined this activity? Did you see this collaborative element flourishing because of this initiative? Did you collaborate it also on other activities or on other projects because of these new relationships that you started building with your colleagues? So it's interesting to hear that thing, but as well. Christina, would you like to go first? Yes, sure. Yes, I've seen a change. My colleagues are more confident in sharing between them, in involving each other in other projects because they've seen the results are great when we work together as a team. So yeah, there were positive changes for my school after the involvement in this pilot project and thank you very much for that, to school education gateway. Yeah, the same for me and for my school and for my group of regional teachers because in an ideal world we all agree about the importance of collaboration, but when you have to do it really and in practice, then you discover the importance and some aspects that you don't have taken into account. So yes, for me too, it has been really really important and for instance, working on Erasmus Plus projects, e-twinning projects. Thanks to the participation in this pilot, in this experience has helped a lot of my colleagues to involve themselves deeper and deeper in other projects of our school. Excellent, many thanks then for sharing this experience with us. Before closing, I would like to go back to this call that Ben mentioned also at the beginning. So we invite teachers to apply and join a new group that we are about to create. The group of pilot teachers, I don't know if you've seen my screen, yeah okay you see my screen as well. So the group of pilot teachers will focus on defining and implementing actions, supporting other teachers who lack relevant skills to benefit from the school education gateway and e-twinning online professional development offer. Encourage those who would normally be less interested in participating in such professional development formats and recognize the work of those who successfully do. So this new pilot will continue actually the work presented by exploring innovative formats and activities that can facilitate the use of e-twinning at school education gateway professional development at school level and it also aims at facilitating the use of other professional development formats that are offered across the two platforms, for example short courses or restricted courses or webinar series or webinars etc. The exact activities will be determined together with the pilot school selected but the idea is that we establish a longer term group of pilot schools that we can rely on for developing and innovating the professional development offer across e-twinning and school education gateway. So what are the main tasks that this group of teachers will be asked to carry? First one is to participate in a one-day workshop in the future classroom lab happening in Brussels and plan to take place in December if measures allow it hopefully and then plan and implement a set of pilot actions at school original level, support the creation of resources that will serve as a guide to other teachers and schools who want to benefit from school education gateway and e-twinning professional development offer, participate in semi-regular online meetings with the coordinator of the pilot to allow for a more enriching exchange of experience and knowledge and provide feedback and evaluation data via online questionnaires and interviews. But if you are interested to join this group of teachers you have to qualify so you have to have this selection criteria so you have to be a teacher at a school that currently holds the e-twinning schools label be proficient have a proficient knowledge of English be available to travel to Brussels and participate in the workshop and also in the semi-regular online meetings be an active and experienced teacher who is already taking or willing to take an active role in the development of their school and have the explicit support of your school leader be active on social media so you can disseminate this news to other teachers and increase the engagement and have an interest in becoming a mentor to support other teachers during the life cycle of this pilot group and maybe because you will need there might be a possibility to you will be asked to create something we would like you to have some relevant content creation skills and as you understand the benefits are quite obvious I would say you will have an opportunity to be a member of the selected group for this activity of the school education gateway and e-twinning and test out new professional development format formats you have the opportunity to participate in in a workshop happening at the future classroom lab with all the travel and accommodation cost of course covered and you will have the possibility to be part of an international community of teachers whose work will be disseminated through the two platforms and through the channels of the two platforms and thereby gaining more visibility and recognition at international level and of course also having the opportunity to get your previous work on school education gateway and e-twinning more recognized at school level and inspire colleagues with the support of the group and maybe also learn something through this through this group as you will join a group of like-minded colleagues who all have the same interests to participate so here you have the application form and I'm going to share the link also in the chat the deadline to apply for this group is the 15th of September so please feel free to submit to fill in the form and join us in this group and we will be more than happy to welcome you and work with you in this activity please note that a specific number of people will be selected 10 teachers so everybody will be notified for the result until the end of September after the deadline so I think that's it from from us I don't know Elena Ben or Cristina if you have a final word on this presentation if you want to share something else with the participants well from my side a great thanks to the school education gateway to all of you and thanks for having this fantastic opportunity to to experiment to try to learn and to to learn together which is the most important way of learning in my opinion I would also like to encourage the participants my colleagues to to register for this great opportunity to become like we all like to say a pilot teacher we were the pilot but we are always happy to to receive more more teachers in our group in our great group of friends we are already a group of friends working together in a great project thank you very much thank you both then I see some comments in the chat already asking about if you can apply if you read the the information in the form I think you will and the criteria that you have to to fulfill in order to apply I think it will be clear for you so yeah please apply we would be more than happy to receive your application and many thanks for joining this webinar we wish you to have a nice summertime a very well-deserved summer holidays as we are approaching the end of the school years in most of the European countries and yeah many thanks for joining us thank you Christina thank you Elena have a lovely lovely evening and we will stay in touch thank you indeed bye bye bye have a nice summer thanks everyone bye