This online course is created to assist science teachers and any people interested in science in incorporating the use of online labs and supportive inquiry learning apps into their teaching and learning activities. After completing this course, you will know how to find inquiry learning tools fitting your teaching and learning goals and how to create complete learning scenarios suitable for different subject domains and topics. In this course, you will learn how to plan your inquiry learning activities and how to implement your pedagogic scenarios in a digital learning environment. We will introduce you to the Go-Lab Portal, where you can find appropriate tools and create your own virtual learning spaces. Furthermore, several scenarios of using various online labs and tools are explained in this course.

Module 1 “Inquiry learning with online labs” gives you an introduction to the inquiry-based science education in schools. Main concepts of inquiry learning, as well as its benefits and challenges for school education are presented. The module also gives insight into the teaching practice using innovative tools and future trends in science education.

In Module 2 “Creating an inquiry-oriented lesson plan”, you will learn how to incorporate the use of online labs in your classroom activities, how to create lesson plans containing inquiry-based exercises, and how to implement these lesson plans in web-based Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). This module makes you familiar with Go-Lab Inquiry Learning Cycle describing five phases of the inquiry learning process, as well as with a basic pedagogic scenario, which you can use to create your lesson plan. Furthermore, it explains how to start creating an ILS in the Go-Lab Portal.

Module 3 “Creating an Inquiry Learning Space” introduces you to the Go-Lab Authoring Platform Graasp and gives you a step-by-step guidance in creating your Inquiry Learning Space (ILS). This module contains multiple demo videos explaining both the basics of the ILS creation process as well as the advanced functionalities of the Go-Lab Portal. After studying this module, you will be able to create your own ILSs using sophisticated features of the Portal and publish them in the Go-Lab Repository to make available for your colleagues.

Module 4 “Exploring the Sun” represents the Sun4All Project with its database of solar images collected over the last 90 years and introduces you to the use of the SalsaJ tool for the analysis of these images. Furthermore, several videos are available taking you on a guided tour through the Observatory of the University of Coimbra in Portugal. These video-excursions demonstrate how a modern spectroheliograph takes solar images and show some older instruments of astronomical investigation in the past.

Module 5 “Exploring galaxies” introduces you to the Faulkes Telescope Project and to the Galaxy Crash online labs. You will be shown how to book an observation session with the remote telescope, how to observe diverse space objects like, for example, galaxies and star-forming regions, and how to take images of them. Additionally, the use of the Galaxy Crash simulation and the integration of these online labs in a pedagogical scenario are demonstrated.
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In Module 6 “Identifying particles with the ATLAS” the Hybrid Pupils' Analysis Tool for Interactions in ATLAS (HYPATIA) is presented. The video lectures of this module provide an introduction to the HYPATIA online lab and two learning scenarios (“Discover the Z and Higgs bosons” and “The motion of a charged particle in the ATLAS magnetic field”), which can be completed with this lab. Some demo videos are incorporated into the lectures to facilitate the handling of this comprehensive tool.