A goal of science education is for students to develop scientific literacy. Scientific literacy involves the acquisition of factual scientific knowledge and the ability to assess the credibility of scientific assertation. Furthermore, students should be able to include ethical considerations. Realising this goal is complicated because it requires the development of argumentation skills, content knowledge, and an understanding of Nature of Science. Teachers struggle to apply effective strategies in the classroom. Few studies have shed light on usable, effective strategies. Therefore, the research goal is to identify features that encourage students to explore socio-scientific issues. To stimulate the development of scientific literary and support teachers, a web-based educational instrument was designed. In this study, the effects and influences of its features in the context of socio-scientific issues are investigated. The instrument provides a sequence of concept cartoons alternated with an interactive diagram. The instrument is deployed in 14 classrooms in both primary and secondary schools. In this paper, we present the educational instrument and report on its practical implementation and its constituent features. The results indicate that students show active involvement during their interaction with the instrument and reveal both the merits and challenges regarding the various features.
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The overall objective of project OC/EFSA/AMU/2018/01 was to support EFSA to develop in-house capacity to collect, appraise and synthesize evidence coming from literature sources in the context of food and feed scientific assessment. This objective had to be reached by offering 3 different types of training courses to EFSA staff (including Trainees) and Experts (of Panels, Working Groups and Member States). This report summarizes these trainings and their evaluation. Between 15 October 2018 and 24 November 2020, 9 trainings were delivered by a team of trainers from SYRCLE (SYstematic Review Centre for Laboratory animal Experimentation, www.syrcle.nl) and partners. A total number of 160 people participated in these trainings (an average of 18 per training), some of whom participated in more than one training (day). The individual trainings were evaluated using an online evaluation form, which consisted of general questions (e.g. about the training room or course material) and specific questions about the various parts of the training courses. The participants had the option of adding qualitative comments. Moreover, a so-called second level evaluation was used to assess the extent to which the trainings improved the capacity of participants to use the techniques explained in the courses in the context of EFSA assessments. With an average score of 8.23 (out of 10), the trainings were evaluated very positively. Major revisions of the content were only necessary for two of the courses and only after the first editions. Overall, the participants assessed their knowledge and practical skills to be higher after the training compared to before. Moreover, two of the online editions of the courses received an EFSA Golden Globe for the most successful EFSA scientific courses delivered in 2020. Based on the experiences with this series of trainings, recommendations are made for future EFSA trainings in evidence synthesis.
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Visual Thinking (VT) is concerned with the use of visual resources (diagrams, simple drawings, short texts) to represent, organize or communicate ideas or contents. VT aims to favor the understanding of concepts to `translate' to a visual representation a content or process. Lower thinking skills to remember and understand concepts are necessary as much as higher order skills to filter, manage and spatially organize contents. VT offers us a slower, but more effective, way to learn and teachers are increasingly using VT for educational purposes in their lectures. Within the VT techniques, we have set ourselves in the so-called canvas as a template that allows to visually structuring the fundamental elements of an entity or process. As an example of use in the educational field, the PBL canvas proposed by conecta13, describes a Project Based Learning process in nine steps (key competences, learning standards, evaluation method, final product, tasks, resources, ICT tools, grouping and organization and dissemination). On the other hand, we find the need to encourage Science, Technonoloy, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) vocations, especially in women, given the decreasing interest in these areas (Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Mathematics) considered more arid and boring by students. This makes us to face a paradoxical crossroad, since much of the jobs of the future will be linked to these fields. It is therefore necessary to bring the methodology of scientific thinking closer to the students by presenting it in accessible ways. Here we propose a canvas that provides a visual structure to represent graphically the various steps of the scientific method. These steps include the systematic observation, formulation of hypothesis, design of the experiment to prove or discard them, to finally elaborate some conclusions leading to development of a theory. The canvas is used as a visual tool to support the design to summarize the results of the scientific experiment, to cover the different steps in a schematic way either with text or graphically. An empty template is provided as well as different examples of the canvas covered with experiments that can be carried out in different pre-university educational levels. In order to let this canvas become part of the public domain it is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, so that anyone can use it, copy or modify by free, with the only condition of attributing the corresponding authorship and keeping the license open.
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Electronic Sports (esports) is a form of digital entertainment, referred to as "an organised and competitive approach to playing computer games". Its popularity is growing rapidly as a result of an increased prevalence of online gaming, accessibility to technology and access to elite competition.Esports teams are always looking to improve their performance, but with fast-paced interaction, it can be difficult to establish where and how performance can be improved. While qualitative methods are commonly employed and effective, their widespread use provides little differentiation among competitors and struggles with pinpointing specific issues during fast interactions. This is where recent developments in both wearable sensor technology and machine learning can offer a solution. They enable a deep dive into player reactions and strategies, offering insights that surpass traditional qualitative coaching techniquesBy combining insights from gameplay data, team communication data, physiological measurements, and visual tracking, this project aims to develop comprehensive tools that coaches and players can use to gain insight into the performance of individual players and teams, thereby aiming to improve competitive outcomes. Societal IssueAt a societal level, the project aims to revolutionize esports coaching and performance analysis, providing teams with a multi-faceted view of their gameplay. The success of this project could lead to widespread adoption of similar technologies in other competitive fields. At a scientific level, the project could be the starting point for establishing and maintaining further collaboration within the Dutch esports research domain. It will enhance the contribution from Dutch universities to esports research and foster discussions on optimizing coaching and performance analytics. In addition, the study into capturing and analysing gameplay and player data can help deepen our understanding into the intricacies and complexities of teamwork and team performance in high-paced situations/environments. Collaborating partnersTilburg University, Breda Guardians.
Manual labour is an important cornerstone in manufacturing and considering human factors and ergonomics is a crucial field of action from both social and economic perspective. Diverse approaches are available in research and practice, ranging from guidelines, ergonomic assessment sheets over to digitally supported workplace design or hardware oriented support technologies like exoskeletons. However, in the end those technologies, methods and tools put the working task in focus and just aim to make manufacturing “less bad” with reducing ergonomic loads as much as possible. The proposed project “Human Centered Smart Factories: design for wellbeing for future manufacturing” wants to overcome this conventional paradigm and considers a more proactive and future oriented perspective. The underlying vision of the project is a workplace design for wellbeing that makes labor intensive manufacturing not just less bad but aims to provide positive contributions to physiological and mental health of workers. This shall be achieved through a human centered technology approach and utilizing advanced opportunities of smart industry technologies and methods within a cyber physical system setup. Finally, the goal is to develop smart, shape-changing workstations that self-adapt to the unique and personal, physical and cognitive needs of a worker. The workstations are responsive, they interact in real time, and promote dynamic activities and varying physical exertion through understanding the context of work. Consequently, the project follows a clear interdisciplinary approach and brings together disciplines like production engineering, human interaction design, creative design techniques and social impact assessment. Developments take place in an industrial scale test bed at the University of Twente but also within an industrial manufacturing factory. Through the human centered design of adaptive workplaces, the project contributes to a more inclusive and healthier society. This has also positive effects from both national (e.g. relieve of health system) as well as individual company perspective (e.g. less costs due to worker illness, higher motivation and productivity). Even more, the proposal offers new business opportunities through selling products and/or services related to the developed approach. To tap those potentials, an appropriate utilization of the results is a key concern . The involved manufacturing company van Raam will be the prototypical implementation partner and serve as critical proof of concept partner. Given their openness, connections and broad range of processes they are also an ideal role model for further manufacturing companies. ErgoS and Ergo Design are involved as methodological/technological partners that deal with industrial engineering and ergonomic design of workplace on a daily base. Thus, they are crucial to critically reflect wider applicability and innovativeness of the developed solutions. Both companies also serve as multiplicator while utilizing promising technologies and methods in their work. Universities and universities of applied sciences utilize results through scientific publications and as base for further research. They also ensure the transfer to education as an important leverage to inspire and train future engineers towards wellbeing design of workplaces.
The building industry is a major target for resource-efficiency developments, which are crucial in European Union’s roadmaps. Using renewable materials impacts the sustainability of buildings and is set as urgent target in current architectural practice. The building industry needs renewable materials positively impacting the CO2 footprint without drawbacks. The use of wood and timber as renewable construction materials has potentials, but also drawbacks because trees need long time to grow; producing timber generates considerable waste; and the process from trees to applications in buildings requires transportation and CO2 emission. This research generates new scientific knowledge and a feasibility study for a new wood-like bio-material - made of cellulose and lignin from (local) residual biomass via i.e. 3D printing - suitable for applications in the building industry. It contributes to a sustainable built environment as it transforms waste from different sectors into a local resource to produce a low carbon-footprint bio-material for the construction sector. Through testing, the project will study the material properties of samples of raw and 3D printed material, correlating different material recipes that combine lignin and cellulose and different 3D printing production parameters. It will map the material properties with the requirements of the construction industry for different building products, indicating potentials and limits of the proposed bio-material. The project will produce new knowledge on the material properties, a preliminary production concept and an overview of potentials and limits for application in the built environment. The outcome will be used by industry to achieve a marketable new bio-material; as well as in further scientific academic research.
