Digital Marine: An online platform for blended learning in a marine experimental biology module, the Schmid Training Course

International audience ; For over 20 years, the Schmid Training Course (STC) has offered unique opportunities for marine biology students from European universities to learn about marine model organisms. While the topics of the course have continuously changed over the years with the advent of new research techniques and discoveries, the pedagogical approach has remained largely the same-a combination of lectures, lab practicals, and field excursions. Several life science researchers, who have taught in the STC for many years, sought to bring the course's pedagogical approach into the 21st century, and with the support of Erasmus+ Programme of the European Community funding, the DigitalMarine project was developed. DigitalMarine began in 2018 as an international partnership between the six research centers from which the STC instructors hail, and its main objective was to introduce a flipped, blended approach to learning and teaching with respect to established and emerging marine biological model systems. The DigitalMarine platform, which covers 12 marine model organisms, is now publicly available. The Schmid Training Course (STC) The Station Biologique de Roscoff, a marine station of Sorbonne Université (SU), in France (Northern Brittany) was founded in 1872 by Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers with the aim to develop a laboratory for both observational and experimental zoology. Since then, research has extended into additional fields, including ecology and oceanography, and several training courses linked to these areas have been established. One of these courses is the Schmid Training Course (STC) that focuses on experimental biology using marine organisms. The STC was named after the Swiss zoologist Volker Schmid, who was an iconic teacher for the course, and who passed away in 2008 [1]. The STC allows students to explore the diversity of marine model organisms and train them in using these models in experimental biology. More precisely, the goal is to show students the benefits of various marine organisms as ...