Dr. Anette Dragan, principal of the Montessori Community School in Friedrichsthal (Germany), uses digital media whenever they enrich the lessons in a meaningful way.
She also advises: "I think it's very important to create a uniform solution. If you agree on a learning platform, all teachers should use it and not use OneDrive or e-mail to make their materials available instead. In addition, I think it's important that the system is tailored to the school and adapted to the different age groups."

The online platform was developed within the scope of several EU projects, especially Go-Lab, Next-Lab and GO-GA that have been initiated in 2012. Today, Go-Lab is no longer a mere project but rather a community of several players from the fields of science and teaching, the professional development of teachers, and the software industry. We refer to this cooperation community as the "Go-Lab initiative".

The Go-Lab Ecosystem was designed in close cooperation with school teachers. As of this date it's the world's largest platform for online laboratories provided by industry leaders.

In the Go-Lab Ecosystem teachers and their students have access to more than 600 online laboratories. This can include virtual - i.e. simulated - as well as remotely controlled experiments, in which the web interface enables students and teachers to access real laboratories.

Teachers have the possibility to select an online laboratory that matches the lesson topic and can combine it with interactive learning applications and other content in a virtual learning environment, building a so-called "Inquiry Learning Space". They share this learning environment with their students via a web link, which enables them to utilize this Space in the classroom but also at home.

Structured learning environments such as these guide students through the research process and support them in every phase. This way they learn how to phrase research questions and hypotheses, how to verify them by experiment, how to analyze the collected data, and how to summarize such data in a digital report.

The underlying idea is to introduce students to scientific subjects and encourage them to pursue a career in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It was, however, very important to us to not only provide theoretical knowledge but also impart practical skills and abilities. This is why Go-Lab allows students to work like real scientists during the lessons and provides the necessary research skills, such as analytical thinking and an empirical approach. Go-Lab also takes the so-called "21st-century skills" into account since it integrates collaboration and reflection into the learning process.

With its huge selection of online laboratories end ready-to-use virtual learning environments Go-Lab basically covers all age groups from six through 18 years. It's focus, however, is rather on secondary level education.

The platform can be accessed from all over the world. It is mainly used in Europe but also in our partner countries in Africa, i.e. Kenya, Nigeria and Benin. To date, approximately 120,000 students were able to benefit from Go-Lab.The online laboratories are available in more than 60 languages, while Inquiry Learning Spaces can be prepared and published in almost any language.

Some of the providers in our partner network offer professional online labs at a certain charge. These online laboratories will now be available as "premium labs" in addition to our free offer that we will of course continue to provide.

Our partner LabsLand, for example, offers a large variety of remotely controlled laboratories. Their huge advantage is that the installation of every laboratory is replicated at several universities and research institutes, thus ensuring continuous availability and excellent technical reliability. These labs enable students to program real Arduino robots and to conduct experiments covering topics such as radioactivity and kinematics.

It's exactly this service that we offer together with LabsLand free of charge from now on since we want to help mitigating the effects of school closings due to the corona pandemic as much as possible.

Communication and leadership skills are more important than ever, not only in times of virtual teamwork. But how do you train these so-called transversal skills? How can learning progress be identified and recommendations be made for further skill development?

European research partners in the DEVELOP project have been specifically working on these questions and they are now presenting innovative solutions. A résumé and an outlook.

The DEVELOP project has developed a Personalised Learning Environment (PLE) that benefits strategic human resources development and that supports both employees and managers in medium-sized and large companies. As an online career coach, the system offers users tailor-made guidance to actively plan and develop their career. Special attention is paid to the promotion of soft and transversal skills.

In practice, the scenario is as follows: At the beginning of the digital soft skills assessment, you start with a self-evaluation and get feedback from colleagues and superiors, which is also reflected in the system. Then you can complete various serious games, which, for example, assess your communication skills or, by means of a simulation, your abilities as a manager.

From all these assessments, the system determines the employee's current competency profile and provides corresponding automated recommendations and options for possible career paths and career goals. The employee can choose the desired path and receives suitable training recommendations to close competency gaps. As soon as a training is completed, the plan is updated, and the corresponding progress is visible in the system.

Uta Schwertel explains what were the biggest challenges during the project: "Especially with leadership skills, it is always very difficult to integrate the skills learned during a one-time training course into everyday working life. That's why we decided to use a tool that works like a social network and aims to support informal learning and on-the-job training when dealing with issues".

So, if an employee wants to prepare for a leadership role, he is referred to imc’s Social Learning Tool. The tool works similarly to a social network and aims to support the employee in topics such as self-reflection, networking and knowledge transfer.

Once logged in, the employees must first self-assess their leadership skills and set personal goals. Based on this, the tool recommends specific tasks. For example, participants are asked to share their own experiences, comment on other people's contributions, add their own tasks they are currently working on and expand their network.

After the successful completion of the project at the end of 2019, the foundation "DEVELOP your career" was established. It is chaired by the former project coordinator Greg Carey from the Learnovate Centre, Trinity College Dublin. The aim of the foundation is to follow up the project and to conduct further practical and scientific research on career and competence development, learning interventions and methods, and work-related social and human capital.

imc is also co-operating with the DEVELOP Foundation and continues its work on DEVELOP, particularly on the Social Learning Tool. Learning activities created in the Social Learning Tool can be integrated into a course offered via the imc Learning Suite - as can be the leadership simulation game.

In addition, the former DEVELOP member, Joost Modderman, continued DEVELOP's work in his company SkillFull B.V. In cooperation with the foundation, SkillFull is one of the distributors of DEVELOP's Personal Learning Environment and provides, among other things, individual HR instruments such as the simulation games.