Teachers’ Feedback Expressed in a Training Course Organized in a MOOC Environment

Abstract

The concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) became more and more visible in the last few years and is one of the new pillars in the European Commission policy, in particular within the European Commission’s Science in Society program, framed within the EU Horizon 2020 initiative. Taking into consideration the presence of this concept into the FP7 Program priorities, a big number of European projects have been approved and financed by EU, in order to bring closer the research and innovation results to the people. One of those projects is the FP 7 ENGAGE Project (“Equipping the Next Generation for Active Engagement in Science Equipping the Next Generation”, www.engagingscience.eu). The partnership of the project proposed to come with interesting continuous development programs for teachers, organized through face-to-face workshops or on-line courses, where different interactive-participatory teaching strategies are presented and many examples of applying these strategies are discussed. These examples start from identifying a problematic situation (dilemma) that students may face in their real life and they need to find rational solutions, by using their scientific and socio-moral knowledge. The paper presents our findings based on the analysis of the Romanian teachers’ feedback after they finished the 1st edition of the on-line course “Methods of promoting RRI dimensions in Science Education”, organized by Valahia University Targoviste in 2015. Our analysis was focused on the Science teachers’ replies to an initial and final questionnaire and to the teachers’ reflections collected during the on-line course duration.