Go-Lab Report on Development of the Virtual Go-Lab User Community -V1

The focus of this document is to perform an analysis into the type and intensity of Go-Lab engagement, exhibited by its users, mainly teachers in the current period. The emphasis is still on measuring and interpreting the way the community of users has grown, as well as on the type and degree of involvement and experience sharing in the Go-Lab infrastructure. In the framework of Go-Lab, Community Building is considered as a professional development activity. In this framework apart from the detailed report and analysis on the user’s engagement this document describes the framework of effective community building and the support mechanism that was developed in the framework of Go-Lab project in order to support the large scale implementation. As a result we are reporting the major achievements of this procedure: Overall about 18000 unique visitors are currently (end of Phase B of the large scale implementation) using the Go-Lab portal. About 5000 of them are using the authoring platform to search for ILSs, to adopt them and implemented in their lessons. Finally 1200 teachers are creating new ILSs, either developing existing ones or developing new ones. We are describing the process that we have followed in order to monitor the user’s behavior by combining the data from the GRAASP platform and the Google Analytics monitoring system. Data from different countries and locations where trainings took place are presented. Actions taken to support low performers are presented and their impact is discussed. We have created optimum paths for the use of the system (e.g. the creation of an ILS requires at least 8 actions on the system) and we have tried to investigate the number of users who are really using the system in such terms. Finally, by applying a number of conditions we have identify the ILSs that are most popular for use in the classroom. This analysis is in progress as we are now moving on to the main implementation phase of the project (Phase C of the large scale implementation). The initial data indicate that there are at least 166 ILSs which have been used in the participating schools. The Go-Lab consortium will use these data as reference for monitoring the large scale implementation during the last year and at the same time will apply all the necessary tools to map the progress of the community development. The support mechanism has been developed to support users at all levels of their involvement in using the system and its outcomes. It includes face to face training (local, national and international courses), online support (including webinars and a MOOC), a tutoring platform, guides and materials