Studies prove that Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has played a great role in inventions and discovery. STEM encompass a vast array of subjects and affect virtually every component of our everyday lives. With the rise in the demand for STEM education that leads to the highest pay profession in 21st century, it has become the need of the hour to focus on the K-12 segment studies towards Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
There has been a shift in the teaching pattern at many schools who give emphasis on the technology and reasoning based learning system. Right from the early stage, a child starts developing interest in STEM education and their curiosity to know more about it in detail turns out to be their desired career option later on.
From revamping the curricula and making it more practical-based learning to having qualified teachers and fun ways of learning through digital technology, all this helps in making the foundation of STEM education stronger in the child’s progress.
Creating a better tomorrow
The quest for a better future is intellectually stimulating and seeks to empower students. It draws on the innate capacity of the human mind to engage in foresight or thinking enhanced by concepts, tools and techniques. When this enhanced capacity to engage with the future is implemented in specific areas, it can contribute substantially to social and economic well-being. Students can be encouraged to transform their view of the world. In process of learning how present actions will shape future consequences, students gain access to new sources of understanding and action.
Sometimes, it looks like there’s nothing new left to invent for us. Almost everything seems to have been thought of by fellow humans from the past and the present. We often come up with a new idea only to realise that somebody has already worked on it decades ago. But when we look carefully, there are so many things to still watch out for, work on and invent. And this is where STEM education comes into use. Decades ago, our ancestors invented things in their times with considerably less resources at their disposal, compared to now, which was a really colossal task. Every innovation, be it big or small, requires a strong foundation of education in STEM and by staring from an early age, it will help in fast development of thinking and intellect.
Conducive environment to creation
Today we are at a threshold where we can create, invent and move at speeds never thought of before. Through STEM we can channelise the acumen which will have a profound and notable impact on the future. Today, we talk about collaborative learning and it is important that educators understand the different learning domains, tasks and environments that support individual skills.
Imparting of knowledge and sharing it is an important part of the learning process. These skills must be acquired to respond to the learning challenges of the digital era. Through personalised learning, students are taught to use conceptual and factual knowledge in purposeful activities amidst the digital environment.
STEM for education
learning strategies, involving thinking, social and emotional skills, should be employed in schools. This can be enabled by STEM techniques like robotics, virtual environment and artificial intelligence. Encouraging analytical thinking among the children enables them to compare, criticise, judge, contrast, evaluate and assess. It motivates the learner to be more creative and practical. It gives them and the educator a lot more scope to personalise learning outcomes.
Personalised learning environments can increase the value of learning. Efficient teachers make school learning experiences stimulating for students in two fundamental ways— cognitively, by enabling students to learn and understand content; and motivationally, by allowing them to appreciate its value and use it in real-life situations.
One of the crucial challenges, today, is to encourage and prepare learners to participate in socially organised activities. It’s important to recognise that the new learning environments in schools and workplaces are often based on collaborative and shared experiences. These environments work under the presumption that learners are capable to work as team members and share their opinions and ideas clearly.
STEM helps the learner to have progressive inquisitiveness, problem-based learning (PBl) and project-based learning. This approach to learning differs greatly from the conventional school classrooms where students spend most of their time listening to lectures, or learning facts and solving problems from the textbooks.
How can technology be used to enhance personalised learning in different real-life contextsIJ How can collaborative learning activities be developed for different learning environments such as virtual ones. For personalised learning to succeed, it’s important that we develop models that use technology to support individual and social learning activities. Multidisciplinary collaboration between technology developers and educational designers need to find ways to apply virtual spaces, simulations, game-technology or mobile applications to education.
Teachers and trainers are likely to encounter transitional problems when implementing personalised learning curricula and move on from conventional to new, open, and less complicated learning environments. New learning environments require tailor-made instructional designs. Teachers will now have to redefine communication and collaborative skills. They will have to develop new pedagogical reflective thinking in mentoring education, mediating values and social skills, as well as systematically evaluating students’ and teacher’s own activities
The writer is VP Next Education India Pvt. ltd. and head of Next Deeksha.