The WEEC is the most prominent international scientific and research conference for environmental education. It is organized every two years and constantly gathers a large and high-status global audience of academics, researchers, educators, policy-makers and other stakeholders and citizens.
At the Congress, Maria Daskolia, tenured associate professor at NKUA, director of the Environmental Education Lab at the same institution and coordinator of the integration of citizen science into school in Cos4Cloud, and Naya Grillia, PhD researcher at the NKUA and member of the Cos4Cloud consortium, presented the NKUA’s work in Cos4Cloud.
Education, citizen science and Cos4Cloud’s technologies
In a joint presentation, Maria and Naya outlined the project’s general strategy to integrate citizen science and the project’s technologies and new services to school-based environmental education. Following that, they analysed the design approach the NKUA applied in relation to the six-month online training course, which was organised and run with the aim to empower Greek environmental education teachers and other educational stakeholders in incorporating citizen science into their school practice, “Citizen Science and Environmental Education for Sustainability”.
Maria and Naya also explained the two levels of formative evaluation the NKUA carried out to collect data before the start of the training (i.e., on theparticipants’ profiles and motivation) and throughout the implementation of the course (i.e., the participants’ needs and expectations from the overall design and specific aspects of the course’s implementation, and their views and reflections about their training experience), as a more holistic approach to better understanding and supporting the training experience and outcomes.
NKUA team has also recently participated in the Greek teacher training seminar organized by the Museum of School Life and Education; and the “Real world – Real Education” international Conference organized by one of the most well-known educational organizations of private primary and secondary schools (Doukas Schools).
