The 12th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL 2013) has been held successfully in Kenting, Taiwan (Oct. 6 -9, 2013). The EU project Go-Lab has conducted a round table on “Supporting Inquiry and Problem Based Learning with Online Labs and STEM Apps” (organisers: Yiwei Cao (IMC), Sten Govaerts (EPFL), Denis Gillet (EPFL), and Nils Faltin (IMC)).

Five experts and over 25 participants have attended the Go-Lab round table. The round table experts are mostly professors in e-learning research areas, besides a publisher/editor of the British Journal of Educational Technology, and one professor who was once a school teacher for more than 10 years.

After Sten Govaerts has presented the Go-Lab concepts and the experts have exchanged their ideas and first-hand experiences on different topics including inquiry learning, STEM apps, eBooks, learning analytics, and future trends in e-Learning research.

The round table has been appreciated by the participants with active questions and productive discussions. The round table has been a good opportunity to show the first-year’s research results of the Go-Lab project to the international e-Learning researchers. It is expected to bring further collaboration opportunities with potential associate project partners.

Besides the round table, the paper on the Go-Lab Portal architecture “Towards an Online Lab Portal for Inquiry-based STEM Learning at School” has been presented by Sten Govaerts (EPFL) and Yiwei Cao (IMC). This is a first joint paper of the whole Go-Lab technical research cluster with over ten contributors. (View the paper here).

As another successful result of the organisation of the Go-Lab round table, Yiwei Cao has been nominated to one of the workshop co-chairs of ICWL 2014 which will be held in Tallin, Estonia in August 2014. A preliminary Call for Papers is available here.

Article by Yiwei Cao (IMC)