📍 Porto, Portugal | 🗓️ 8–10 October 2025
The IMPROVE COST Action (CA21139) successfully hosted its first Training School at i3S – Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, bringing together educators, researchers, and trainers from across Europe to explore innovative approaches to teaching the 3Rs (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) in animal research.
Key Outcomes:
- Pedagogical Innovation: Participants engaged in hands-on sessions focused on education science, learning how to effectively teach the 3Rs using modern, learner-centered methods.
- Ethical & Emotional Dimensions: The program emphasized the importance of addressing emotional and ethical aspects in laboratory animal science education.
- Collaborative Exchange: The hybrid format enabled broad participation, fostering international collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Impact
This Training School marked a significant step in building a community of educators committed to improving research quality and animal welfare through education. It laid the groundwork for future initiatives and collaborations within the IMPROVE network.
đź”— For more details and resources, visit: https://cost-improve.eu/outcomes/
The participants learned about different models for testing in vitro, focusing on reproducibility, and exploring new non-animal models for getting closer to humans. The Training School shed light on the latest models for performing research in human diseases and health problems with less use of animals for experimentation.
The first large Training school with a focus on Dissemination took place at Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan (Italy) with expert trainers and trainees from 13th-15th of September 2023, directly before the Centro 3Rs meeting. The in total about 30 in-person and online participants attended courses on “Theory of Science Communication”, “Theory and Software for Video-Making”, Video Ideas and Analysis”, “Social Media”, “Use of Social media Channels”, “GDPR in Communication”, “Newsletters” and “Twitter Bio”. The Training school was very successful offering new knowledge and techniques which could be leveraged for the COST Action itself or for the different tasks in the daily life of the participants.
Photo: Arti Ahluwalia