Share Paper: Practical STEM at the Open University: The Use of Live Video in the OpenStem Labs to Innovate Teaching and Create a Community of Practical STEM Students

  1. Brian Richardson, The Open University, United Kingdom
  2. Kate Bradshaw, The Open University, United Kingdom
  3. Trevor Collins, The Open University, United Kingdom
  4. Ben Hawkridge, The Open University, United Kingdom
Tuesday, June 25 6:00 PM-7:30 PM Koepelzaal

Abstract: From a strategy to teach our distance learning students practical skills online, a new platform was developed, ‘The OpenScience Laboratory’ (www.opensciencelab.ac.uk), which sought to ‘bring interactive practical science to students anywhere and anytime the internet is available. The laboratory features investigations based around on-screen instruments and virtual scenarios using real data’. The OpenScience Laboratory project has now evolved into the ‘OpenSTEM Labs’ expanding the teaching to all STEM subjects, through the use of real remote instrumentation, streaming observations of real experiments and live, interactive, online broadcasts from the field and the laboratory. This ‘go live’ delivery allows real experiments and ...