Special attention is given to provide training opportunities to (under)graduate students in the EU (Bologna Declaration, 1999). Thus, the internship period has gained official recognition in all EU university degrees to guarantee enough duration and a place to carry out specific professional preparation. Consequently, preservice teachers’ practical experiences are also gaining momentum in the teaching education programs across Europe. In view of its importance, there is a need to find common ways to design, implement, and evaluate the practicum programs within the EU, not only to share common guidelines but also to set rigorous indicators of what might constitute the learned professional experience in schools.
Secondly, there is an urgency to foster the use of ICT and online teachers’ resources to improve the learning processes. The practicum requires to be updated according to this EU strategic plan by embedding and prioritizing ICT in the teacher education programs. To date, the teaching practicum is still highly dependent on a presence-based modality. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic has recently put universities to the test to find online solutions for face-to-face teaching. Nonetheless, major challenges have been spotlighted in the practicum as it is the only subject that has been canceled -or postponed- in many teaching programs worldwide because of its supervised application nature.
PRAC3 is a pioneering initiative to test the efficacy of an online teaching practicum. Today’s operational online resources aiming at bringing in the ICT in the practicum are based on the web 2.0 (theoretical contents online, users’ interaction via forums, blogs, social websites, etc). However, the ultimate motivation for this consortium is to design integrated online teaching resources for the on-site school teaching training based on web 3.0, which its defining feature is the possibility to access more personalized information according to the user’s experience (e.g., Elaboration of mentors’ and preservice students’ profiles, and virtual personalized school practices).
The relevance and necessity of an online teacher practicum are recognized globally as key indicators of future professional performance. PRAC3 is a European initiative aimed at designing technological products and solutions for the online practicum to be used by mentors and pre-service teachers in the participant countries. Its usability is based upon two major aspects: a management resource and a professional exchange interface for practice. For the first aspect, the management resource tool (Practicum Profile Tool) helps to globally administrate the schools’ network available for the practicum in each participant country, to visualize the collective agreements between the universities-schools- educational authorities, and select the optimal mentors for the preservice teachers according to designed professional features. In relation to the second purpose, the PRAC3 allows pre-service teachers to become immersed in the practicum experience through simulated teaching (e.g., Augmented Reality) and virtual practices (e.g., face-to-face teaching or Live Remote Classroom System -LRCS-) which, in turn, allow for more capacity building and teaching accessibility as well as understanding different school contexts and environments.
PRAC3 clusters several online resources to optimize the management of tasks typically related to teacher education training and to school-based experiences. For instance, websites, Apps, Augmented Reality hardware and software, and bidirectional simultaneous communication systems through LRCS. Its technological solutions can be summarized in the following:

1. Identifying and matching professional and training profiles: The practicum Profiles Tool (PPT). Users’ online registration and automatic profiling of the pairs or dyads of mentors and preservice teachers according to an agreed-upon set of evaluation standards (e.g., managerial, pedagogical, and professional criteria) is one of its most innovative features.
2. Promoting virtual and online practicum experiences. The preservice teachers participating in this innovative pilot initiative is offered special online teaching training by using of: 2.1. Augmented Reality (AR) simulations and real-classroom scenarios; 2.2. A Live Remote Classroom System (LRCS); and 2.3. An online Digital Repository (DR) with recorded situations of practice to be analyzed. The student teachers can reflect upon a variety of paths and teaching actions that ultimately lead to different outcomes (e.g., e-portfolios).
3. Establish a system of online indicators that facilitates the mentor teachers’ evaluation of their preservice teachers’ practice. Our aim is to create a set of common teaching standards for all participant countries in this project that could serve as seed criteria for future European Professional Standards for Teachers.

Program Erasmus+
Call: 2020
Key action: Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education (Key Action 226)

PROJECT REFERENCE NUMBER: 2020-1-ES01-KA226-HE-096120
OID: E10208679
INSTITUTION: UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA
PROJECT TITLE: DIGITAL PRACTICUM 3.0: EXPLORING AUGMENTED REALITY, REMOTE CLASSROOMS, AND VIRTUAL LEARNING TO ENRICH AND EXPAND PRESERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION PREPARATION

FUNDING: 170.231,00 €
TYPE: Desarrollo e innovación

Project Start Date: 2021-06-01
Project Total Duration: 24 months
Project End Date: 2023-05-31

3.1. European partners.

• E10174358 PANEPISTIMIO THESSALIAS Greece
• E10212713 STICHTING ZUYD HOGESCHOOL Netherlands
• E10209369 UNIVERSITETET I BERGEN Norway
• E10209514 UNIVERSIDADE DO MINHO Portugal
• E10208679 UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA Spain

3.2. Associate partners

• ROYAL MELBOURNE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, RMIT (AUSTRALIA)
• UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (CANADA)
• UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA (ISRAEL)

The main objective is to design an online tool for teachers and student teachers to access more personalized information according to the users’ experience. The tool is called Practicum Profiles Tool (PPT). The absence of face-to-face meetings and interviews during the COVID-19 pandemic spotlights the need for a full online management tool for the practicum.
The core idea aims at developing profiles both for teaching (professional profile) and learning (training profile) the profession. The PPT automatically chooses the best dyads or triads for the practicum according to mentors’ professional features (professional profile), student teachers’ learning needs (training profile), and school characteristics. Teacher mentoring is highly dependent on contexts of practice and multiple human interactions.

Improving the teaching process during the practicum implies the selection and production of innovative content in virtual spaces. First: 360º training classroom scenarios and Augmented Reality (AR) educational situations have been designed and prioritized. Second: an operational Live Remote Classroom System (LRCS) was activated in each country and provided to the participants. Third, 25 good teaching practices were collected from the practicum experience to develop a Digital Repository (DR) containing 34 video recordings of teaching lessons (Primary Education and Lower Secondary Education levels) from five European countries.

We have created a set of common assessment indicators that facilitate school mentors and faculty advisors the student teachers’ evaluation at training in both face-to-face and online environments.
Indicators play a fundamental role in modern societies and constitute an essential resource for Teacher Educators, policymakers, leaders and the general public. “They support evidence-based decision making, allow comparisons over time, between policies, countries and regions, social groups and industries, and contribute to increased transparency and accountability” (EUROSTAT, 2017, p.5). In short, they condense complex information, as driving signals do, into a comprehensive scheme that helps to assess it. To accomplish this purpose, the indicators meet the ‘fit for purpose’ rule and other quality requirements.

The main goal of the workshop has been to convey the significant results of the PRAC project that prove to have positive effects on practice: The Practicum Profiles Tool, testing 360º training classrooms, the AR simulations, and the edited videos from the Digital Repository cases.

The target audiences of this event were schoolteachers, Teaching Unions representatives, student teachers, and other educational stakeholders in each country, Attendees were provided with the credentials to access the Practicum Profiles Tool and free access to a 360º  training classroom and AR simulations.

Dedicated team members from the faculty of education at each university from the consortium:

• randomly selected the Primary Education and Lower Secondary Education teachers and student teachers to discuss in teams the technologies applied to the online practicum and other relevant issues regarding the practicum experience (both on-site and online).
• paired student teachers with school mentors to open dialogues about the best mentoring skills to engage student teachers to learn the profession.

The activity was crucial to early detect potential risks in the organization of the event, such as the lack of motivation among the student teachers, lack of a critical mass of participating primary school teachers, or little faculty involvement.  On the other way round, the event was a success as the participating school teachers from each country are still eager to continue learning from these sorts of seminars in the future. In the workshop, good practices and successful teacher training strategies were documented and shared as key aspects to being adopted by other teachers and schools. Besides, sharing of practices on results and progress of the main topics of the project was done throughout poster sessions.

In short, the ultimate purpose of the proposed multiplier event was not only to publicize the PRAC3 project outputs but also to encourage the educational administration and companies to convey the PRAC3 technological tools into the school practice (if proved to be fully effective) and offer them as official resources for the network of teachers of the school district.

Salamanca (Spain), Braga (Portugal), Bergen (Norway), Sittard (The Netherlands), and Volos (Greece)

Between 20 to 30 in each country (e.g., schoolteachers, student teachers, teaching union representatives, and other education stakeholders).

Multiplier Event Greece

Multiplier Event Portugal

Multiplier Event Norway

Multiplier Event Spain

Multiplier Event The Netherlands

The teaching training course addressed teacher educators, schoolteachers, school mentors, faculty advisors, and scholars. Its primary purpose was to qualify educators in a more professionalizing approach to the teaching mentoring practice under an immersive learning approach. More specifically, the objective was threefold: (1) to offer support, resources, and guidance to better implement the PRAC3 technologies and strategies in the teaching practice; (2) to facilitate student teachers’ integration process to the schools; (3) explaining the advantages of using the PPT.

The training activities contents consisted of the following sections:

Module 1: Classroom management

Module 2: Analysis of the Teaching Practice

Module 3: Technology implementation.

Module 4: Resilience and Emotional Well-being.

Module 5: Professional Relationships (collaboration).

Module 6: Online Mentoring and teacher identity learning

Mainly student teachers and primary and secondary school teachers. Also, Faculty teachers and others (i.e., stakeholders, representative from teaching unions, etc.).

February 9, 10, 11, 2023.

University of Minho, Portugal.

Mentoring training course Programme

PHOTOS

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