Final Report Summary - ENGINEER (brEaking New Ground IN the sciencE Education Realm)
Executive Summary:
This document provides information about the FP7 ENGINEER (BrEaking New Ground IN the SciencE Education Realm) project, funded under the EC contract № 288989.
The teaching of science in schools has been the focus of much attention on a national, European and international level in recent years. There is strong evidence of the declining interest of young people in science topics taught in schools. This trend raises serious concerns for Europe’s future ability to meet the challenges of the knowledge-based economy. A shared consensus among experts in science education views inquiry based science education (IBSE) as an effective form of pedagogy that will engender the kind of real student interest needed for a turnaround in this area.
The coordinator of the ENGINEER project is the Bloomfield Science Museum, Jerusalem Israel (BSMJ). The consortium consists of partners from ten science museums and ten elementary schools in ten European and associate countries. These organisations worked together in teams entitled ‘Museum’ and ‘School’, with the academic support of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the Boston Museum of Science (BMOS).
The ENGINEER project took inquiry based science education (IBSE) methods one step forward and introduced engineering design challenges as its core feature. It was based on the experience and proven success in the US over the last ten years of the "Engineering in Elementary" (EiE) program developed by BMOS. The ENGINEER project aimed to introduce engineering to the European education system, as part of the science curriculum, starting from an early age in primary schools. The ENGINEER project adopted EiE's five-steps of the Engineering Design Process (EDP): Ask; Imagine; Plan; Create and Improve in which students follow the process to develop, build and test model solutions to specific practical problems.
The ENGINEER consortium developed ten different engineering challenges in ten different engineering fields connected to the science curricula taught in primary schools in Europe. The challenges were carefully chosen to be relevant to students in the different countries. All engineering school units were supported by teacher guides and teacher training programs. The ten museum partners also developed museum programs for school visits and workshops on engineering topics for the general public as part of the museum‘s program to visitors. All the materials were translated into ten different languages and are available for free on the project website (www.engineer-project.eu) on Scientix and on partners’ websites.
A democraticevaluation process of the ENGINEER project, applied by University of West England (UWE), assessed the experiences, impacts and effects at all levels of the project, with a particular emphasis on the young learner. The inputs received from the evaluation reports, as well as from the assessment process of the pilot stage of the project, helped the partners to fine tune and revise the materials they developed in the second period of the project.
An extensive outreach activity program was operational in each of the ten countries targeted at disseminating the Engineering School Units to more teachers, teacher trainers and schools. The outreach plan aimed to encourage teachers, trained in inquiry-based pedagogic methods, to implement the use of the engineering units in the classroom. The outreach program exceeded the target numbers. Over 1,000 schools were involved; 1,400 teachers participated in teachers training; and more than 25,000 people participated in one of the engineering workshops.
An important goal of ENGINEER project was to make a change in the attitude toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education. It aimed to introduce engineering education to local and national policy makers and to lobby European decision-makers to deepen their support for the widespread introduction of engineering into the teaching of science in schools and museums, promoting ENGINEER‘s programme as a practical and proven way of teaching science. More than 500 advocacy activities were organised by the partners. Thanks to the great amount of advocacy and dissemination activities, led by ECSITE, the European network of science centres and museums, the project contributed to raising interest in the Engineering part of STEM education by formal education, industry and informal education.
Project Context and Objectives:
The ENGINEER project objectives were to:
• Adapt for European usage EiE’s EDP, which has been shown to increase children’s technology literacy and raise their interest in science.
• Develop new engineering design challenges suited to European contexts.
• Adapt and develop teacher training materials that will increase primary school educators’ ability to teach engineering and technology to their students using IBSE pedagogic methods
• Strengthen the cooperation between schools and informal science learning institutions and enrich formal science education with informal experiences in the science museums.
• Undertake advocacy activities to promote the long term goal of integrating engineering into science teaching in primary schools throughout Europe.
• Plan and implement an extensive outreach program
• Raise the awareness about the ENGINEER project to support the outreach campaign
In order to start the project Manchester Metropolitan University ( MMU) (WP2) first designed, delivered and analysed a survey of science curricula and pedagogies across the consortium in order to identify appropriate science topics within each country’s curriculum for development as engineering challenges. This led to a prioritisation of the range of science topics and engineering fields which would appeal to all children, boys and girls. Next, it developed a strategy for supporting partners in ten countries to develop their units. The central team produced a prototype unit in order to understand what processes were involved in the development of a new design challenge unit and a unit design template for partners to build on. Emphasis in unit design was placed on the use of inexpensive local materials to support the engineering design challenge component of each unit, differentiation for a range of abilities, and appropriate science and pedagogic support for teachers. School units were also subsequently adapted as shorter museum activities for school classes based on the EDP.
The development of the template for the challenge units was made in in two rounds. A first version of the template was presented to the partners in order to obtain their feedback. The template was adapted as a result of this feedback. The template was then used by the partners in their first submission of the challenge units and the pilot. In a second round, for the submission during a meeting in Sweden, the work package leaders decided on the final design and structure of the template for the teacher guide. The ten countries were divided into five pairs who worked together in the development and testing stages.
Additionally, a template for the Professional Development Guide (PDG) was developed along with workshop plans for teachers and teacher trainers by NEMO science centre Amsterdam (WP3). The template for the PDG was presented to the partners during a workshop in Amsterdam and then adapted following feedback. During the pilot stage four museums tested the training workshop for teachers and the professional development guide in which the workshop plans are written. The ten PDG's were used as part of a training handbook for teacher training but they were also developed as standalone tool for future use by teachers to be able to use without training. NEMO also developed a modular format for the Teacher Training Workshop that could be tailored by each country according to local conditions. All workshops were hands-on and introduced the EDP to teachers by ensuring that they carried out the activities themselves.
The pilot stage led by Museo Nazionale della Scienzw e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Millano MUST (WP4) began with the Pilot Workshop which was held in Amsterdam and hosted by NEMO (8-11/10/2012). The aim of the workshop was to train participants in the engineering units and teacher training materials for use in school and in museums. Each museum obtained all the materials of the kits and the teacher guide. Each country team consisting of a museum and a school tested two units : the one that they had developed and the one their "partner country" team developed, to clarify the necessary changes to improve the units, with the support of MMU and BMOS.
Following the workshop, the partners started the pilot stage involving the delivery of the engineering units in schools, the teacher training workshops in four museums and engineering activities in museums (November 2012 – May 2013). This provided a range of feedback on the activities including teacher logs, observation sheets and teacher interviews.
Each school tested two units: the one they developed in collaboration with their museum partner and another from their partner country. Each museum tested the unit they developed.
The second period of ENGINEER project was devoted to the revision of the ten engineering design challenges (WP2), the revision of the teacher training materials and workshops (WP3) and finalising the pilot stage (WP4). The detailed feedback from the pilot stage, produced and developed by MUST and MMU, as well as the evaluation data gathered by UWE, gave a lot of insights into what needed to be revised. A post-pilot workshop was held in Milan which enabled the museum and school teams to discuss their units with their partner country, with the EiE team from BMOS and with the MMU team (consisting of two WP leaders, three teacher educators in science and design and technology and one design and technology technician). MMU worked with WP4 leaders to plan the workshop and devise tasks which would help unit developers to understand pedagogy issues and how to improve their units. After the revision of the engineering units and Pedagogic Development Guide (PDG), all materials underwent a process of English (ICASE) pedagogic and science editing provided by MMU. BMOS provided support and ideas from their experience on how to operate engineering challenges in a museum environment.
A democratic evaluation process of the ENGINEER project, applied by University of West England (UWE), assessed the experiences, impacts and effects at all levels of the project, with a particular emphasis on the young learner. The inputs received from the evaluation reports helped the partners to fine tune and revise the materials they developed.
One of the main objectives of the project was the planning and implementation of an extensive outreach program (WP5) led by Teknikens Hus (TSC). The partners invested extensively in the recruitment of targeted schools, teachers, teacher trainers and the general public. The main activity has been the extensive teacher training programs in all ten countries, using the PDG's. This focused on introducing the use of engineering units as part of science teaching in schools and supporting teachers with kits of materials. At the same time, all the museum partners implemented as part of their museum activities, school programs and family workshops that were all based on lessons from the engineering units and focused on one or more of the EDP stages.
Another main objective was to raise awareness about ENGINEER project to support the outreach campaign. The partners initiated many disseminations activities on local, national and European levels (WP7 led by Conservatoire National des Arts at Metiers (CNAM). The main tools were printed brochures and posters; news and events on the websites, newsletters, a Facebook page of the partners; articles and publications, conference presentations, special meetings and professional workshops. The main dissemination activity of ENGINEER programme to other science museums was at the 2014 ECSITE annual conference in the Hague with a preconference workshop for museum educators and guides, a main session presentation and participation in the open market showcase of all the museums units.
ENGINEER advocacy efforts were crucial in moving from the successful introduction of engineering in schools and museums in partner countries to a more comprehensive introduction of engineering into formal and informal science education throughout Europe. Advocacy activities, aimed at each of the target constituencies identified in the advocacy action plan, took place in each of the partner countries. ECSITE, as the leader of the advocacy program (WP8), with the support of BMOS, carried out a range of activities including: a workshop for all museum partners, guidelines for national and local advocacy plans and useful materials (such as an easily translatable leaflet, a booklet as a real interactive object that was sent to science education networks and a video that was published on the website and used in European events). BMOS President, Ioannis Miaoulis, attended many meeting in Europe to discuss and promote ENGINEER project. As part of the ECSITE 2014 conference, ECSITE organised a high level event together with NEMO for policymakers and directors of science centres and museums who are in a position to influence national and European policies.
Project Results:
WP1: Project management (WP Leader: BSMJ)
In order to ensure smooth progress within the ENGINEER project and contribute to its success, an efficient management structure set up to oversee the activities of the project, take the appropriate strategic and day-to-day decisions required, and apply suitable corrective actions when needed. Management involved two main areas – technical and administrative tasks. Technical leadership assured that the consortium executes the project work plan. Administrative leadership assured that appropriate project documentation is delivered to the Commission. This includes all areas of financial management.
WP2: Adaptation/Development of Engineering Design Challenges (WP Leader: MMU)
The main goal of this work package was to develop 10 new engineering design challenge units based on the EiE‘s Engineering Design Process (EDP) model (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve). – Students identified a particular problem, brainstormed for ideas, and chose one idea to develop, built a model using a carefully chosen set of inexpensive materials, and refined the completed design. The content of each engineering design challenge unit was connected to a specific engineering field (e.g. civil engineering, chemical engineering, food engineering, environment engineering, and mechanical engineering). Each unit included an introductory lesson on the specific engineering field and its links to science and maths, followed by three class sessions that deal with a practical design challenge taken from the children‘s everyday environment. WP2 began with a workshop supported by BMOS, where BMOS leaders shared their knowledge and experience in developing and running engineering programs for elementary school teachers in the USA.
Starting with an EiE unit dealing with a particular engineering field, each team (science museum professionals, science teachers and academic experts in curriculum development and IBSE methods) developed a new engineering design challenge. The teams were assisted by local advisory boards, made up by local engineering practitioners and researchers, specializing in the different engineering fields that relate to each unit. Development conducted in two phases: 1) Development of an initial version to be piloted; then after pilot results are evaluated 2) a second phase to allow fine-tuning, improvements and additional local adjustments to the units prior to their use in widespread outreach activities. Special attention was given to issues of translation and cross cultural transfer. Each museum translated the units developed by other teams of museums and schools to their own native language with due consideration of local social and cultural context and cross cultural transfer of meaning.
The ten museum partners have also developed museum programs for schools visits, and workshops on engineering topics for the general public, as part of the museum‘s program to visitors, based on one or more steps of the EDP of the Engineering design units.
All materials developed are accessible, modular, flexible, and translated for use across countries and are web downloadable.
WP3: Adaptation/Development of Teacher Training Materials (WP Leader: NEMO)
The goals of this work package were to adapt and develop teacher training materials that will enable science teachers to effectively use the engineering units employing inquiry-based pedagogical methods. There were two types of teacher training materials: 1. Professional development guides to be used in teacher training workshops (adapted from EiE teacher guides); 2. Teacher guides, designed for use by teachers when introducing engineering units into their classrooms. The teacher guides are designed both for teachers who took part in the training workshops and for teachers outside the project. They are available for free download by all European teachers at the ENGINEER portal (developed in WP8) and at the SCIENTIX portal as well as the museums’ websites.
Materials kits that include the materials needed for doing the design challenges in all the units also distributed by each science museum to trained teachers interested in using the units in their classrooms. In addition, a list of all the materials that are needed for the unit included.
The professional development guides used in the teacher training workshops were closely adapted from EiE guides, and benefited from the best practices, teacher tips and lessons learned there to foster understanding of the engineering and technology content and pedagogy.
Each museum translated the teacher guides developed by other teams of museums and schools to their own native language with due consideration of local social and cultural context and cross cultural transfer of meaning.
WP4: Pilots (WP leader: MUST)
An important part of the project is the pilot experimentation of the outputs of WP2 and WP3. These were tested through pilot activities which carried out by the 10 schools and 10 science museums. Each school tested 2 units: the one they developed in collaboration with museums and the other from their partner country. Each museum tested the unit they developed.
The pilot began with a one-week kick-off workshop with all project partners. At least one teacher from each partner school participated in the workshop (according to the constraints of each school in terms of substitute teachers, etc.), and transferred the knowledge to his/her colleagues on his/her return to school. Those teachers that participate in this workshop became teacher trainers during outreach.
The workshop aimed to train participants in the educational materials that are developed by the project for use at school and in museums. In particular, the workshop focused on: Successful strategies for integrating engineering in the science curriculum; Experimentation of the activities and methodologies by the participants, with the help of the BMOS staff; Group evaluation; Presentation and discussion of working with students in classes; and engineering challenges and issues of gender.
WP5: Outreach (WP leader: TH)
ENGINEER aimed at conducting an extensive outreach program that took place in the ten EU Member States/Associate States participating in the project, in primary schools and science museums. The outreach program targeted schools, teachers and teacher trainers as well as museums visitors.
WP6: Evaluation (WP leader: UWE)
WP6 applied a democratic evaluation’s approach, which seeks to assess experiences, impacts and effects at all levels, but with a particular emphasis on teachers and students. Whilst providing independent evaluative analysis in conventional summative terms, it also provided a level of formative critical friendship’s to the project team. The evaluation was appropriately informed by relevant academic research on: science education; inquiry based pedagogic approaches; science and gender. It also drew upon evaluative work pertaining to the US EiE program and to school-museum partnerships.
WP7: Dissemination (WP leader: CNAM)
ENGINEER dissemination plan aimed at multiple relevant targets, including primary level science teachers and school headmasters, science centres and museums, primary level students and their parents, science education networks and associations, the science education research community, relevant local, national and EU authorities, and the general public. Dissemination efforts therefore varied depending on the target audience. The dissemination activities were designed to raise awareness to the project and advertise its goals and programs. They therefore complemented the extensive outreach activities (WP5) and were reinforced by an advocacy campaign (WP8) aimed at key policy makers and constituencies such as local authorities, national Ministries of Education, EU representatives, and the relevant engineering societies.
Dissemination activities included presentation of results at scientific workshops and conferences, contributions to journals and conferences, management and distribution of a repository of project documentation including brochures and posters for stands, and the establishment and maintenance of a project web portal.
WP8: Advocacy (WP leader: ECSITE)
ENGINEER advocacy effort is crucial to moving from the successful introduction of engineering in school and museums in the participating European/Associate State country partners during the project‘s outreach stage to a more comprehensive introduction of engineering into formal and informal science education throughout Europe.
While dissemination focused on publicizing and distributing the engineering program and its benefits, the advocacy WP undertook lobbying efforts aimed at persuading decision-makers to support the widespread introduction of engineering into schools and museums. Policy-makers need to be persuaded of ENGINEER‘s potential value in reversing the serious decline in European student interest in science, math, and engineering subjects and careers.
Five European constituencies were targeted: local and national representatives of each partner‘s Ministry of Education; policy makers at the EU-level; science centre directors and senior staff; university professors and staff; and industry representatives.
The purpose of the following section is to provide a summary of project results and achievements with regard to each work package activities.
WP1 – Project Management (WP Leader : BSMJ)
The Coordinator (BSMJ), with the support of the Project Office (ART), were responsible for establishing the management infrastructure and project management tools, including the internal website (D1.1). Additionally they carried out the contractual and financial management of the project, including maintenance of the Consortium Agreement and follow-up of the progress and contractual obligations (reporting, deliverable issuing and resources). Through WP 1 a Project Management and Quality Assurance Manual (D1.2) was created and all reports were reviewed and verified for consistency with the projects tasks before transmitting them to the commission. The coordinator was responsible for the process of identifying legal and ethical requirements for the project in each country and obtaining the necessary approvals by competent local/national ethics committees following national data protections laws and providing the EC with all the ethical approvals before starting the pilot stage in schools (D1.3).
There was a smooth and effective cooperation between the partners, ensured by frequent communication by mail, tele/web conferences and face-to-face meetings approximately every three months. Simple and effective reporting and control tools were developed in order to facilitate project monitoring and progress control. The coordinator provided global project coordination with the aim to meet the project schedule and objectives. The coordinator ensured that the scientific content of deliverables and publications for dissemination met the necessary requirements and carried out quality and technical reviews of the deliverables. Additionally, the coordinator ensured that the work plan was fulfilled and supported by Work Package Leaders in their Work Package management, helping them to find solutions to problems and unforeseen obstacles
A financial monitoring tool was used to keep track of payments and expenses and compare planned effort and budget with the actual in order to ensure an adequate use of resources. Both the technical and the administrative management were flexible and adapted for the current needs of the consortium. All EC requirements and guidelines are monitored by the Project Office and communicated to the partners, in order to assure that they are effectively implemented and followed.
The Project Office took care of archiving deliverables on the internal platform, regularly following up and updating the consortium communication tools, providing assistance for all financial and administrative-related issues to the whole consortium and following up on the preparation and submission of deliverables due and submitted during the period. The Project Office constantly liaised with the Coordinator on these tasks.
The Coordinator was also responsible for communication with the Project Advisory Board. The board were updated regularly on the project’s progress and participated in two consortium meetings – the Pre-Pilot meeting in Amsterdam and the After-Pilot workshop in Milan.
The Coordinator and the Project Office were responsible for the planning, organisation and follow-up of all project meetings together with the hosting partner for each meeting. Meeting logistics, including the planning of dates, drafting and circulation of agenda, recommendations for required preparation from the partners, registration, logistics, meeting facilitation and preparation of meeting minutes was carried out by the Project Office. All meetings were registered on the ENGINEER internal website, together with the related presentations, preparatory documents, agenda and minutes.
WP2: Adaptation/Development of Engineering Design Challenges (WP Leader: MMU)
The development of ten school units
WP2 led and supported the development of ten new engineering design challenges (D 2.3) based on BMOS’ Engineering is Elementary model of inquiry-based learning, producing ten stand-alone units embedded in detailed teacher guides with supporting science notes targeting the learning needs and developmental stage of primary school children. Guides were sufficiently detailed to be used by non-specialist teachers. The emphasis in unit design is on the use of inexpensive local materials to support the engineering design challenge component of each unit, differentiation for a range of abilities, and appropriate science and pedagogic support for teachers. Units were also deliberately designed to be gender inclusive in terms of the range of topics covered (a wide range of engineering contexts and problems), their non-competitive and collaborative approach, and the provision of support for teachers for maintaining equality between children in their team working. The final range covered the following engineering fields and topics:
Country Engineering field Science Field Unit name Design problem/context
Israel Biomedical engineering Human body, Respiratory system Huff and puff: Designing a device for measuring exhalation volume Build a device which can measure lung capacity to help diagnose why a friend has difficulty breathing
Italy Geotechnical engineering Geology Knee deep: Designing and constructing a water pond Understand how to build a pond to replace one that is lost in new building
Netherlands Acoustic engineering Sound Music to the ears: Designing and creating a sound generator Design a string sound generator to compose a soundtrack for a silent movie
Sweden Electrical engineering Electricity Super Sucker: Designing a machine to clean up litter Build a vacuum cleaner to clean up the classroom quickly
Czech Republic Agricultural engineering Plants Life support: Direct water flow to plants Design a system to water plants to support life on a new planet.
Denmark Materials engineering Materials, heat transfer, insulation and methods in science Frisky feet: Winter-proof a pair of shoes
Design insulated shoe soles when the baggage goes missing on a trip to Greenland.
Greece Ocean/Marine engineering Sinking and Floating High and dry: Protecting objects on a floating platform Build a floating platform to transport belongings to an island without getting them wet.
France Mechanical engineering Simple Mechanics
Energy Popular mechanics: Becoming a designer of machines
Design mechanical toys for children in Africa which tell well-known stories; design a counting machine to keep count of the numbers of children in a crowded toyshop.
UK Aeronautic engineering Forces High flyers: Building a glider with everyday materials
Build a glider to carry messages between two friends who live next door to each other
Germany Mechanical engineering Balance and Forces A fine balance: Building a hanging sculpture Design a hanging sculpture with multiple tiers for the school assembly hall.
The unit development process: collecting baseline data
To produce the units, WP2 first designed, delivered and analysed a survey of science curricula and pedagogies across the consortium in order to identify appropriate science topics within each country’s curriculum for development as engineering challenges, prioritising a spread of science topics and engineering fields which would appeal to all children, including girls. The survey identified relevant local country features which needed to be taken into account in the challenge design process, in particular pedagogic approaches, assessment structures, flexibility in curriculum and pedagogy, specific gender-related initiatives, extra-curricular activities, including work with museums, and resourcing issues. It also gathered data from museums in order to understand their connections to science curricula and their methods and resourcing for supporting science and engineering education in schools. The findings of this survey were presented in D2.1 a report detailing the primary science curriculum in all ten European participating countries. The report also included details of pedagogic practices in all ten countries, providing important insights into the presence of experience and expertise in supporting inquiry-based learning across the consortium, as well as the challenges that the ENGINEER approach might present for some countries. The report thus presented an analysis of (1) the structure of the science curriculum across the consortium; (2) patterns of pedagogy and assessment; (3) the role of the partner museums in supporting science education, and (4) a preliminary selection of EiE topics as the basis for future development. The conclusion discussed issues arising from these separate analyses, and made some observations concerning the implications for the remaining tasks in WP2. Its appendices presented country-by-country and museum-by-museum summaries of the survey results for detailed reference in the future.
The unit development process: development strategy
Following this survey, WP2 developed a strategy for supporting partners in ten countries to develop their units, producing a prototype unit in order to understand what processes were involved in the development of a new design challenge unit, and a unit design template for partners to build on (D2.2). The report contained (1) an overview of MMU’s information-gathering and discussion activities in developing a strategy for the implementation of task 2.3 the development of the ten units themselves; (2) a prototype unit designed to illustrate for partners the ENGINEER unit design aims, together with a surrounding narrative about how the unit was developed and the various considerations which need to be taken into account for local development; and (3) an account of MMU’s strategy for supporting museums and schools as they developed their units, and a proposed timeline for coordination of the work on the ten units. The conclusion summarised the strategy and discussed the implications for task 2.3 and WP3. The appendices included a digest of responses from the museums on their science project experience and the background science knowledge developed for the prototype unit.
Unit development: first phase
The unit template featured in D2.2 was developed in further collaboration with WP3 to produce the generic teacher guide template which would be the vehicle for each school unit in D2.3. Following a preliminary supported design workshop in Amsterdam, teams proceeded to develop their units, with constant feedback and support from WP2 in a phased process. WP2 coordinated targeted support for teams experiencing difficulties, involving BMOS where appropriate, holding individual support sessions via skype and in person where possible and appropriate. This process culminated in the first release of D2.3 comprising ten units embedded in teacher guides.
Unit development: pilot and revision phase
Following the first release of units, the pilot phase aimed to identify strengths and weakness of units prior to further fine tuning for the second and final release of D2.3. WP2 collaborated with WP4 on the design of pilot data collection material, and provided further support in the pilot phase. This task progressed throughout the period between M12 and M21, as partners participated in extensive piloting of the units, each country piloting their own and their teamed partner country’s unit. WP2 analysed the pilot data, and communicated with unit developers throughout this period, providing feedback on their units prior to the end of pilot workshop in M21. Teams were asked to come to the workshop with the latest version of their unit (adjusted in the light of piloting and MMU feedback). In M21 the after-pilot workshop in Milano enabled teams to discuss their units with their partner country and the MMU team of 2 WP leaders, plus 3 teacher educators in science and design and technology, plus 1 design and technology technician. MMU worked with WP4 leaders to plan the workshop and devise tasks which would help unit developers to understand pedagogy issues and how to improve their units. Unit developers continued to work on this issue after the workshop, with support as required from MMU, before delivering their units to MMU for final fine-tuning. This final stage involved pedagogic editing of all 10 units and the production of science notes for all units which were designed to support teachers, including non-specialists, to promote learning of science concepts for the target age group. The task was completed and the second release units (D2.3) were available for use in the outreach stage at the end of M28. The units are accompanied by D2.5 materials kits, which provide fully illustrated lists of the materials and quantities needed for each school unit.
The development of ten museum activities
In addition to the development of the school units, each museum adapted their school engineering design challenge to a shorter programs designed for museum visitors (D2.5). Development followed a similar process in that a template for museum activities was developed by WP3, and museums worked to this template in order to provide detailed guidance for museums. This development was supported by BMOS, who brought their museum educator expertise and experience to the process, reviewing each museum activity in order to support fine-tuning.
WP3: Adaptation/Development of Teacher Training Materials (WP Leader: NEMO)
The objectives in WP3 were to adapt and develop teacher training materials. These teacher training materials will enable science teachers to effectively use the engineering units employing inquiry based pedagogical methods. The training materials include teacher guides that will accompany the engineering design challenges as well as professional development workshops for teachers, and their related guides.
The objectives in WP3 were to adapt and develop teacher training materials that would enable teachers to effectively use the engineering design challenges. Therefore, in WP 2 and WP 3, ten teacher guides that accompany the ten engineering design challenges were designed. These are intended for teachers who before teaching the unit in class took part in teacher training as well as for teachers who didn’t participate in training but also thought a unit in class. To give teachers who wanted or needed more guidance on the didactics used in the engineering design challenges and knowledge about the science and engineering topics, teacher training was developed. In the teacher training it was important that the teachers experienced hands-on the activities for the pupils in class and then become confident about teaching one or more engineering design challenge in class.
From the Evaluation in WP 6 it was learned that teachers who participated in an ENGINEER teacher training experienced it as very useful. Although teachers did benefit from the teacher trainings both to gain subject knowledge on the science and engineering topic as in the didactic methods used in the engineering design challenges, the teacher guides are also possible to use as a stand-alone. They give sufficient explanation on the practical issues in the lessons, the content of the lessons, the context, the background information on the subject and the ideas of children on the engineering and science topic.
The ten developed professional development guides give workshop plans and guidance to educators (both museum educators and teacher trainers) about giving an ENGINEER training to teachers or teacher trainers. It consists of workshop activities which aim to let the participants experience the engineering design cycle in a hands-on way and see the activities form the engineering design challenge from a pupil view.
Task 3.1 Development of teacher guides (M10-M12, M21-M24)
The generic teacher guide that all partners used to write their engineering design challenge in, has been developed by NEMO in cooperation with MMU and BMOS. During the consortium meeting in June 2013 NEMO presented the template of the generic teacher guide. The partners gave feedback and this resulted in a final template that was sent to the partners. The partners wrote their engineering design challenge in this format of the generic teacher guide. All the ten teacher guides have been pedagogically checked by MMU and the science notes have been rewritten by MMU to make a direct link to the learning goals of each engineering design challenge. After that the layout of all ten teacher guides have been checked by NEMO and if necessary corrected. In total ten teacher guides each accompanying an engineering design challenges have been made. The teacher guides include:
• introduction about the engineering design process and pedagogy;
• lesson plans with:
o lesson overview
o objectives for the pupils
o resources
o preparation
o assessment tools
o working methods
o key ideas of the lesson
o context and background
• pupil worksheet with accompanying answer sheets;
• science notes for teachers about the science and engineering field;
• pupils ideas of the science concepts of the unit;
• if necessary concepts about the science and engineering field of the unit.
The teacher guides are a standalone tool for teachers, who will be able to use them without training. If the teachers want to follow training that is possible.
Task 3.2 Adaptation/development of professional development guides and workshops for teachers
• T3.2.1 Adaptation of EiE’s professional development guides for use in the teacher training workshops.
In the professional development guide are workshop activities for a trainings workshop for teachers and teacher trainers. The developed workshop activities are about engineering, the engineering design process, gender guidance, motivating colleagues and organizing a workshop. First NEMO has developed the pilot version of the generic professional development guide. During WP 4 four museums have piloted the professional development guides and the trainings activities in it; BMSJ, MUST, TH and NEMO. After the pilot NEMO adapted the generic professional development guide and presented it during the consortium meeting in June 2013 to all the partners. The partners gave feedback and that has resulted in a final template that has been sent to the museum partners. The museum partners wrote a workshop activity for the engineering design challenge they developed. This resulted in ten professional development guides to be used as a trainings handbook for teacher training. Each professional development guide accompanies the teacher guide belonging to the same engineering design challenge.
Because of cultural differences between the US and Europe the structure and content of the EiE’s professional development guides and the professional development guides from ENGINEER are different.
• T3.2.2 Plan the structure of the professional development workshops.
NEMO developed a modular model for the trainings workshops. The modular structure gave the partners the opportunity to construct the trainings workshops for teachers and teacher trainers according to the possibilities in their country. During WP 4 four museums have piloted the workshops activities; BMSJ, MUST, TH and NEMO.
The workshop plans are in the professional development guides that accompany the engineering design challenges. The workshop activities are hands-on; teachers will be introduced to the engineering design process by doing the activities developed for the pupils.
Task 3.3 Development of workshops for teacher trainers
The professional development guides that accompany the engineering design challenges contain the workshop plans for trainings workshops for teacher and for teacher trainers. The trainings workshop for teacher trainers is broadly the same as the trainings workshop for teachers. However the workshop for teacher trainers is extended with information about planning and executing a trainings workshop, how to approach teachers and to encourage them to participate in training and ensuring that the introduction of engineering design challenges in school can be on-going and sustainable.
WP4: Pilots (WP leader: MUST)
The main results of the WP 4 are the pilots in museum partners’ institutions and the feedback collected.
During the Pilot phase (M 15-20) museum partners tested 3 different activities:
• Teacher training workshops (4 museums: MUST, NEMO, BSMJ, TH)
• Engineer design challenges in schools (all museum and school partners)
• Engineer activities for museums (all museum partners)
The feedback system developed by MUST in collaboration with MMU have been efficient in collecting the info by the partners in the pilot phase.
On the basis of the info collected the museums in collaboration with MMU and NEMO revised and fine-tuned the activities and materials.
Partner museums in the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden tested the pilot version of the Engineering activities for museums and supported the school partners to pilot the Engineering challenges for schools (M 15-20) .
School partners tested the engineering design challenges in their classes. At least two classes per school have been involved and each school tested two Engineering challenges for schools, one to which the teacher had contributed development work in collaboration with their partner museum, and the other developed by their partner country (see D 2.2).
In the Pilots of the activities for schools and museums WP 4:
• developed the Pilot Kick off Workshop in collaboration with WP 2
• developed the Pilot feedback process in collaboration with WP 2
• supported museum partners during the Pilots, in particular in the scheduling of the activities and in the collection of feedback information
• collected all the documents on the project internal platform.
Four museum partners (MUST, NEMO, BSMJ, TH) in Italy, Netherlands, Israel and Sweden tested the pilot version of the Teacher Training Workshop and materials (TTW) offering one day workshop to a group of 5-10 teachers.
In the TTW Pilots WP 4:
- developed the Pilot Kick off Workshop in collaboration with WP 2 and WP 3
- developed the Pilot feedback process in collaboration with WP 2 and WP 3
- supported the museum during the Pilots, in particular in the scheduling of the activities and in the collection of feedback information
- collected all the documents on the ARTTIC platform.
Key elements of the Pilot phase:
• The Pilots have been a key moment for the partners in order to revise and improve the activities and materials developed in WP 2 and 3
• During the Pilots Museums: scheduled the activities in the Museum and school calendar, run the activities, observed the activities, and filled in the Feedback materials.
• The Pilot phase has been a key moment of the collaboration between schools and museums. The Schools and Museums after the development of the activities in WP 2, in the Pilots for the first time collaborated to the practice, observation and evaluation of the activities developed.
• The Pilot phase has been very demanding for the partners who have been involved at the same time in running the activity, observing it, reporting and starting to think about the further developments (Action Research supported by MUST and MMU).
• Most of the Partners efforts have been focused on the Pilots of the Engineering challenge for school more than in museums and TTW. TTW are like a result from the Engineering challenges for schools, being compose by part of the activities developed for the Challenge in school.
• The four Museums developed the TTW after the Engineer challenge for schools and the Engineering activities for museums. This happened because of the complexity of the school activities (5 lessons of about 15 hours) compared with the Museum ones (1 interactive workshop of 1 hour and 1 day teacher training). The TTW was developed on the basis of the indication of NEMO and of the Engineering challenge for schools.
WP5: Outreach (WP leader: TH)
In order to achieve objectives science museums and elementary schools consortium partners have planned and implemented an extensive outreach year in the ten EU and associated countries. In the outreach year the outreach program and recruitment efforts targeted schools and students, teachers and teacher trainers and general public. The Outreach year has been a full year of outreach activities using the refined materials for the ENGINEER project. The main activities has been extensive teacher training focusing on the use of engineering units in schools as part of the teaching of science, museum programs for schools and general public were the focus has been to give an introduction of engineering and IBSE, training of teacher trainers with focus on training of other teachers to use the ENGINNER units in schools. The partners have involved over 1000 schools in the different activities during the outreach. The activities for schools have covered school programs in the museums, teacher trainings in the museums, training of teachers’ trainers and training of teachers by the teachers’ trainers. The focus on the activities for schools have been to increase children‘s technology literacy and raise their interest in science by using the new engineering design challenges developed in the ENGINEER project.
In order to achieve the objectives the ten museum partners have implemented school programs dealing with the lessons from the engineering units, and offered them to school groups visiting the science centre/museum. The museums have also offered workshops on engineering topics to the general public visiting the museum, as part of the museum‘s offerings to general visitors. More than 25 000 people have participated in one of the Engineering workshops for schools or for general public in the 10 partner countries. There have been over 250 school group workshops and the total number of students participating in engineering school workshops during the outreach year is around 6000 students. And the total number of participants in engineering workshops for the general public during the outreach year is estimated to be more than 19 000 people. We have seen that the activities can be adapted to different countries and different museums and that the activities are popular among teachers, students and general public. One outcome from the project is also that many museums are planning for further Engineer activities in the future.
In the project an extensive teacher training has been planned and implemented by the museum and school partners. In the project the museum partners also trained teachers´ trainers to train other teachers to use the Engineer materials. The aim with the teacher trainings were to increase primary school educators‘ ability to teach engineering and technology to their students using IBSE pedagogic methods. During the outreach year over 1400 teachers participated in teacher trainings held by museums or teachers´ trainers were the focus has been on the use of engineering units in schools as part of the teaching of science. Some countries used one unit in their teacher training and presented the other units shortly and other museums used up to four different units in their trainings. From the description of the training days described by the partners we can see that “The teacher guides” and “The professional development guides” were used in the trainings. The museums did most of the trainings, more than 1100 teachers were trained by the museums and the 112 teachers´ trainers have during the outreach year trained over 300 other teachers. Some of the museums and teachers´ trainers we know have more training scheduled for next year.
One of the outcomes is that we now have a lot of trained teachers out in schools and that they have started to use the units with their students. We can see from the follow ups done by the museum partners on “The use of the units in the classroom of primary schools in partner countries” that the teachers have used or are planning use the units in schools. The outcome is that over 10 200 students have already used the units in school and that over 16 000 students will be using the units this school year. Many teachers have been trained during spring 2014 and in the last moth of the project so it is natural that they plan to use the material in the upcoming school year 2014/2015. Not all teachers have responded on the follow ups so the data are maybe counted very low. The schools that participated in the teacher trainings received the project‘s teacher guides and materials kits. Science museums and school partners have provided with ongoing support to the teachers that participated in teacher training activities. The school partners have also provided with information about the school‘s experience using ENGINEER‘s engineering units in the teaching of science and technology.
WP6: Evaluation (WP leader: UWE)
The main results of the UWE led democratic evaluation are:
• A democratic evaluation of ENGINEER which assessed the experiences, impacts and effects at all levels, with a particular emphasis on the young learner, has been applied from M7 - M36. Evaluation reports on each of the key phases of the project have been completed and submitted on time.
• Evaluators engaged in critical discussions with partners at all levels which usefully influenced the direction of the project. These most often arose from the evaluators sharing their observations and insights from field visits to various partner countries with the consortium and resulting conversations.
• The evaluation has yielded a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data which has been used to demonstrate the project’s successes against its objectives.
WP7: Dissemination (WP leader: CNAM)
The Dissemination Activities are twofold: carried out by the consortium, or carried out by each partner based on its capacities and on the results to be disseminated. Dissemination Activities are carried out with the approval of the consortium.
Procedures and Templates for the notification of Dissemination Activities within the consortium have been defined at project start, thus allowing all partners to have an overview of the elements disseminated under the ENGINEER Project.
Partners’ roles in activities were shared between for all types of activities, and the evaluation and preparation of each specific activity was fulfilled. The enlightened activities were meetings with groups of interest, attending events as exhibitors or visitors, organising or participating in symposiums or seminars, organising demonstration workshops, updating the project’s website, releasing news, contributing and advertising on professional publications and web portals and contributing to standards. For each type, a detailed list of activities was drawn to gather opportunities altogether. All activities are recorded and can be found at the Dissemination activities table in this documents.
In order to reach larger audience the public website, located at http://www.engineer-project.eu/ had been set up during the first months of the project. ENGINEER’s website constitutes one of the main communication channels within the project’s Dissemination Plan. It provides complete external visibility as it contains general information on project goals, scope, focus and work progress, as well as on consortium partners. Moreover, it is used to share information (news, events, brochures, etc.) produced throughout the project. It consists of static data, which shall remain relatively unchanged throughout the dissemination phase of the project, and dynamic data, which was constantly updated. This updating had been coordinated by the project’s dissemination leader – CNAM and BCMJ (project coordinator).
ENGINEER's website is compliant with the FP7 Guidelines for Communication on Projects.
Dissemination Tools
In addition to the above mentioned, during the second project period an animated card for the New Year had been created
Each partner received a version and was able to send it and then disseminate about the project.
ENGINEER website and its use, general aspects
During the two periods of the project, the same proportion of “new visitor” and “returning visitor” has been registered
The increasing of the number of visits could be explained by several factors: more posted items, better tracking of the website, teachers guides are published and downloaded, the development of SEO (it means a better referencing of the website), the importance of the Facebook page and other social networks, activities of all partners to send news for the project and disseminate about the project using the website.
More than 75% of traffic (including new visitors and return visitors) has been registered by the system.The most important “traffic months” are February 2014 (month of publication of teachers guides), April 2014 and September 2014 (people have downloaded many teachers guides perhaps for the new scholar year).
Figure below presents an overview of countries which have visited ENGINEER website. (the first period of the project on the left side and the second period on the right side).
Website visitors “read” the following pages of ENGINEER website:
1. Acoustics item: 572 visitors
2. Mechanical item: 554 visitors
3. Biomedical item: 461 visitors
4. Electricity item: 427 visitors
5. Geotechnical item: 277 visitors.
The countries the most interested in project (and who are not partners) are
• India: almost 695 visits
• Turkey: almost 145 visits
• Austria: almost 189 visits.
Social communities
Facebook and Tweeter had been used at dissemination channels of the project. Some partners have also “tweeted” news and have used their linkedIn accounts to disseminate about some ENGINEER activities. These activities are also opportunities to communicate about ENGINEER website and then the project. We have analysed the number of visits for the first and the second periods. Here is the board presented these results.
Social network Number of visits
First/second period Number of Pageviews
First/second period Duration of visit(in minuts)
First/second period
Facebook 16/95 21/220 00:10/01.26
Twitter 15/27 20/45 00:19/01.09
WordPress 6/6 13/14 00:44/01.11
goo.gl 2/0 2/0 00:00/00.00
Pocket 1/0 2/0 00:12/00.00
Tumblr 1/0 1/0 00:00/00.00
Blogger 0/2 0/2 00.00/00.00
LinkedIn 0/13 0/41 00.00/0.01.50
Dissemination activities
During the project, ENGINEER partners have lead more than 300 activities and reached more than 36030 teachers, students and visitors (all these target were fixed by the consortium of the project). Different kinds of activities have been lead as workshops (teachers could test and realize ENGINEER activities during teachers’ trainings and/or workshop for museum’s visitors), presentation or conference when partners have presented the content and the aim of the project. Many partners have published about the project on museum’s newsletter, some articles. Media have been also invited to interviewed partners and disseminate about the project.
WP8: Advocacy (WP leader: ECSITE)
Engineer advocacy efforts in Engineer have been crucial to moving from the introduction of engineering in school and museums involved in the project to a more comprehensive introduction of engineering into formal and informal science education throughout Europe.
The advocacy activities of Engineer undertook lobbying efforts aiming at persuading decision-makers to support the widespread introduction of engineering into schools and museums.
The advocacy activities of the Engineer project aimed at:
• Persuading European decision-makers to support the introduction of engineering in formal and informal education.
• Promoting ENGINEER as a practical and proven way of teaching science.
• Inviting large corporations in playing a key role in advocacy efforts.
The efforts of the ENGINEER advocacy campaign have focused on targets identified in the advocacy strategic plan. The initial targets of the campaign were:
• National policy makers
• Ministers of Education
• EU level policy makers
• Science Centre directors and senior staff
• Academia representatives
• Education community
• Representatives of industry and large corporations
Within the project, it was realized that advocacy takes a lot of time, not only in organising activities but also in preparation and planning.
Advocacy activities only started on month 10 of the project. The strategic plan for advocacy was created on month 15 and the advocacy workshop, organised in order to train and inform partners on advocacy, was only hold on November 2013, on month 26 that is to say only 10 months before the end of the project.
The preparation of the strategic plan and advocacy material were crucial for the implementation of all advocacy activities. Also, the workshop allow partners to discuss about Advocacy, have examples of what is done in the United States and in the countries were advocacy already started, and think about adapted strategies for the project at European and local levels. This workshop was very helpful for all partners who mostly started the advocacy after the event.
Consequently, the full operation of the advocacy plan was only implemented during 10 months of the project which is very short to trigger big changes.
Therefore, some adaptations of the initial plan were taken. While the above targets were identified at the beginning of the project, the focus of advocacy has been made essentially on Museum Directors and senior staff. During the project, indeed, the partners involved realised that it is difficult to change curricula and convince policy makers to introduce a new subject within the time and resources available in the project Engineer. Policy makers, at national and international levels, can be difficult to reach and institutions take time to adopt new projects.
However, given the time available in the project and for advocacy activities, the project obtained very good results, especially in some countries were Ministries of Education got interested and involved. The involvement of the Ministry of Education is crucial and boosts the possibility of extending the project.
In the Netherlands in 2014, it was decided that Science and Technology education becomes mandatory in primary schools by 2020. Therefore more attention was given for W&T education and teacher training in the field of science, technology and engineering. This led to multiple opportunities for NEMO to disseminate and advocate the Engineer project.
In Israel, the Ministry of Education supported the project from an early stage. Soshy Cohen, the Director of Science unit and the Chief Inspector of S&T instructions in the Administration of S&T at the Ministry of Education (MoE) has been convinced of the interest of Engineer and got involved actively in advocacy activities for the project. She supports the project in the Engineer video as well as in the booklet. She also participated as a guest speaker at the high level event organised in The Hague with 55 attendees. With this strong and close relation with the Ministry of Education, the BMSJ is now working towards the introduction of Engineer units in Israeli school curricula in elementary and junior high schools and providing professional development in Engineering to the MoE teachers training national programs .
In some other countries, approaching the Ministry of Education and bringing it on board was much more difficult.
In Italy, the main lack was the support of the Ministry of Education. Even the external stakeholders of the project complained about this situation. The ambitious of changing the curriculum and culture take time and some stakeholders did not find a clear strategy to achieve this goal. Stakeholders appreciated the Engineer activities in the project but asked a more demanding work after the end of the project in order to get support to go on the project.
Just like in Italy, many advocacy activities will go on after the end of the project, essentially towards schools and education systems. Museums might organize more training for teachers and spread the methods of Engineers in new schools.
Other advocacy activities will be developed towards industries. The advocacy involving companies already started during the project with some contacts taken and meetings organised. These efforts will be going on in most countries involved in the Engineer project. Indeed, partners are looking for funds that would allow them to continue the project after its end.
Suggestions
As mentioned, preparing and leading advocacy activities take a lot of time. Also, the advocacy efforts could have started at the very beginning of the project and the workshop for partners organised at the end of year 1. Giving more time to the advocacy activities could probably have given more results by the end of the project. Thanks to the changes operated in the strategy, more ambassadors of Engineer who have influential roles in their countries or in Europe (museums directors and staff) were made aware of Engineer and the importance of introducing engineering activities at early ages will be able to talk about the project and objectives after the end of the project. We can already note the popularity of the Engineer project as members of the consortium were invited to participate in major international conferences on Education in autumn 2014 to represent the project.
The involvement of the Ministry of Education is crucial and boosts the possibility of extending the project after its end. However, reaching the Ministry of Educations is not as easy in some countries as in others. On a second hand, changing the culture and further, the curricula is another step forward that takes a lot of time in a majority of cases.
A suggestion that was proven efficient for example in Denmark and at European level is to multiply at maximum the number of people convinced in the project and willing to spread the word in influential networks. In Denmark, the advocacy activities were very effective for teachers thanks to the multiple workshops and events where Experimentarium took part of to present the project. These contacts resulted in spreading the materials in new schools and have strong communication relays with teachers speaking about the project to other teachers.
Also, like in Italy, It has been important for museums to focus on the involvement of different kind of stakeholders in one single project. The stakeholders belonged from different field: education, companies, and universities. This allowed multiple networks to be developed in different fields and extend the effects of advocacy activities. In particular industries can be an important target to convince on the potential of engineer also because they could be willing to support the project financially for its development after the end of the European funding. At a European level, the participation of Engineer partners to international conferences started by sending session proposals to different event and gets accepted. These presentations in addition with the strong presence of Engineer at two Ecsite conferences (largest European conference on science communication) allowed the project to be well known and popular. In September 2014, right at the end of the project, we counted already 5 invitations to attend international conferences in autumn 2014. This shows that the multiplication of sources and supports can efficiently boost the advocacy of the project. Especially, Engineer members were invited to major event in science education where influent stakeholders in education at national or European level will take part in. At ECSITE Annual Conference 2015, another pre-conference workshop will take place to share experiences and to discuss the opportunities to create a thematic group of science museums, as a respond to the large interest from many science museums in ENGINEER project.
Potential Impact:
WP2: Adaptation/Development of Engineering Design Challenges (WP Leader: MMU)
The potential impact of the school units is wide-ranging, with impact at individual, institutional and group levels.
• At the individual level, the pedagogical approach taken in the ENGINEER school units is designed to make science more engaging for pupils and ultimately raise performance and enhance attitudes to science. It emphasises a ‘hands on’ approach which supports the development of understanding in context. It also emphasises science in use, embedding it in technology and problem-solving. Exposure to the units can have an impact on pupils’ learning styles, achievements and subsequent motivation in both science and other school subjects. Similar impact can be expected from the museum activities, which emphasise problem solving in real world contexts and raise engagement with science concepts.
• At the institutional level, the pedagogical approach taken in the ENGINEER school units has the potential for impact on school practices, introducing and supporting inquiry-based learning for those schools where inquiry has been absent or difficult to sustain. In terms of curriculum, it also supports science teaching in schools, enabling teachers to present science concepts with more clarity and confidence. It also has the potential to support cross-disciplinary teaching and sustained project work. In addition, the units have the potential to raise the profile of engineering in schools, and to enable them to support pupil career aspirations by creating clear links between the formal curriculum and real world applications and jobs.
• At group level, the school units were designed to be inclusive with respect to gender, class and ethnicity, emphasising collaborative working, discussion and presentation skills, and non-competitive working. We know that certain minority ethnic groups, girls and working class students are more likely to see STEM subjects as too hard for them or not suitable for them, and they are also likely to fare less well in competitive school environments. The inquiry-based focus on planning, doing, evaluating and improving meant that pupils who might be more likely to see themselves (and be seen) as unable were given time and space to contribute to the work. The emphasis on reflection on improvement rather than right/wrong answers supports this approach, as does the inclusion of ‘soft skills’ of presentation and discussion. The content of the units themselves have the potential to widen interest in engineering and STEM in general, introducing engineering topics and contexts which departed from the stereotypical ‘male domain’ view of mechanical engineering within competitive and narrow contexts (e.g. creating faster cars/building bridges). The inclusivity supported by this range of topics is complemented by the inclusion on all units of material on engineering careers which include both men and women. These benefits are also reflected in the museum activities.
The wider societal impact of the project may be seen in its long-term consequences in terms of engaging a larger number of pupils from different backgrounds in STEM learning and raising aspirations to STEM careers. Similarly, long-term impact on school practices in general may lead to a greater emphasis on problem-solving approaches and cross-disciplinary teaching. Integration of the units into national curricula is a strong possibility, already demonstrated in the case of Israel.
In addition to the project-based outreach and advocacy activities, dissemination has included the presentation of conference papers to museum educator audiences and also more general education research audiences. It has also included the use of ENGINEER school units in initial teacher education, as a means of illustrating the potential of the pedagogic approach taken, and as a vehicle for engagement with schools in continuing professional development. Exploitation in Manchester has focused on the promotion of engineering in STEM education in primary schools in the North-West region of England, and it is anticipated that specialist postgraduate pre-service teaching students will act as ambassadors to promote engineering in their school placements. Negotiations to extend this through MMU’s STEM CPD centre are ongoing. Further research into engineer-related pedagogies is in the process of being developed with a view to publishing and conference presentations.
WP3: Adaptation/Development of Teacher Training Materials (WP Leader: NEMO)
The project and especially the teacher trainings made teachers broaden their view on engineering. This leads to a different approach of teachers about engineering in class. It has started to change. Engineering has started to shift form just being a school subject that was often even barely taught to a subject that is important for the future of our society and can help pupils to explore their talents like for example problem solving skills.
The engineering design challenge can be used to teach more maths in class and to give more meaning to math.
By delivering ten good qualities engineering design challenges that are available in ten languages and still be found through Scientix and/or the websites of the different museums the potential impact is great. A great part of the teachers are used to look for new teaching materials for in class.
The structure of the engineering design challenges that is developed in this project could be used to develop more engineering design challenges on other subject and/or to expand the ranges there is now to junior high students and pupils younger than 8 years old.
The good cooperation in this project has led to a network between schools, universities, institutions and museum. In the future we can use this network.
WP4: Pilots (WP leader: MUST)
The main impact of the WP 4 has been:
• consolidation of the collaboration between Schools and Museum partners
• involvement of the Museums and Schools in a demanding work of action research supported by MUST and MMU
• first informal outreach of the activities with target audiences (schools and museum visitors) in museums and in school settings.
Numbers and figures
In the Pilot of the Engineer design challenge in schools have been involved:
• 35 school classes - 875 students and 70 teachers
In the Pilot of the Engineer activities in Museums have been involved:
• 52 school classes – 1230 students and 100 teachers
• 820 museum visitors
All the activities have been advertised by the schools and museums partners through their local channels.
For museums the main tools have been: museums websites, teachers and visitors newsletters.
WP 5 : Outreach Impact (WP leader : TH)
The result from outreach year is the partners have involved over 1000 schools in the different activities during the outreach. The activities for schools have covered school programs in the museums, teacher trainings in the museums, training of thechers´ trainers and training of teachers by the teachers´trainers.
In the “Engineer teacher trainings” the museums implemented teacher training on the Engineer units that were developed in the Engineer project. The result is so far that 1400 teachers in the ten EU and associated countries have been trained to use the engineer material and methods with their students. During the Engineer teacher training workshops the museums have been using training methods and materials from the “Engineer professional development guides” and from the “Engineer teacher guides”.
These teacher trainings have several impacts
• One impact is that over 1400 teachers are trained to use the Engineer material in schools and several of them have already used the material in their classes and several has plan to use the material this upcoming year. From follow up we know that over 10 200 students have already used the units in school and that over 16 000 students will be using the units this school year. Many teachers have been trained during spring 2014 and in the last moth of the project so it is natural that they plan to use the material in the upcoming school year 2014/2015. And one more potential impact is that the trained teachers will use the material several times in different classes in the upcoming years
• We know from reports by the museum partners that more teacher trainings are scheduled next year. So one potential impact is that the museum partners will continue to offer teacher trainings on the engineer material and that other museums than the partner museums will start to use the guides to train teachers. “The teacher guides” and “The professional development guides” were used in the trainings and we have seen that these guides are useful for teachers and also for educators in museums and by other like teachers´ trainers. Then the impact is that we will have more teachers with ability to teach engineering and technology to their students using IBSE pedagogic methods.
• In the outreach year several of the museum and school partners have worked together in the implementation of teacher trainings. For example in Denmark the museums and schools have developed a learning team of the 2 teachers from the partner school Maglegaard and 2 employees from Experimentarium. This team did the entire teacher training in Denmark. The collaboration between the schools and the museums has the impact of strengthen the cooperation between schools and the informal science learning institutions (the museums).
Engineer activities in museums
Over 25 000 people have participated in one of the Engineering workshops for schools or for general public in the museums. The workshops have been both drop in workshops and some have been more scheduled with clear start and ending times. The impact is that the project now have a wide dissemination and the concept and methods of Engineer are widely spread among families and students.
One result is also that we have seen that the Engineer activities can be adapted to different countries and different museums and that the activities are popular among teachers, students and general public. For example the “High flyers” museum activity has been used by BSMJ, TH, NEMO and SCIOX and the “Frisky feet” museum activity have been used by EXP and BSMJ. And we can see that the engineering field and content is the same but the museums have adapted the activities to fit in their own museums for example changing the context to more local or changing the design to fit in the exhibition areas. And the school activity for example “Popular mechanics” have been used and adapted by CNAM, MUST and DM. So one potential impact is that many museums all over Europe have the possibility to read and adapt the units to their museums. We have seen that many of the partner museums are planning for further Engineer activities in the future. Some museums (TH, BSMJ, NEMO ) already design new types of exhibits based on the EDP, and some are developing new kind of LABS (MUST, NEMO, BSMJ) that will be the "home" for Engineering.
Teachers´ trainers
One outcome is that we now have over 100 teachers´ trainers trained to train other teachers to use the engineer material and methods. And we know from follow ups that they have during the outreach year trained over 300 other teachers and that there will be more training in the upcoming year. Some countries now have networks with teachers´ trainers that can discuss teaching of engineering in schools and some countries have teachers´ trainers from the ministry of education that have planned to continue to use the engineer material in trainings. The potential impact is that there will be more Engineer trainings conducted by the teachers´trainers.
Teacher students
Several of the museum partners have trained teacher students to use the engineer material. The result is that in some years or maybe already now, these students will be out working in schools and have the confidence and knowledge to use the engineer materials.
WP6: Evaluation (WP leader: UWE)
UWE hosted a range of trainings and has been instrumental in securing further grant funds to research the use of the ’Engineer teaching materials in a range of contexts.
UWE hosted a meeting with Ionannis Miaoulis form Boston Museum of Science and the Heads of Department from Education, Engineering as well as the Environment with Head teachers from Primary schools. The result of this meeting was a united resolution to take the collaboration between the parties further. This resulted in the successful application to the Engineering Professors Grant fund for further work with the Engineer materials.
The Engineering Professors’ grant was to trial, develop and evaluate a model of using the ‘Engineer‘ teaching materials in school taught by Initial teacher education students (ITT) and Engineering students. The aims were to spread the use of materials in schools, increase the subject knowledge of the ITT student and the communication skills and outreach strategy of the Engineering students. The experience of the pupils will be monitored through an early researcher grant project working alongside the main project. The result of the Project aims to be a wider dissemination in primary schools of the project and approximately 300 more children experiencing an Engineer unit in 2014 as well as the training of 10 students in their final year in the use of the materials. 10 Engineering students will have experience of outreach work in their local community and further developed their communication skills in this context. The model is intended to be a permanent part of UWE ITT and Engineering degrees in future years.
UWE also have started to use the training materials in the training of primary science specialist who will be teaching in schools in the next academic year. This is a group of a further 40 Teachers going into local schools and further afield with training and experience of teaching ‘Engineer units’
We also used them this year with 85 yr 2s ITT students running a science day with approx 100 children and their teachers from a selection of schools from economically deprived areas.
Staff from WP 6 presented the evaluation data at the BERA (British Educational Research Association) in September disseminating the project further.
UWE has gathered a wealth of data relating to teacher and pupil engagement with science, technology and engineering education in primary schools across the EU. These data sets are published in the final ENGINEER report and have the potential to influence policy, curricular and pedagogy positively if disseminated successfully. For example, the evaluation data present a strong case for the role of design and build activities as a vehicle for learning science and the evaluation points strongly towards ENGINEER materials as useful drivers to engage girls in all fields of engineering. Data gathered by the evaluation team clearly indicate that programmes of study at primary school have the potential to increase young peoples’ interest in engineering which could result in increased numbers of school leavers choosing STEM subjects at higher education and then entering careers in related fields.
The impact of museums working with primary schools has the potential to encourage visits from the wider public for example parents visiting with their children to undertake ENGINEER activities. In addition, it has provided opportunities for museums to work with children from diverse socio – economic backgrounds, including those children who might not normally visit museums. Thus there are opportunities for widening participation and access to museums for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
The involvement of professional engineers in developing materials with some partners/ supporting some partners has the potential to encourage pupils to see the value of studying science/ engineering at school.
The implications of more girls accessing and showing interest in engineering fields at primary school are potentially far reaching from a societal point of view.
WP 7 + 8 : Dissemination and Advocacy Impact (WP leaders CNAM and ECSITE)
Dissemination:
ENGINEER activities have been lead in different social background of scholar groups. The aim was to make aware each student who has participated to our activities that he could become a future engineer and at least discover engineer’s process and job.
This purpose was also the aim of dissemination activities. So using dissemination tools and activities, each partner had organized activities to discover engineer’ job and process to each fixed target (museum’s visitors, policy makers, teachers and students).
Many pedagogical activities will be continued after the end of the project because of the interest of participants or because of dissemination activities lead. We have noticed that Greece, France, Israël, Denmark (for example) will organize next year teachers’ trainings and lead pedagogical project using ENGINEER pedagogical materials. Then we could conclude that because of these activities we are going to reach more target than fixed by ENGINEER consortium.
As we have developed this kind of activities inside museums and universities, some explainers form science centres have been interested and asked us some presentations and trainings. It could be also another way to disseminate about the project and ENGINEER process.
Advocacy:
Many advocacy activities will go on after the end of the project, essentially towards schools and education systems thanks to the contacts initiated by advocacy and outreach actions.. Other advocacy activities will be developed towards industries. The advocacy involving companies already started during the project with some contacts taken and meetings organised. These efforts will be going on in most countries involved in the Engineer project. Indeed, partners are looking for funds that would allow them to continue the project after its end and extend it. Following the multiplicity of events were Engineer was presented within the lifetime of the project, Engineer became quite popular for science communication and education stakeholders in Europe. As a consequence, Engineer partners were invited to five European conferences in Europe in autumn 2014.
Thanks to these activities, the project will go on reaching new audiences and will be made aware of new supporters and believers in Engineer. We can expect that the extension of the project in schools and museums in Europe will go on in the coming years.
The advocacy activities of Engineer have started 10 months before the end of the project. Also, it is a very short period to be able to observe measurable impacts. However, some changes have been triggered and some others were observed during the lifetime of Engineer.
Engineer aimed to transform the teaching of science education in primary schools in Europe by introducing engineering as a discipline that is inherently inquiry-based and problem-focused, and yet usually overlooked in the teaching of sciences. In some countries, like in Israel, in the Netherlands, the change has already started to happen. In other countries, contacts were more difficult to take with the Ministry of Education such as in France and Italy. But with many schools involved and probably more to come, the impact of the project could weight more and change mentalities at bigger scales.
Another ambitious impact foreseen in the project is the action towards Europe, reaching people beyond the ones already involved as project’s partners. The modules, teacher training, and other distinctive elements of Engineer can be easily translated into all European languages. Ten languages are already available and translations can be asked through the Scientix portal. Indeed, only 3 interests for a translation is enough for the Scientix team to translate the material. Also, as piloted in Engineer, the units are very easily transferable in different countries.
The many international events where Engineer was presented and the positive feedbacks received from different institutions which participated, suggest that Engineer became popular within science communication within Europe. The real impact of these international advocacy activities are difficult to measure as museums and schools are free to use the Engineer material. Also, the Engineer material is available on different online portals so even if numbers in terms of downloading material can be gathered, we will not know how many museums and schools will organize Engineer units. The most important impact for the project here is that regarding the high level stakeholders in education and science communication reached during the project, Engineer contributed to make the E of STEM bigger.
The Impact of WP7 and WP8 presented by CNAM and ECSITE, add here an analysis of the project dissemination and advocacy activities, as well as an analysis of the project's public website.
List of Websites:
Coordinator contacts details
Maya Halevy
BSMJ
Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem
Israel
Phone: +972 2 6544860
E-mail: mayah@mada.org.il
ENGINEER public website: http://www.engineer-project.eu/
This document provides information about the FP7 ENGINEER (BrEaking New Ground IN the SciencE Education Realm) project, funded under the EC contract № 288989.
The teaching of science in schools has been the focus of much attention on a national, European and international level in recent years. There is strong evidence of the declining interest of young people in science topics taught in schools. This trend raises serious concerns for Europe’s future ability to meet the challenges of the knowledge-based economy. A shared consensus among experts in science education views inquiry based science education (IBSE) as an effective form of pedagogy that will engender the kind of real student interest needed for a turnaround in this area.
The coordinator of the ENGINEER project is the Bloomfield Science Museum, Jerusalem Israel (BSMJ). The consortium consists of partners from ten science museums and ten elementary schools in ten European and associate countries. These organisations worked together in teams entitled ‘Museum’ and ‘School’, with the academic support of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the Boston Museum of Science (BMOS).
The ENGINEER project took inquiry based science education (IBSE) methods one step forward and introduced engineering design challenges as its core feature. It was based on the experience and proven success in the US over the last ten years of the "Engineering in Elementary" (EiE) program developed by BMOS. The ENGINEER project aimed to introduce engineering to the European education system, as part of the science curriculum, starting from an early age in primary schools. The ENGINEER project adopted EiE's five-steps of the Engineering Design Process (EDP): Ask; Imagine; Plan; Create and Improve in which students follow the process to develop, build and test model solutions to specific practical problems.
The ENGINEER consortium developed ten different engineering challenges in ten different engineering fields connected to the science curricula taught in primary schools in Europe. The challenges were carefully chosen to be relevant to students in the different countries. All engineering school units were supported by teacher guides and teacher training programs. The ten museum partners also developed museum programs for school visits and workshops on engineering topics for the general public as part of the museum‘s program to visitors. All the materials were translated into ten different languages and are available for free on the project website (www.engineer-project.eu) on Scientix and on partners’ websites.
A democraticevaluation process of the ENGINEER project, applied by University of West England (UWE), assessed the experiences, impacts and effects at all levels of the project, with a particular emphasis on the young learner. The inputs received from the evaluation reports, as well as from the assessment process of the pilot stage of the project, helped the partners to fine tune and revise the materials they developed in the second period of the project.
An extensive outreach activity program was operational in each of the ten countries targeted at disseminating the Engineering School Units to more teachers, teacher trainers and schools. The outreach plan aimed to encourage teachers, trained in inquiry-based pedagogic methods, to implement the use of the engineering units in the classroom. The outreach program exceeded the target numbers. Over 1,000 schools were involved; 1,400 teachers participated in teachers training; and more than 25,000 people participated in one of the engineering workshops.
An important goal of ENGINEER project was to make a change in the attitude toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education. It aimed to introduce engineering education to local and national policy makers and to lobby European decision-makers to deepen their support for the widespread introduction of engineering into the teaching of science in schools and museums, promoting ENGINEER‘s programme as a practical and proven way of teaching science. More than 500 advocacy activities were organised by the partners. Thanks to the great amount of advocacy and dissemination activities, led by ECSITE, the European network of science centres and museums, the project contributed to raising interest in the Engineering part of STEM education by formal education, industry and informal education.
Project Context and Objectives:
The ENGINEER project objectives were to:
• Adapt for European usage EiE’s EDP, which has been shown to increase children’s technology literacy and raise their interest in science.
• Develop new engineering design challenges suited to European contexts.
• Adapt and develop teacher training materials that will increase primary school educators’ ability to teach engineering and technology to their students using IBSE pedagogic methods
• Strengthen the cooperation between schools and informal science learning institutions and enrich formal science education with informal experiences in the science museums.
• Undertake advocacy activities to promote the long term goal of integrating engineering into science teaching in primary schools throughout Europe.
• Plan and implement an extensive outreach program
• Raise the awareness about the ENGINEER project to support the outreach campaign
In order to start the project Manchester Metropolitan University ( MMU) (WP2) first designed, delivered and analysed a survey of science curricula and pedagogies across the consortium in order to identify appropriate science topics within each country’s curriculum for development as engineering challenges. This led to a prioritisation of the range of science topics and engineering fields which would appeal to all children, boys and girls. Next, it developed a strategy for supporting partners in ten countries to develop their units. The central team produced a prototype unit in order to understand what processes were involved in the development of a new design challenge unit and a unit design template for partners to build on. Emphasis in unit design was placed on the use of inexpensive local materials to support the engineering design challenge component of each unit, differentiation for a range of abilities, and appropriate science and pedagogic support for teachers. School units were also subsequently adapted as shorter museum activities for school classes based on the EDP.
The development of the template for the challenge units was made in in two rounds. A first version of the template was presented to the partners in order to obtain their feedback. The template was adapted as a result of this feedback. The template was then used by the partners in their first submission of the challenge units and the pilot. In a second round, for the submission during a meeting in Sweden, the work package leaders decided on the final design and structure of the template for the teacher guide. The ten countries were divided into five pairs who worked together in the development and testing stages.
Additionally, a template for the Professional Development Guide (PDG) was developed along with workshop plans for teachers and teacher trainers by NEMO science centre Amsterdam (WP3). The template for the PDG was presented to the partners during a workshop in Amsterdam and then adapted following feedback. During the pilot stage four museums tested the training workshop for teachers and the professional development guide in which the workshop plans are written. The ten PDG's were used as part of a training handbook for teacher training but they were also developed as standalone tool for future use by teachers to be able to use without training. NEMO also developed a modular format for the Teacher Training Workshop that could be tailored by each country according to local conditions. All workshops were hands-on and introduced the EDP to teachers by ensuring that they carried out the activities themselves.
The pilot stage led by Museo Nazionale della Scienzw e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci, Millano MUST (WP4) began with the Pilot Workshop which was held in Amsterdam and hosted by NEMO (8-11/10/2012). The aim of the workshop was to train participants in the engineering units and teacher training materials for use in school and in museums. Each museum obtained all the materials of the kits and the teacher guide. Each country team consisting of a museum and a school tested two units : the one that they had developed and the one their "partner country" team developed, to clarify the necessary changes to improve the units, with the support of MMU and BMOS.
Following the workshop, the partners started the pilot stage involving the delivery of the engineering units in schools, the teacher training workshops in four museums and engineering activities in museums (November 2012 – May 2013). This provided a range of feedback on the activities including teacher logs, observation sheets and teacher interviews.
Each school tested two units: the one they developed in collaboration with their museum partner and another from their partner country. Each museum tested the unit they developed.
The second period of ENGINEER project was devoted to the revision of the ten engineering design challenges (WP2), the revision of the teacher training materials and workshops (WP3) and finalising the pilot stage (WP4). The detailed feedback from the pilot stage, produced and developed by MUST and MMU, as well as the evaluation data gathered by UWE, gave a lot of insights into what needed to be revised. A post-pilot workshop was held in Milan which enabled the museum and school teams to discuss their units with their partner country, with the EiE team from BMOS and with the MMU team (consisting of two WP leaders, three teacher educators in science and design and technology and one design and technology technician). MMU worked with WP4 leaders to plan the workshop and devise tasks which would help unit developers to understand pedagogy issues and how to improve their units. After the revision of the engineering units and Pedagogic Development Guide (PDG), all materials underwent a process of English (ICASE) pedagogic and science editing provided by MMU. BMOS provided support and ideas from their experience on how to operate engineering challenges in a museum environment.
A democratic evaluation process of the ENGINEER project, applied by University of West England (UWE), assessed the experiences, impacts and effects at all levels of the project, with a particular emphasis on the young learner. The inputs received from the evaluation reports helped the partners to fine tune and revise the materials they developed.
One of the main objectives of the project was the planning and implementation of an extensive outreach program (WP5) led by Teknikens Hus (TSC). The partners invested extensively in the recruitment of targeted schools, teachers, teacher trainers and the general public. The main activity has been the extensive teacher training programs in all ten countries, using the PDG's. This focused on introducing the use of engineering units as part of science teaching in schools and supporting teachers with kits of materials. At the same time, all the museum partners implemented as part of their museum activities, school programs and family workshops that were all based on lessons from the engineering units and focused on one or more of the EDP stages.
Another main objective was to raise awareness about ENGINEER project to support the outreach campaign. The partners initiated many disseminations activities on local, national and European levels (WP7 led by Conservatoire National des Arts at Metiers (CNAM). The main tools were printed brochures and posters; news and events on the websites, newsletters, a Facebook page of the partners; articles and publications, conference presentations, special meetings and professional workshops. The main dissemination activity of ENGINEER programme to other science museums was at the 2014 ECSITE annual conference in the Hague with a preconference workshop for museum educators and guides, a main session presentation and participation in the open market showcase of all the museums units.
ENGINEER advocacy efforts were crucial in moving from the successful introduction of engineering in schools and museums in partner countries to a more comprehensive introduction of engineering into formal and informal science education throughout Europe. Advocacy activities, aimed at each of the target constituencies identified in the advocacy action plan, took place in each of the partner countries. ECSITE, as the leader of the advocacy program (WP8), with the support of BMOS, carried out a range of activities including: a workshop for all museum partners, guidelines for national and local advocacy plans and useful materials (such as an easily translatable leaflet, a booklet as a real interactive object that was sent to science education networks and a video that was published on the website and used in European events). BMOS President, Ioannis Miaoulis, attended many meeting in Europe to discuss and promote ENGINEER project. As part of the ECSITE 2014 conference, ECSITE organised a high level event together with NEMO for policymakers and directors of science centres and museums who are in a position to influence national and European policies.
Project Results:
WP1: Project management (WP Leader: BSMJ)
In order to ensure smooth progress within the ENGINEER project and contribute to its success, an efficient management structure set up to oversee the activities of the project, take the appropriate strategic and day-to-day decisions required, and apply suitable corrective actions when needed. Management involved two main areas – technical and administrative tasks. Technical leadership assured that the consortium executes the project work plan. Administrative leadership assured that appropriate project documentation is delivered to the Commission. This includes all areas of financial management.
WP2: Adaptation/Development of Engineering Design Challenges (WP Leader: MMU)
The main goal of this work package was to develop 10 new engineering design challenge units based on the EiE‘s Engineering Design Process (EDP) model (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve). – Students identified a particular problem, brainstormed for ideas, and chose one idea to develop, built a model using a carefully chosen set of inexpensive materials, and refined the completed design. The content of each engineering design challenge unit was connected to a specific engineering field (e.g. civil engineering, chemical engineering, food engineering, environment engineering, and mechanical engineering). Each unit included an introductory lesson on the specific engineering field and its links to science and maths, followed by three class sessions that deal with a practical design challenge taken from the children‘s everyday environment. WP2 began with a workshop supported by BMOS, where BMOS leaders shared their knowledge and experience in developing and running engineering programs for elementary school teachers in the USA.
Starting with an EiE unit dealing with a particular engineering field, each team (science museum professionals, science teachers and academic experts in curriculum development and IBSE methods) developed a new engineering design challenge. The teams were assisted by local advisory boards, made up by local engineering practitioners and researchers, specializing in the different engineering fields that relate to each unit. Development conducted in two phases: 1) Development of an initial version to be piloted; then after pilot results are evaluated 2) a second phase to allow fine-tuning, improvements and additional local adjustments to the units prior to their use in widespread outreach activities. Special attention was given to issues of translation and cross cultural transfer. Each museum translated the units developed by other teams of museums and schools to their own native language with due consideration of local social and cultural context and cross cultural transfer of meaning.
The ten museum partners have also developed museum programs for schools visits, and workshops on engineering topics for the general public, as part of the museum‘s program to visitors, based on one or more steps of the EDP of the Engineering design units.
All materials developed are accessible, modular, flexible, and translated for use across countries and are web downloadable.
WP3: Adaptation/Development of Teacher Training Materials (WP Leader: NEMO)
The goals of this work package were to adapt and develop teacher training materials that will enable science teachers to effectively use the engineering units employing inquiry-based pedagogical methods. There were two types of teacher training materials: 1. Professional development guides to be used in teacher training workshops (adapted from EiE teacher guides); 2. Teacher guides, designed for use by teachers when introducing engineering units into their classrooms. The teacher guides are designed both for teachers who took part in the training workshops and for teachers outside the project. They are available for free download by all European teachers at the ENGINEER portal (developed in WP8) and at the SCIENTIX portal as well as the museums’ websites.
Materials kits that include the materials needed for doing the design challenges in all the units also distributed by each science museum to trained teachers interested in using the units in their classrooms. In addition, a list of all the materials that are needed for the unit included.
The professional development guides used in the teacher training workshops were closely adapted from EiE guides, and benefited from the best practices, teacher tips and lessons learned there to foster understanding of the engineering and technology content and pedagogy.
Each museum translated the teacher guides developed by other teams of museums and schools to their own native language with due consideration of local social and cultural context and cross cultural transfer of meaning.
WP4: Pilots (WP leader: MUST)
An important part of the project is the pilot experimentation of the outputs of WP2 and WP3. These were tested through pilot activities which carried out by the 10 schools and 10 science museums. Each school tested 2 units: the one they developed in collaboration with museums and the other from their partner country. Each museum tested the unit they developed.
The pilot began with a one-week kick-off workshop with all project partners. At least one teacher from each partner school participated in the workshop (according to the constraints of each school in terms of substitute teachers, etc.), and transferred the knowledge to his/her colleagues on his/her return to school. Those teachers that participate in this workshop became teacher trainers during outreach.
The workshop aimed to train participants in the educational materials that are developed by the project for use at school and in museums. In particular, the workshop focused on: Successful strategies for integrating engineering in the science curriculum; Experimentation of the activities and methodologies by the participants, with the help of the BMOS staff; Group evaluation; Presentation and discussion of working with students in classes; and engineering challenges and issues of gender.
WP5: Outreach (WP leader: TH)
ENGINEER aimed at conducting an extensive outreach program that took place in the ten EU Member States/Associate States participating in the project, in primary schools and science museums. The outreach program targeted schools, teachers and teacher trainers as well as museums visitors.
WP6: Evaluation (WP leader: UWE)
WP6 applied a democratic evaluation’s approach, which seeks to assess experiences, impacts and effects at all levels, but with a particular emphasis on teachers and students. Whilst providing independent evaluative analysis in conventional summative terms, it also provided a level of formative critical friendship’s to the project team. The evaluation was appropriately informed by relevant academic research on: science education; inquiry based pedagogic approaches; science and gender. It also drew upon evaluative work pertaining to the US EiE program and to school-museum partnerships.
WP7: Dissemination (WP leader: CNAM)
ENGINEER dissemination plan aimed at multiple relevant targets, including primary level science teachers and school headmasters, science centres and museums, primary level students and their parents, science education networks and associations, the science education research community, relevant local, national and EU authorities, and the general public. Dissemination efforts therefore varied depending on the target audience. The dissemination activities were designed to raise awareness to the project and advertise its goals and programs. They therefore complemented the extensive outreach activities (WP5) and were reinforced by an advocacy campaign (WP8) aimed at key policy makers and constituencies such as local authorities, national Ministries of Education, EU representatives, and the relevant engineering societies.
Dissemination activities included presentation of results at scientific workshops and conferences, contributions to journals and conferences, management and distribution of a repository of project documentation including brochures and posters for stands, and the establishment and maintenance of a project web portal.
WP8: Advocacy (WP leader: ECSITE)
ENGINEER advocacy effort is crucial to moving from the successful introduction of engineering in school and museums in the participating European/Associate State country partners during the project‘s outreach stage to a more comprehensive introduction of engineering into formal and informal science education throughout Europe.
While dissemination focused on publicizing and distributing the engineering program and its benefits, the advocacy WP undertook lobbying efforts aimed at persuading decision-makers to support the widespread introduction of engineering into schools and museums. Policy-makers need to be persuaded of ENGINEER‘s potential value in reversing the serious decline in European student interest in science, math, and engineering subjects and careers.
Five European constituencies were targeted: local and national representatives of each partner‘s Ministry of Education; policy makers at the EU-level; science centre directors and senior staff; university professors and staff; and industry representatives.
The purpose of the following section is to provide a summary of project results and achievements with regard to each work package activities.
WP1 – Project Management (WP Leader : BSMJ)
The Coordinator (BSMJ), with the support of the Project Office (ART), were responsible for establishing the management infrastructure and project management tools, including the internal website (D1.1). Additionally they carried out the contractual and financial management of the project, including maintenance of the Consortium Agreement and follow-up of the progress and contractual obligations (reporting, deliverable issuing and resources). Through WP 1 a Project Management and Quality Assurance Manual (D1.2) was created and all reports were reviewed and verified for consistency with the projects tasks before transmitting them to the commission. The coordinator was responsible for the process of identifying legal and ethical requirements for the project in each country and obtaining the necessary approvals by competent local/national ethics committees following national data protections laws and providing the EC with all the ethical approvals before starting the pilot stage in schools (D1.3).
There was a smooth and effective cooperation between the partners, ensured by frequent communication by mail, tele/web conferences and face-to-face meetings approximately every three months. Simple and effective reporting and control tools were developed in order to facilitate project monitoring and progress control. The coordinator provided global project coordination with the aim to meet the project schedule and objectives. The coordinator ensured that the scientific content of deliverables and publications for dissemination met the necessary requirements and carried out quality and technical reviews of the deliverables. Additionally, the coordinator ensured that the work plan was fulfilled and supported by Work Package Leaders in their Work Package management, helping them to find solutions to problems and unforeseen obstacles
A financial monitoring tool was used to keep track of payments and expenses and compare planned effort and budget with the actual in order to ensure an adequate use of resources. Both the technical and the administrative management were flexible and adapted for the current needs of the consortium. All EC requirements and guidelines are monitored by the Project Office and communicated to the partners, in order to assure that they are effectively implemented and followed.
The Project Office took care of archiving deliverables on the internal platform, regularly following up and updating the consortium communication tools, providing assistance for all financial and administrative-related issues to the whole consortium and following up on the preparation and submission of deliverables due and submitted during the period. The Project Office constantly liaised with the Coordinator on these tasks.
The Coordinator was also responsible for communication with the Project Advisory Board. The board were updated regularly on the project’s progress and participated in two consortium meetings – the Pre-Pilot meeting in Amsterdam and the After-Pilot workshop in Milan.
The Coordinator and the Project Office were responsible for the planning, organisation and follow-up of all project meetings together with the hosting partner for each meeting. Meeting logistics, including the planning of dates, drafting and circulation of agenda, recommendations for required preparation from the partners, registration, logistics, meeting facilitation and preparation of meeting minutes was carried out by the Project Office. All meetings were registered on the ENGINEER internal website, together with the related presentations, preparatory documents, agenda and minutes.
WP2: Adaptation/Development of Engineering Design Challenges (WP Leader: MMU)
The development of ten school units
WP2 led and supported the development of ten new engineering design challenges (D 2.3) based on BMOS’ Engineering is Elementary model of inquiry-based learning, producing ten stand-alone units embedded in detailed teacher guides with supporting science notes targeting the learning needs and developmental stage of primary school children. Guides were sufficiently detailed to be used by non-specialist teachers. The emphasis in unit design is on the use of inexpensive local materials to support the engineering design challenge component of each unit, differentiation for a range of abilities, and appropriate science and pedagogic support for teachers. Units were also deliberately designed to be gender inclusive in terms of the range of topics covered (a wide range of engineering contexts and problems), their non-competitive and collaborative approach, and the provision of support for teachers for maintaining equality between children in their team working. The final range covered the following engineering fields and topics:
Country Engineering field Science Field Unit name Design problem/context
Israel Biomedical engineering Human body, Respiratory system Huff and puff: Designing a device for measuring exhalation volume Build a device which can measure lung capacity to help diagnose why a friend has difficulty breathing
Italy Geotechnical engineering Geology Knee deep: Designing and constructing a water pond Understand how to build a pond to replace one that is lost in new building
Netherlands Acoustic engineering Sound Music to the ears: Designing and creating a sound generator Design a string sound generator to compose a soundtrack for a silent movie
Sweden Electrical engineering Electricity Super Sucker: Designing a machine to clean up litter Build a vacuum cleaner to clean up the classroom quickly
Czech Republic Agricultural engineering Plants Life support: Direct water flow to plants Design a system to water plants to support life on a new planet.
Denmark Materials engineering Materials, heat transfer, insulation and methods in science Frisky feet: Winter-proof a pair of shoes
Design insulated shoe soles when the baggage goes missing on a trip to Greenland.
Greece Ocean/Marine engineering Sinking and Floating High and dry: Protecting objects on a floating platform Build a floating platform to transport belongings to an island without getting them wet.
France Mechanical engineering Simple Mechanics
Energy Popular mechanics: Becoming a designer of machines
Design mechanical toys for children in Africa which tell well-known stories; design a counting machine to keep count of the numbers of children in a crowded toyshop.
UK Aeronautic engineering Forces High flyers: Building a glider with everyday materials
Build a glider to carry messages between two friends who live next door to each other
Germany Mechanical engineering Balance and Forces A fine balance: Building a hanging sculpture Design a hanging sculpture with multiple tiers for the school assembly hall.
The unit development process: collecting baseline data
To produce the units, WP2 first designed, delivered and analysed a survey of science curricula and pedagogies across the consortium in order to identify appropriate science topics within each country’s curriculum for development as engineering challenges, prioritising a spread of science topics and engineering fields which would appeal to all children, including girls. The survey identified relevant local country features which needed to be taken into account in the challenge design process, in particular pedagogic approaches, assessment structures, flexibility in curriculum and pedagogy, specific gender-related initiatives, extra-curricular activities, including work with museums, and resourcing issues. It also gathered data from museums in order to understand their connections to science curricula and their methods and resourcing for supporting science and engineering education in schools. The findings of this survey were presented in D2.1 a report detailing the primary science curriculum in all ten European participating countries. The report also included details of pedagogic practices in all ten countries, providing important insights into the presence of experience and expertise in supporting inquiry-based learning across the consortium, as well as the challenges that the ENGINEER approach might present for some countries. The report thus presented an analysis of (1) the structure of the science curriculum across the consortium; (2) patterns of pedagogy and assessment; (3) the role of the partner museums in supporting science education, and (4) a preliminary selection of EiE topics as the basis for future development. The conclusion discussed issues arising from these separate analyses, and made some observations concerning the implications for the remaining tasks in WP2. Its appendices presented country-by-country and museum-by-museum summaries of the survey results for detailed reference in the future.
The unit development process: development strategy
Following this survey, WP2 developed a strategy for supporting partners in ten countries to develop their units, producing a prototype unit in order to understand what processes were involved in the development of a new design challenge unit, and a unit design template for partners to build on (D2.2). The report contained (1) an overview of MMU’s information-gathering and discussion activities in developing a strategy for the implementation of task 2.3 the development of the ten units themselves; (2) a prototype unit designed to illustrate for partners the ENGINEER unit design aims, together with a surrounding narrative about how the unit was developed and the various considerations which need to be taken into account for local development; and (3) an account of MMU’s strategy for supporting museums and schools as they developed their units, and a proposed timeline for coordination of the work on the ten units. The conclusion summarised the strategy and discussed the implications for task 2.3 and WP3. The appendices included a digest of responses from the museums on their science project experience and the background science knowledge developed for the prototype unit.
Unit development: first phase
The unit template featured in D2.2 was developed in further collaboration with WP3 to produce the generic teacher guide template which would be the vehicle for each school unit in D2.3. Following a preliminary supported design workshop in Amsterdam, teams proceeded to develop their units, with constant feedback and support from WP2 in a phased process. WP2 coordinated targeted support for teams experiencing difficulties, involving BMOS where appropriate, holding individual support sessions via skype and in person where possible and appropriate. This process culminated in the first release of D2.3 comprising ten units embedded in teacher guides.
Unit development: pilot and revision phase
Following the first release of units, the pilot phase aimed to identify strengths and weakness of units prior to further fine tuning for the second and final release of D2.3. WP2 collaborated with WP4 on the design of pilot data collection material, and provided further support in the pilot phase. This task progressed throughout the period between M12 and M21, as partners participated in extensive piloting of the units, each country piloting their own and their teamed partner country’s unit. WP2 analysed the pilot data, and communicated with unit developers throughout this period, providing feedback on their units prior to the end of pilot workshop in M21. Teams were asked to come to the workshop with the latest version of their unit (adjusted in the light of piloting and MMU feedback). In M21 the after-pilot workshop in Milano enabled teams to discuss their units with their partner country and the MMU team of 2 WP leaders, plus 3 teacher educators in science and design and technology, plus 1 design and technology technician. MMU worked with WP4 leaders to plan the workshop and devise tasks which would help unit developers to understand pedagogy issues and how to improve their units. Unit developers continued to work on this issue after the workshop, with support as required from MMU, before delivering their units to MMU for final fine-tuning. This final stage involved pedagogic editing of all 10 units and the production of science notes for all units which were designed to support teachers, including non-specialists, to promote learning of science concepts for the target age group. The task was completed and the second release units (D2.3) were available for use in the outreach stage at the end of M28. The units are accompanied by D2.5 materials kits, which provide fully illustrated lists of the materials and quantities needed for each school unit.
The development of ten museum activities
In addition to the development of the school units, each museum adapted their school engineering design challenge to a shorter programs designed for museum visitors (D2.5). Development followed a similar process in that a template for museum activities was developed by WP3, and museums worked to this template in order to provide detailed guidance for museums. This development was supported by BMOS, who brought their museum educator expertise and experience to the process, reviewing each museum activity in order to support fine-tuning.
WP3: Adaptation/Development of Teacher Training Materials (WP Leader: NEMO)
The objectives in WP3 were to adapt and develop teacher training materials. These teacher training materials will enable science teachers to effectively use the engineering units employing inquiry based pedagogical methods. The training materials include teacher guides that will accompany the engineering design challenges as well as professional development workshops for teachers, and their related guides.
The objectives in WP3 were to adapt and develop teacher training materials that would enable teachers to effectively use the engineering design challenges. Therefore, in WP 2 and WP 3, ten teacher guides that accompany the ten engineering design challenges were designed. These are intended for teachers who before teaching the unit in class took part in teacher training as well as for teachers who didn’t participate in training but also thought a unit in class. To give teachers who wanted or needed more guidance on the didactics used in the engineering design challenges and knowledge about the science and engineering topics, teacher training was developed. In the teacher training it was important that the teachers experienced hands-on the activities for the pupils in class and then become confident about teaching one or more engineering design challenge in class.
From the Evaluation in WP 6 it was learned that teachers who participated in an ENGINEER teacher training experienced it as very useful. Although teachers did benefit from the teacher trainings both to gain subject knowledge on the science and engineering topic as in the didactic methods used in the engineering design challenges, the teacher guides are also possible to use as a stand-alone. They give sufficient explanation on the practical issues in the lessons, the content of the lessons, the context, the background information on the subject and the ideas of children on the engineering and science topic.
The ten developed professional development guides give workshop plans and guidance to educators (both museum educators and teacher trainers) about giving an ENGINEER training to teachers or teacher trainers. It consists of workshop activities which aim to let the participants experience the engineering design cycle in a hands-on way and see the activities form the engineering design challenge from a pupil view.
Task 3.1 Development of teacher guides (M10-M12, M21-M24)
The generic teacher guide that all partners used to write their engineering design challenge in, has been developed by NEMO in cooperation with MMU and BMOS. During the consortium meeting in June 2013 NEMO presented the template of the generic teacher guide. The partners gave feedback and this resulted in a final template that was sent to the partners. The partners wrote their engineering design challenge in this format of the generic teacher guide. All the ten teacher guides have been pedagogically checked by MMU and the science notes have been rewritten by MMU to make a direct link to the learning goals of each engineering design challenge. After that the layout of all ten teacher guides have been checked by NEMO and if necessary corrected. In total ten teacher guides each accompanying an engineering design challenges have been made. The teacher guides include:
• introduction about the engineering design process and pedagogy;
• lesson plans with:
o lesson overview
o objectives for the pupils
o resources
o preparation
o assessment tools
o working methods
o key ideas of the lesson
o context and background
• pupil worksheet with accompanying answer sheets;
• science notes for teachers about the science and engineering field;
• pupils ideas of the science concepts of the unit;
• if necessary concepts about the science and engineering field of the unit.
The teacher guides are a standalone tool for teachers, who will be able to use them without training. If the teachers want to follow training that is possible.
Task 3.2 Adaptation/development of professional development guides and workshops for teachers
• T3.2.1 Adaptation of EiE’s professional development guides for use in the teacher training workshops.
In the professional development guide are workshop activities for a trainings workshop for teachers and teacher trainers. The developed workshop activities are about engineering, the engineering design process, gender guidance, motivating colleagues and organizing a workshop. First NEMO has developed the pilot version of the generic professional development guide. During WP 4 four museums have piloted the professional development guides and the trainings activities in it; BMSJ, MUST, TH and NEMO. After the pilot NEMO adapted the generic professional development guide and presented it during the consortium meeting in June 2013 to all the partners. The partners gave feedback and that has resulted in a final template that has been sent to the museum partners. The museum partners wrote a workshop activity for the engineering design challenge they developed. This resulted in ten professional development guides to be used as a trainings handbook for teacher training. Each professional development guide accompanies the teacher guide belonging to the same engineering design challenge.
Because of cultural differences between the US and Europe the structure and content of the EiE’s professional development guides and the professional development guides from ENGINEER are different.
• T3.2.2 Plan the structure of the professional development workshops.
NEMO developed a modular model for the trainings workshops. The modular structure gave the partners the opportunity to construct the trainings workshops for teachers and teacher trainers according to the possibilities in their country. During WP 4 four museums have piloted the workshops activities; BMSJ, MUST, TH and NEMO.
The workshop plans are in the professional development guides that accompany the engineering design challenges. The workshop activities are hands-on; teachers will be introduced to the engineering design process by doing the activities developed for the pupils.
Task 3.3 Development of workshops for teacher trainers
The professional development guides that accompany the engineering design challenges contain the workshop plans for trainings workshops for teacher and for teacher trainers. The trainings workshop for teacher trainers is broadly the same as the trainings workshop for teachers. However the workshop for teacher trainers is extended with information about planning and executing a trainings workshop, how to approach teachers and to encourage them to participate in training and ensuring that the introduction of engineering design challenges in school can be on-going and sustainable.
WP4: Pilots (WP leader: MUST)
The main results of the WP 4 are the pilots in museum partners’ institutions and the feedback collected.
During the Pilot phase (M 15-20) museum partners tested 3 different activities:
• Teacher training workshops (4 museums: MUST, NEMO, BSMJ, TH)
• Engineer design challenges in schools (all museum and school partners)
• Engineer activities for museums (all museum partners)
The feedback system developed by MUST in collaboration with MMU have been efficient in collecting the info by the partners in the pilot phase.
On the basis of the info collected the museums in collaboration with MMU and NEMO revised and fine-tuned the activities and materials.
Partner museums in the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and Sweden tested the pilot version of the Engineering activities for museums and supported the school partners to pilot the Engineering challenges for schools (M 15-20) .
School partners tested the engineering design challenges in their classes. At least two classes per school have been involved and each school tested two Engineering challenges for schools, one to which the teacher had contributed development work in collaboration with their partner museum, and the other developed by their partner country (see D 2.2).
In the Pilots of the activities for schools and museums WP 4:
• developed the Pilot Kick off Workshop in collaboration with WP 2
• developed the Pilot feedback process in collaboration with WP 2
• supported museum partners during the Pilots, in particular in the scheduling of the activities and in the collection of feedback information
• collected all the documents on the project internal platform.
Four museum partners (MUST, NEMO, BSMJ, TH) in Italy, Netherlands, Israel and Sweden tested the pilot version of the Teacher Training Workshop and materials (TTW) offering one day workshop to a group of 5-10 teachers.
In the TTW Pilots WP 4:
- developed the Pilot Kick off Workshop in collaboration with WP 2 and WP 3
- developed the Pilot feedback process in collaboration with WP 2 and WP 3
- supported the museum during the Pilots, in particular in the scheduling of the activities and in the collection of feedback information
- collected all the documents on the ARTTIC platform.
Key elements of the Pilot phase:
• The Pilots have been a key moment for the partners in order to revise and improve the activities and materials developed in WP 2 and 3
• During the Pilots Museums: scheduled the activities in the Museum and school calendar, run the activities, observed the activities, and filled in the Feedback materials.
• The Pilot phase has been a key moment of the collaboration between schools and museums. The Schools and Museums after the development of the activities in WP 2, in the Pilots for the first time collaborated to the practice, observation and evaluation of the activities developed.
• The Pilot phase has been very demanding for the partners who have been involved at the same time in running the activity, observing it, reporting and starting to think about the further developments (Action Research supported by MUST and MMU).
• Most of the Partners efforts have been focused on the Pilots of the Engineering challenge for school more than in museums and TTW. TTW are like a result from the Engineering challenges for schools, being compose by part of the activities developed for the Challenge in school.
• The four Museums developed the TTW after the Engineer challenge for schools and the Engineering activities for museums. This happened because of the complexity of the school activities (5 lessons of about 15 hours) compared with the Museum ones (1 interactive workshop of 1 hour and 1 day teacher training). The TTW was developed on the basis of the indication of NEMO and of the Engineering challenge for schools.
WP5: Outreach (WP leader: TH)
In order to achieve objectives science museums and elementary schools consortium partners have planned and implemented an extensive outreach year in the ten EU and associated countries. In the outreach year the outreach program and recruitment efforts targeted schools and students, teachers and teacher trainers and general public. The Outreach year has been a full year of outreach activities using the refined materials for the ENGINEER project. The main activities has been extensive teacher training focusing on the use of engineering units in schools as part of the teaching of science, museum programs for schools and general public were the focus has been to give an introduction of engineering and IBSE, training of teacher trainers with focus on training of other teachers to use the ENGINNER units in schools. The partners have involved over 1000 schools in the different activities during the outreach. The activities for schools have covered school programs in the museums, teacher trainings in the museums, training of teachers’ trainers and training of teachers by the teachers’ trainers. The focus on the activities for schools have been to increase children‘s technology literacy and raise their interest in science by using the new engineering design challenges developed in the ENGINEER project.
In order to achieve the objectives the ten museum partners have implemented school programs dealing with the lessons from the engineering units, and offered them to school groups visiting the science centre/museum. The museums have also offered workshops on engineering topics to the general public visiting the museum, as part of the museum‘s offerings to general visitors. More than 25 000 people have participated in one of the Engineering workshops for schools or for general public in the 10 partner countries. There have been over 250 school group workshops and the total number of students participating in engineering school workshops during the outreach year is around 6000 students. And the total number of participants in engineering workshops for the general public during the outreach year is estimated to be more than 19 000 people. We have seen that the activities can be adapted to different countries and different museums and that the activities are popular among teachers, students and general public. One outcome from the project is also that many museums are planning for further Engineer activities in the future.
In the project an extensive teacher training has been planned and implemented by the museum and school partners. In the project the museum partners also trained teachers´ trainers to train other teachers to use the Engineer materials. The aim with the teacher trainings were to increase primary school educators‘ ability to teach engineering and technology to their students using IBSE pedagogic methods. During the outreach year over 1400 teachers participated in teacher trainings held by museums or teachers´ trainers were the focus has been on the use of engineering units in schools as part of the teaching of science. Some countries used one unit in their teacher training and presented the other units shortly and other museums used up to four different units in their trainings. From the description of the training days described by the partners we can see that “The teacher guides” and “The professional development guides” were used in the trainings. The museums did most of the trainings, more than 1100 teachers were trained by the museums and the 112 teachers´ trainers have during the outreach year trained over 300 other teachers. Some of the museums and teachers´ trainers we know have more training scheduled for next year.
One of the outcomes is that we now have a lot of trained teachers out in schools and that they have started to use the units with their students. We can see from the follow ups done by the museum partners on “The use of the units in the classroom of primary schools in partner countries” that the teachers have used or are planning use the units in schools. The outcome is that over 10 200 students have already used the units in school and that over 16 000 students will be using the units this school year. Many teachers have been trained during spring 2014 and in the last moth of the project so it is natural that they plan to use the material in the upcoming school year 2014/2015. Not all teachers have responded on the follow ups so the data are maybe counted very low. The schools that participated in the teacher trainings received the project‘s teacher guides and materials kits. Science museums and school partners have provided with ongoing support to the teachers that participated in teacher training activities. The school partners have also provided with information about the school‘s experience using ENGINEER‘s engineering units in the teaching of science and technology.
WP6: Evaluation (WP leader: UWE)
The main results of the UWE led democratic evaluation are:
• A democratic evaluation of ENGINEER which assessed the experiences, impacts and effects at all levels, with a particular emphasis on the young learner, has been applied from M7 - M36. Evaluation reports on each of the key phases of the project have been completed and submitted on time.
• Evaluators engaged in critical discussions with partners at all levels which usefully influenced the direction of the project. These most often arose from the evaluators sharing their observations and insights from field visits to various partner countries with the consortium and resulting conversations.
• The evaluation has yielded a wealth of qualitative and quantitative data which has been used to demonstrate the project’s successes against its objectives.
WP7: Dissemination (WP leader: CNAM)
The Dissemination Activities are twofold: carried out by the consortium, or carried out by each partner based on its capacities and on the results to be disseminated. Dissemination Activities are carried out with the approval of the consortium.
Procedures and Templates for the notification of Dissemination Activities within the consortium have been defined at project start, thus allowing all partners to have an overview of the elements disseminated under the ENGINEER Project.
Partners’ roles in activities were shared between for all types of activities, and the evaluation and preparation of each specific activity was fulfilled. The enlightened activities were meetings with groups of interest, attending events as exhibitors or visitors, organising or participating in symposiums or seminars, organising demonstration workshops, updating the project’s website, releasing news, contributing and advertising on professional publications and web portals and contributing to standards. For each type, a detailed list of activities was drawn to gather opportunities altogether. All activities are recorded and can be found at the Dissemination activities table in this documents.
In order to reach larger audience the public website, located at http://www.engineer-project.eu/ had been set up during the first months of the project. ENGINEER’s website constitutes one of the main communication channels within the project’s Dissemination Plan. It provides complete external visibility as it contains general information on project goals, scope, focus and work progress, as well as on consortium partners. Moreover, it is used to share information (news, events, brochures, etc.) produced throughout the project. It consists of static data, which shall remain relatively unchanged throughout the dissemination phase of the project, and dynamic data, which was constantly updated. This updating had been coordinated by the project’s dissemination leader – CNAM and BCMJ (project coordinator).
ENGINEER's website is compliant with the FP7 Guidelines for Communication on Projects.
Dissemination Tools
In addition to the above mentioned, during the second project period an animated card for the New Year had been created
Each partner received a version and was able to send it and then disseminate about the project.
ENGINEER website and its use, general aspects
During the two periods of the project, the same proportion of “new visitor” and “returning visitor” has been registered
The increasing of the number of visits could be explained by several factors: more posted items, better tracking of the website, teachers guides are published and downloaded, the development of SEO (it means a better referencing of the website), the importance of the Facebook page and other social networks, activities of all partners to send news for the project and disseminate about the project using the website.
More than 75% of traffic (including new visitors and return visitors) has been registered by the system.The most important “traffic months” are February 2014 (month of publication of teachers guides), April 2014 and September 2014 (people have downloaded many teachers guides perhaps for the new scholar year).
Figure below presents an overview of countries which have visited ENGINEER website. (the first period of the project on the left side and the second period on the right side).
Website visitors “read” the following pages of ENGINEER website:
1. Acoustics item: 572 visitors
2. Mechanical item: 554 visitors
3. Biomedical item: 461 visitors
4. Electricity item: 427 visitors
5. Geotechnical item: 277 visitors.
The countries the most interested in project (and who are not partners) are
• India: almost 695 visits
• Turkey: almost 145 visits
• Austria: almost 189 visits.
Social communities
Facebook and Tweeter had been used at dissemination channels of the project. Some partners have also “tweeted” news and have used their linkedIn accounts to disseminate about some ENGINEER activities. These activities are also opportunities to communicate about ENGINEER website and then the project. We have analysed the number of visits for the first and the second periods. Here is the board presented these results.
Social network Number of visits
First/second period Number of Pageviews
First/second period Duration of visit(in minuts)
First/second period
Facebook 16/95 21/220 00:10/01.26
Twitter 15/27 20/45 00:19/01.09
WordPress 6/6 13/14 00:44/01.11
goo.gl 2/0 2/0 00:00/00.00
Pocket 1/0 2/0 00:12/00.00
Tumblr 1/0 1/0 00:00/00.00
Blogger 0/2 0/2 00.00/00.00
LinkedIn 0/13 0/41 00.00/0.01.50
Dissemination activities
During the project, ENGINEER partners have lead more than 300 activities and reached more than 36030 teachers, students and visitors (all these target were fixed by the consortium of the project). Different kinds of activities have been lead as workshops (teachers could test and realize ENGINEER activities during teachers’ trainings and/or workshop for museum’s visitors), presentation or conference when partners have presented the content and the aim of the project. Many partners have published about the project on museum’s newsletter, some articles. Media have been also invited to interviewed partners and disseminate about the project.
WP8: Advocacy (WP leader: ECSITE)
Engineer advocacy efforts in Engineer have been crucial to moving from the introduction of engineering in school and museums involved in the project to a more comprehensive introduction of engineering into formal and informal science education throughout Europe.
The advocacy activities of Engineer undertook lobbying efforts aiming at persuading decision-makers to support the widespread introduction of engineering into schools and museums.
The advocacy activities of the Engineer project aimed at:
• Persuading European decision-makers to support the introduction of engineering in formal and informal education.
• Promoting ENGINEER as a practical and proven way of teaching science.
• Inviting large corporations in playing a key role in advocacy efforts.
The efforts of the ENGINEER advocacy campaign have focused on targets identified in the advocacy strategic plan. The initial targets of the campaign were:
• National policy makers
• Ministers of Education
• EU level policy makers
• Science Centre directors and senior staff
• Academia representatives
• Education community
• Representatives of industry and large corporations
Within the project, it was realized that advocacy takes a lot of time, not only in organising activities but also in preparation and planning.
Advocacy activities only started on month 10 of the project. The strategic plan for advocacy was created on month 15 and the advocacy workshop, organised in order to train and inform partners on advocacy, was only hold on November 2013, on month 26 that is to say only 10 months before the end of the project.
The preparation of the strategic plan and advocacy material were crucial for the implementation of all advocacy activities. Also, the workshop allow partners to discuss about Advocacy, have examples of what is done in the United States and in the countries were advocacy already started, and think about adapted strategies for the project at European and local levels. This workshop was very helpful for all partners who mostly started the advocacy after the event.
Consequently, the full operation of the advocacy plan was only implemented during 10 months of the project which is very short to trigger big changes.
Therefore, some adaptations of the initial plan were taken. While the above targets were identified at the beginning of the project, the focus of advocacy has been made essentially on Museum Directors and senior staff. During the project, indeed, the partners involved realised that it is difficult to change curricula and convince policy makers to introduce a new subject within the time and resources available in the project Engineer. Policy makers, at national and international levels, can be difficult to reach and institutions take time to adopt new projects.
However, given the time available in the project and for advocacy activities, the project obtained very good results, especially in some countries were Ministries of Education got interested and involved. The involvement of the Ministry of Education is crucial and boosts the possibility of extending the project.
In the Netherlands in 2014, it was decided that Science and Technology education becomes mandatory in primary schools by 2020. Therefore more attention was given for W&T education and teacher training in the field of science, technology and engineering. This led to multiple opportunities for NEMO to disseminate and advocate the Engineer project.
In Israel, the Ministry of Education supported the project from an early stage. Soshy Cohen, the Director of Science unit and the Chief Inspector of S&T instructions in the Administration of S&T at the Ministry of Education (MoE) has been convinced of the interest of Engineer and got involved actively in advocacy activities for the project. She supports the project in the Engineer video as well as in the booklet. She also participated as a guest speaker at the high level event organised in The Hague with 55 attendees. With this strong and close relation with the Ministry of Education, the BMSJ is now working towards the introduction of Engineer units in Israeli school curricula in elementary and junior high schools and providing professional development in Engineering to the MoE teachers training national programs .
In some other countries, approaching the Ministry of Education and bringing it on board was much more difficult.
In Italy, the main lack was the support of the Ministry of Education. Even the external stakeholders of the project complained about this situation. The ambitious of changing the curriculum and culture take time and some stakeholders did not find a clear strategy to achieve this goal. Stakeholders appreciated the Engineer activities in the project but asked a more demanding work after the end of the project in order to get support to go on the project.
Just like in Italy, many advocacy activities will go on after the end of the project, essentially towards schools and education systems. Museums might organize more training for teachers and spread the methods of Engineers in new schools.
Other advocacy activities will be developed towards industries. The advocacy involving companies already started during the project with some contacts taken and meetings organised. These efforts will be going on in most countries involved in the Engineer project. Indeed, partners are looking for funds that would allow them to continue the project after its end.
Suggestions
As mentioned, preparing and leading advocacy activities take a lot of time. Also, the advocacy efforts could have started at the very beginning of the project and the workshop for partners organised at the end of year 1. Giving more time to the advocacy activities could probably have given more results by the end of the project. Thanks to the changes operated in the strategy, more ambassadors of Engineer who have influential roles in their countries or in Europe (museums directors and staff) were made aware of Engineer and the importance of introducing engineering activities at early ages will be able to talk about the project and objectives after the end of the project. We can already note the popularity of the Engineer project as members of the consortium were invited to participate in major international conferences on Education in autumn 2014 to represent the project.
The involvement of the Ministry of Education is crucial and boosts the possibility of extending the project after its end. However, reaching the Ministry of Educations is not as easy in some countries as in others. On a second hand, changing the culture and further, the curricula is another step forward that takes a lot of time in a majority of cases.
A suggestion that was proven efficient for example in Denmark and at European level is to multiply at maximum the number of people convinced in the project and willing to spread the word in influential networks. In Denmark, the advocacy activities were very effective for teachers thanks to the multiple workshops and events where Experimentarium took part of to present the project. These contacts resulted in spreading the materials in new schools and have strong communication relays with teachers speaking about the project to other teachers.
Also, like in Italy, It has been important for museums to focus on the involvement of different kind of stakeholders in one single project. The stakeholders belonged from different field: education, companies, and universities. This allowed multiple networks to be developed in different fields and extend the effects of advocacy activities. In particular industries can be an important target to convince on the potential of engineer also because they could be willing to support the project financially for its development after the end of the European funding. At a European level, the participation of Engineer partners to international conferences started by sending session proposals to different event and gets accepted. These presentations in addition with the strong presence of Engineer at two Ecsite conferences (largest European conference on science communication) allowed the project to be well known and popular. In September 2014, right at the end of the project, we counted already 5 invitations to attend international conferences in autumn 2014. This shows that the multiplication of sources and supports can efficiently boost the advocacy of the project. Especially, Engineer members were invited to major event in science education where influent stakeholders in education at national or European level will take part in. At ECSITE Annual Conference 2015, another pre-conference workshop will take place to share experiences and to discuss the opportunities to create a thematic group of science museums, as a respond to the large interest from many science museums in ENGINEER project.
Potential Impact:
WP2: Adaptation/Development of Engineering Design Challenges (WP Leader: MMU)
The potential impact of the school units is wide-ranging, with impact at individual, institutional and group levels.
• At the individual level, the pedagogical approach taken in the ENGINEER school units is designed to make science more engaging for pupils and ultimately raise performance and enhance attitudes to science. It emphasises a ‘hands on’ approach which supports the development of understanding in context. It also emphasises science in use, embedding it in technology and problem-solving. Exposure to the units can have an impact on pupils’ learning styles, achievements and subsequent motivation in both science and other school subjects. Similar impact can be expected from the museum activities, which emphasise problem solving in real world contexts and raise engagement with science concepts.
• At the institutional level, the pedagogical approach taken in the ENGINEER school units has the potential for impact on school practices, introducing and supporting inquiry-based learning for those schools where inquiry has been absent or difficult to sustain. In terms of curriculum, it also supports science teaching in schools, enabling teachers to present science concepts with more clarity and confidence. It also has the potential to support cross-disciplinary teaching and sustained project work. In addition, the units have the potential to raise the profile of engineering in schools, and to enable them to support pupil career aspirations by creating clear links between the formal curriculum and real world applications and jobs.
• At group level, the school units were designed to be inclusive with respect to gender, class and ethnicity, emphasising collaborative working, discussion and presentation skills, and non-competitive working. We know that certain minority ethnic groups, girls and working class students are more likely to see STEM subjects as too hard for them or not suitable for them, and they are also likely to fare less well in competitive school environments. The inquiry-based focus on planning, doing, evaluating and improving meant that pupils who might be more likely to see themselves (and be seen) as unable were given time and space to contribute to the work. The emphasis on reflection on improvement rather than right/wrong answers supports this approach, as does the inclusion of ‘soft skills’ of presentation and discussion. The content of the units themselves have the potential to widen interest in engineering and STEM in general, introducing engineering topics and contexts which departed from the stereotypical ‘male domain’ view of mechanical engineering within competitive and narrow contexts (e.g. creating faster cars/building bridges). The inclusivity supported by this range of topics is complemented by the inclusion on all units of material on engineering careers which include both men and women. These benefits are also reflected in the museum activities.
The wider societal impact of the project may be seen in its long-term consequences in terms of engaging a larger number of pupils from different backgrounds in STEM learning and raising aspirations to STEM careers. Similarly, long-term impact on school practices in general may lead to a greater emphasis on problem-solving approaches and cross-disciplinary teaching. Integration of the units into national curricula is a strong possibility, already demonstrated in the case of Israel.
In addition to the project-based outreach and advocacy activities, dissemination has included the presentation of conference papers to museum educator audiences and also more general education research audiences. It has also included the use of ENGINEER school units in initial teacher education, as a means of illustrating the potential of the pedagogic approach taken, and as a vehicle for engagement with schools in continuing professional development. Exploitation in Manchester has focused on the promotion of engineering in STEM education in primary schools in the North-West region of England, and it is anticipated that specialist postgraduate pre-service teaching students will act as ambassadors to promote engineering in their school placements. Negotiations to extend this through MMU’s STEM CPD centre are ongoing. Further research into engineer-related pedagogies is in the process of being developed with a view to publishing and conference presentations.
WP3: Adaptation/Development of Teacher Training Materials (WP Leader: NEMO)
The project and especially the teacher trainings made teachers broaden their view on engineering. This leads to a different approach of teachers about engineering in class. It has started to change. Engineering has started to shift form just being a school subject that was often even barely taught to a subject that is important for the future of our society and can help pupils to explore their talents like for example problem solving skills.
The engineering design challenge can be used to teach more maths in class and to give more meaning to math.
By delivering ten good qualities engineering design challenges that are available in ten languages and still be found through Scientix and/or the websites of the different museums the potential impact is great. A great part of the teachers are used to look for new teaching materials for in class.
The structure of the engineering design challenges that is developed in this project could be used to develop more engineering design challenges on other subject and/or to expand the ranges there is now to junior high students and pupils younger than 8 years old.
The good cooperation in this project has led to a network between schools, universities, institutions and museum. In the future we can use this network.
WP4: Pilots (WP leader: MUST)
The main impact of the WP 4 has been:
• consolidation of the collaboration between Schools and Museum partners
• involvement of the Museums and Schools in a demanding work of action research supported by MUST and MMU
• first informal outreach of the activities with target audiences (schools and museum visitors) in museums and in school settings.
Numbers and figures
In the Pilot of the Engineer design challenge in schools have been involved:
• 35 school classes - 875 students and 70 teachers
In the Pilot of the Engineer activities in Museums have been involved:
• 52 school classes – 1230 students and 100 teachers
• 820 museum visitors
All the activities have been advertised by the schools and museums partners through their local channels.
For museums the main tools have been: museums websites, teachers and visitors newsletters.
WP 5 : Outreach Impact (WP leader : TH)
The result from outreach year is the partners have involved over 1000 schools in the different activities during the outreach. The activities for schools have covered school programs in the museums, teacher trainings in the museums, training of thechers´ trainers and training of teachers by the teachers´trainers.
In the “Engineer teacher trainings” the museums implemented teacher training on the Engineer units that were developed in the Engineer project. The result is so far that 1400 teachers in the ten EU and associated countries have been trained to use the engineer material and methods with their students. During the Engineer teacher training workshops the museums have been using training methods and materials from the “Engineer professional development guides” and from the “Engineer teacher guides”.
These teacher trainings have several impacts
• One impact is that over 1400 teachers are trained to use the Engineer material in schools and several of them have already used the material in their classes and several has plan to use the material this upcoming year. From follow up we know that over 10 200 students have already used the units in school and that over 16 000 students will be using the units this school year. Many teachers have been trained during spring 2014 and in the last moth of the project so it is natural that they plan to use the material in the upcoming school year 2014/2015. And one more potential impact is that the trained teachers will use the material several times in different classes in the upcoming years
• We know from reports by the museum partners that more teacher trainings are scheduled next year. So one potential impact is that the museum partners will continue to offer teacher trainings on the engineer material and that other museums than the partner museums will start to use the guides to train teachers. “The teacher guides” and “The professional development guides” were used in the trainings and we have seen that these guides are useful for teachers and also for educators in museums and by other like teachers´ trainers. Then the impact is that we will have more teachers with ability to teach engineering and technology to their students using IBSE pedagogic methods.
• In the outreach year several of the museum and school partners have worked together in the implementation of teacher trainings. For example in Denmark the museums and schools have developed a learning team of the 2 teachers from the partner school Maglegaard and 2 employees from Experimentarium. This team did the entire teacher training in Denmark. The collaboration between the schools and the museums has the impact of strengthen the cooperation between schools and the informal science learning institutions (the museums).
Engineer activities in museums
Over 25 000 people have participated in one of the Engineering workshops for schools or for general public in the museums. The workshops have been both drop in workshops and some have been more scheduled with clear start and ending times. The impact is that the project now have a wide dissemination and the concept and methods of Engineer are widely spread among families and students.
One result is also that we have seen that the Engineer activities can be adapted to different countries and different museums and that the activities are popular among teachers, students and general public. For example the “High flyers” museum activity has been used by BSMJ, TH, NEMO and SCIOX and the “Frisky feet” museum activity have been used by EXP and BSMJ. And we can see that the engineering field and content is the same but the museums have adapted the activities to fit in their own museums for example changing the context to more local or changing the design to fit in the exhibition areas. And the school activity for example “Popular mechanics” have been used and adapted by CNAM, MUST and DM. So one potential impact is that many museums all over Europe have the possibility to read and adapt the units to their museums. We have seen that many of the partner museums are planning for further Engineer activities in the future. Some museums (TH, BSMJ, NEMO ) already design new types of exhibits based on the EDP, and some are developing new kind of LABS (MUST, NEMO, BSMJ) that will be the "home" for Engineering.
Teachers´ trainers
One outcome is that we now have over 100 teachers´ trainers trained to train other teachers to use the engineer material and methods. And we know from follow ups that they have during the outreach year trained over 300 other teachers and that there will be more training in the upcoming year. Some countries now have networks with teachers´ trainers that can discuss teaching of engineering in schools and some countries have teachers´ trainers from the ministry of education that have planned to continue to use the engineer material in trainings. The potential impact is that there will be more Engineer trainings conducted by the teachers´trainers.
Teacher students
Several of the museum partners have trained teacher students to use the engineer material. The result is that in some years or maybe already now, these students will be out working in schools and have the confidence and knowledge to use the engineer materials.
WP6: Evaluation (WP leader: UWE)
UWE hosted a range of trainings and has been instrumental in securing further grant funds to research the use of the ’Engineer teaching materials in a range of contexts.
UWE hosted a meeting with Ionannis Miaoulis form Boston Museum of Science and the Heads of Department from Education, Engineering as well as the Environment with Head teachers from Primary schools. The result of this meeting was a united resolution to take the collaboration between the parties further. This resulted in the successful application to the Engineering Professors Grant fund for further work with the Engineer materials.
The Engineering Professors’ grant was to trial, develop and evaluate a model of using the ‘Engineer‘ teaching materials in school taught by Initial teacher education students (ITT) and Engineering students. The aims were to spread the use of materials in schools, increase the subject knowledge of the ITT student and the communication skills and outreach strategy of the Engineering students. The experience of the pupils will be monitored through an early researcher grant project working alongside the main project. The result of the Project aims to be a wider dissemination in primary schools of the project and approximately 300 more children experiencing an Engineer unit in 2014 as well as the training of 10 students in their final year in the use of the materials. 10 Engineering students will have experience of outreach work in their local community and further developed their communication skills in this context. The model is intended to be a permanent part of UWE ITT and Engineering degrees in future years.
UWE also have started to use the training materials in the training of primary science specialist who will be teaching in schools in the next academic year. This is a group of a further 40 Teachers going into local schools and further afield with training and experience of teaching ‘Engineer units’
We also used them this year with 85 yr 2s ITT students running a science day with approx 100 children and their teachers from a selection of schools from economically deprived areas.
Staff from WP 6 presented the evaluation data at the BERA (British Educational Research Association) in September disseminating the project further.
UWE has gathered a wealth of data relating to teacher and pupil engagement with science, technology and engineering education in primary schools across the EU. These data sets are published in the final ENGINEER report and have the potential to influence policy, curricular and pedagogy positively if disseminated successfully. For example, the evaluation data present a strong case for the role of design and build activities as a vehicle for learning science and the evaluation points strongly towards ENGINEER materials as useful drivers to engage girls in all fields of engineering. Data gathered by the evaluation team clearly indicate that programmes of study at primary school have the potential to increase young peoples’ interest in engineering which could result in increased numbers of school leavers choosing STEM subjects at higher education and then entering careers in related fields.
The impact of museums working with primary schools has the potential to encourage visits from the wider public for example parents visiting with their children to undertake ENGINEER activities. In addition, it has provided opportunities for museums to work with children from diverse socio – economic backgrounds, including those children who might not normally visit museums. Thus there are opportunities for widening participation and access to museums for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds.
The involvement of professional engineers in developing materials with some partners/ supporting some partners has the potential to encourage pupils to see the value of studying science/ engineering at school.
The implications of more girls accessing and showing interest in engineering fields at primary school are potentially far reaching from a societal point of view.
WP 7 + 8 : Dissemination and Advocacy Impact (WP leaders CNAM and ECSITE)
Dissemination:
ENGINEER activities have been lead in different social background of scholar groups. The aim was to make aware each student who has participated to our activities that he could become a future engineer and at least discover engineer’s process and job.
This purpose was also the aim of dissemination activities. So using dissemination tools and activities, each partner had organized activities to discover engineer’ job and process to each fixed target (museum’s visitors, policy makers, teachers and students).
Many pedagogical activities will be continued after the end of the project because of the interest of participants or because of dissemination activities lead. We have noticed that Greece, France, Israël, Denmark (for example) will organize next year teachers’ trainings and lead pedagogical project using ENGINEER pedagogical materials. Then we could conclude that because of these activities we are going to reach more target than fixed by ENGINEER consortium.
As we have developed this kind of activities inside museums and universities, some explainers form science centres have been interested and asked us some presentations and trainings. It could be also another way to disseminate about the project and ENGINEER process.
Advocacy:
Many advocacy activities will go on after the end of the project, essentially towards schools and education systems thanks to the contacts initiated by advocacy and outreach actions.. Other advocacy activities will be developed towards industries. The advocacy involving companies already started during the project with some contacts taken and meetings organised. These efforts will be going on in most countries involved in the Engineer project. Indeed, partners are looking for funds that would allow them to continue the project after its end and extend it. Following the multiplicity of events were Engineer was presented within the lifetime of the project, Engineer became quite popular for science communication and education stakeholders in Europe. As a consequence, Engineer partners were invited to five European conferences in Europe in autumn 2014.
Thanks to these activities, the project will go on reaching new audiences and will be made aware of new supporters and believers in Engineer. We can expect that the extension of the project in schools and museums in Europe will go on in the coming years.
The advocacy activities of Engineer have started 10 months before the end of the project. Also, it is a very short period to be able to observe measurable impacts. However, some changes have been triggered and some others were observed during the lifetime of Engineer.
Engineer aimed to transform the teaching of science education in primary schools in Europe by introducing engineering as a discipline that is inherently inquiry-based and problem-focused, and yet usually overlooked in the teaching of sciences. In some countries, like in Israel, in the Netherlands, the change has already started to happen. In other countries, contacts were more difficult to take with the Ministry of Education such as in France and Italy. But with many schools involved and probably more to come, the impact of the project could weight more and change mentalities at bigger scales.
Another ambitious impact foreseen in the project is the action towards Europe, reaching people beyond the ones already involved as project’s partners. The modules, teacher training, and other distinctive elements of Engineer can be easily translated into all European languages. Ten languages are already available and translations can be asked through the Scientix portal. Indeed, only 3 interests for a translation is enough for the Scientix team to translate the material. Also, as piloted in Engineer, the units are very easily transferable in different countries.
The many international events where Engineer was presented and the positive feedbacks received from different institutions which participated, suggest that Engineer became popular within science communication within Europe. The real impact of these international advocacy activities are difficult to measure as museums and schools are free to use the Engineer material. Also, the Engineer material is available on different online portals so even if numbers in terms of downloading material can be gathered, we will not know how many museums and schools will organize Engineer units. The most important impact for the project here is that regarding the high level stakeholders in education and science communication reached during the project, Engineer contributed to make the E of STEM bigger.
The Impact of WP7 and WP8 presented by CNAM and ECSITE, add here an analysis of the project dissemination and advocacy activities, as well as an analysis of the project's public website.
List of Websites:
Coordinator contacts details
Maya Halevy
BSMJ
Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem
Israel
Phone: +972 2 6544860
E-mail: mayah@mada.org.il
ENGINEER public website: http://www.engineer-project.eu/
