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Exploring hands-on multidisciplinary STEM

with Arduino Esplora

A/Prof Abelardo Pardo@abelardopardo

Faculty of Engineering and IT

ACSA Symposium14-15 October 2016, Sydney

The University of Sydney Page 2

Agenda

– The Context

– Design

– Teacher Training

– Delivery

– Outreach

– Evaluation

– Future Steps

Fernanda Guerra flickr.com

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The Context

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The Problem

Steep decline in the achievement and attitude towards STEM-related disciplines amongst high school students across the country.

Partially due to students’ self-perception of ability, subject difficulty and usefulness.

The impact of STEM fields to over 26% of the Australian economic activity.

High school students need to be aware of the connection between STEM subjects and the innovation, creativity and problem solving skills required to tackle the current social challenges.

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Vision

Address the steep decline in commitment and interests in STEM subjects for every high school student in Australia

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Method

Our proven and integrated training and delivery method provides high school students and teachers with an inclusive, engaging, hands-on and cross-disciplinary STEM experience in a blended learning scenario with real-time student and teacher support suitable to be integrated as part of the curriculum

Madmaker.com.au

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Execution

• Focus groups with stakeholders

• Design and deployment plan to combine teacher training, active learning inter-disciplinary activities, on-line learning, a simple hardware platform, and a rigorous evaluation procedure.

• Program reached more than 3,000 students, 300 teachers from all STEM disciplines in 130 schools from all sectors

• Achieved a change in student perception of STEM careers by the students.

• Clearly identified path to scale the initiative to all High School students in Australia.

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The Team

AbelardoPardo

OwenBrasier

MiriamPellicano

CallaKlafas

PhilipLeong

JamesCurran

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Design

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Focus Groups

o Target audience

o Connection with the STEM

curriculum

o Barriers for adoption

o Communication strategy

o Adequate hardware

o Evaluation

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Platform

– Arduino Esplora– Microcontroller + sensors

– Accelerometer– Temperature– Light– Buzzer– Microphone– RGB led– Buttons– Joystick

– AUD$ 60 p/u

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Teacher Training

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Teacher Workshops

– Two formats: face-to-face and remote. June/August 2015– Hands on design experience– Review activities, approach– Identify adoption barriers– Create an implementation plan– Feedback collecting mechanism for next stages

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Teacher Workshops - Results

– 21 sessions

– 259 teachers

– Workshops in all states and

territories

– Mostly NSW due to the

dissemination contacts

– Identified schools that serve

as hubs

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Teacher Workshops - Evaluation

– Workshops evaluated through surveys– 0-5 Scale for answers– Provided confidence to deploy the initiative in their classroom

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Delivery

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Support for delivery

– Content with gradual level of difficulty

– Hosted in own server (open source)

– Team of tutors – Real time support to

teachers and students through embedded chat

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Outreach

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Overall Participation

– 131 schools participated in the online course– 195 cohorts– Approximately 3,000 students

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Type of Schools

– Majority in metropolitan areas– Strong participation of regional institutions– Initiative reached all states and territories in Australia

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Disadvantaged Groups

ICSEA: Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage

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Discipline Uptake

– Strong component in Science, Maths and other initiatives– Target: Year 9, but content suitable for other levels– Both formal and informal learning scenarios

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Gender Balance

– Significant uptake by girls– Important number of girl schools– Gender imbalance lower if clubs are ignored

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Indigenous Communities

– 4.45% of students from

indigenous communities

– This percentage is almost

double of the indigenous

population in Australia

– Encouraging initial results

– Focus of new initiatives

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Evaluation

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Student Satisfaction

– Surveys at the beginning and end of the experience– Scale 0-5– High student satisfaction levels

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Change in Student Perception of STEM Careers

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Consider Careers in Science and Math

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Strategy for 2016

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Current Support

o Initial support from AMSPP

o Faculty of Engineering and IT,

Wingara Mura - Bunga

Barrabugu (USYD)

o Integrated STEM activities in

Indigenous and Low SES

Communities. Microsoft Inc.

o CS2HS: Teacher training.

Google Inc

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2016 Edition

o Ongoing teacher training

o Improved teacher support

for class integration

o Improved material

o Comprehensive evaluation

o Online challenge

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“I love this program. It is really fun and I think I want to have a career with coding. Before MadMaker I had no idea what coding was and now I love it!” – Year 7 student

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Future Steps

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Next Steps

o Scale the initiative

throughout Australia

o Consolidate the support

o Sustainability

o Identify additional partner

institutions

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Exploring hands-on multidisciplinary STEM with Arduino Esplora

A/Prof Abelardo PardoSchool of Electrical and Information Engineering

ACSA Symposium14-15 October 2016, Sydney