Toxicology Innovative Learning For Europe

"<< Background >>The European Green Deal EU (Action Plan: 'Towards Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil', 2021), calls for the EU to better monitor, prevent and remedy air, water, soil and consumer product pollutions. Toxicologists and ecotoxicologists are needed to fulfil the Action Plan objectives as it aims in particular to better evaluate toxicity of pollutants (especially emerging ones such as microplastics) but also complex mixtures, to develop innovative methods to evaluate toxicity, and to biomonitor our environment. Thus, the next decade will see an increasing demand for high-qualified toxicologists and ecotoxicologists, especially in Europe. However, Europe is facing an important shortage of experts in those domains. One of the main reasons to explain this shortage is the insufficient training opportunities in Europe to face the increasing job market demands. The other main reason is a lack of interest of students for those fields due inappropriate education systems in Europe (considered as ""old-fashioned""). Thus, there is an urgent need to modernise European curricula and teaching methods in toxicology an ecotoxicology, which is totally in line with the proposals of the renewed EU agenda for higher education (2017).<< Objectives >>The project aimed to modernize of Toxicology and Ecotoxicology teaching in Europe and had several objectives:-develop and use innovative and free educational resources (online courses, interactive PBL) in order to develop high quality digital education - provide innovative content on current hot topics in the field of Toxicology/Ecotoxicology to fit with recent evolution of European Policy and with job market needs – stimulate interest of students for those fields and limit school dropout The project meets the needs of: - students by stimulating their interest, putting them back at the center of teaching through the use of active pedagogies adapted to digital practice to recreate interactions between students, between students and teachers, and by stimulating their motivation through playful approaches. - teachers by proposing stimulating online courses which can be integrated in their own courses, or by motivating them to design and create their own new innovative courses. - partners by modernizing part of their curricula. - stakeholders by developing student and lifelong learner competencies adapted to job market - European Commission by modifying curricula and developing courses adapted to the Green Deal. << Implementation >>The Erasmus ToxLearn4EU project was built by a consortium of 7 HEIs and 3 research centers and laboratory. The consortium has organized its work into 5 Work Packages: - WP1: Coordination and quality management - WP2: Communication and dissemination of project results - WP3: Priority and emerging pollutants - WP4: New approaches, methodologies and models - WP5: Risk assessment, policy and risk communication The ToxLearn4EU project proposed a series of complementary activities that follow logically on from each other during the three years of the programme in order to achieve the defined objectives: - creation of 9 Intellectual Outputs (see expected results below; R1 to R9) with approx. 750h of student workload (30 ECTS) - organization of 2 summer schools training 55 students (A1, A2) - management of 6 Transnational meetings to organize the project (TPM1 to TPM6) - organization of a series of dissemination events: 5 dissemination activities (oral communication, poster, webinar) which allowed regular communication on the project progress and its results (E1 to E5) and a final conference (E6)<< Results >>The direct and tangible outputs are: - Creation of online courses. The first objective of WP3, 4 and 5 was to create a catalogue of online interactive courses on priority and emerging pollutants (R1; e.g. microplastics, nmilitary pollutants), new methods and models to evaluate pollutants (R4; e.g. new exposure assessment in air quality) and risk assessment, policy and risk communication (R7; e.g. How to make sense of complex data for human and environmental risk assessment). A total of 250h (equivalent to 10 ECTS) of student workload is available for master level students and/or PhD students in a form of different interactive courses (online lectures, ebook…). These contents are intended to be used directly by teachers from other HEIs or to serve as a model to develop their own online resource. Accessibility by other audiences working in the specific domain (e.g young graduated, advisors, etc.) is possible as lifelong learning course. - Creation of interactive PBLs. The second objective of WP3, 4 and 5 was to create a catalogue of online PBL case studies on priority and emerging pollutants (R2; e.g. Assessment on war contaminants: case study of depleted uranium), new methods and models to evaluate of pollutants (R5; e.g. How to evaluate the pollution if Plitvička jezera National Park in Croatia?) and risk assessment, policy and risk communication (R8; e.g. Environmental Risk assessment of Pesticides: role-play with different stakeholders). A total of 410h (equivalent to 16,5 ECTS) of student workload is available for master level students and/or PhD students in a form of short (0,5 ECTS), medium (1 ECTS) and long (up to 3ECTS) case studies. These contents are intended to be used directly by teachers from other HEIs or to serve as a model to develop their own online resource. Tutorials to explain the philosophy of the pedagogical tools and in order to explain teachers from other HEIs to use them properly. This should increase the transferability of these IOs but also encourage teachers to create their own resources. Accessibility by other audiences working in the specific domain (e.g young graduated, advisors, etc.) is also possible as lifelong learning course, even though these PBLs are more designed to be used by teacher in a frame of a specific course. - Creation of advanced courses. The third objective of WP3, 4 and 5 was to create a catalogue of advanced courses focused on a specific topic and taught during 2 summer schools: SS2: From simple molecule to complex mixture and matrix evaluation (A1); SS3: Climate change and pollution: impacts on humans and ecosystems (A2). A total of 85h (equivalent to 3.5 ECTS) of student workload is available for master level students and/or PhD students and lifelong distance learners in the same way as interactive courses. More indirect results were achieved: - Development of teacher skills: All along the project, the teachers will strongly develop their skills in online interactive content creation and PBL case study design (only 2 HEIs were expert at the beginning of the project). All partners participated to the creation of each result/researchers, thus teachers with less experience benefited from the help of experienced ones. - Enhancing synergies between the partners: The consortium enhanced its collaboration in the pedagogical aspects that lead to the creation of common Teaching Units instead of each HEI creating its own."