BLOOM Bioeconomy MOOC: 823 participants impacting close to 10,000 students
Hosted on the European Schoolnet Academy, the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) “Boosting Bioeconomy Knowledge in Schools” stared on 4th March 2019 and finished on 11th April 2019.
Divided into 4 modules, and targeting educators, the MOOC aimed to give a fresh perspective into the bioeconomy field and its application in STEM subjects.
With a high number of registrations, the course indicated a clear interest in bioeconomy among teachers in Europe and beyond. In total, the MOOC received 1,503 registrations from 46 countries. 823 registrants followed the course, and a total of 264 course-participants completed the MOOC activities and received the course certificate and badge. Based on the participation numbers, the course has indirectly impacted close to 10,000 students from across Europe and the world.
According to the pre-course survey, more than half of the participants had never used bioeconomy in the classroom before taking the course. This explains why for most of them (62%), the main motivation for enrolling in the MOOC was to learn about bioeconomy in general (62%). The majority of them also wanted to improve their classroom practice (70%), to learn about how bioeconomy can be included in STEM teaching (61%), and to discover more about the Bloom project (45%).
In the course of the MOOC, participants’ self-assessed understanding of bioeconomy had improved considerably, from 22% to 92%. Besides, 94% of post-survey respondents declared to now understand how to teach bioeconomy following the course. 94% of them also agreed that they know more about how to include bioeconomy in different STEM subjects after completing the course and 97% agreed that they now know where to find bioeconomy teaching materials. Overall, participants of the MOOC seemed satisfied. 96% of the post-course survey respondents would recommend the course to a colleague or a friend.
Even though the course is now over, it will remain available on the European Schoolnet Academy platform for an indeterminate amount of time, open to anyone who wishes to access its content.
With a view to ensuring long-term accessibility of these resources, the BLOOM MOOC will also be transferred to an editable format and included in the Scientix Repository – a Europe-wide repository of STEM education resources whose role is to ensure that these important tools remain available long after the funding period.
