STEM education: Solve the problem of lacking engineering design process
In the past years, many places around the country have successfully hosted STEM festivals with booths presenting various eye-catching products. However; when directly observing or from photos taken and teacher’s interviews, all experts recognize a common problem.
That is the product, even though created very thoroughly, all skipped the steps of the engineering design process: no blueprints, although being simple, and no testing after being made.
Designing logic is the backbone of developing, and designing merchandise, and products, along with assisting students with this thinking through attractive lessons, low cost, sticks to everyday life since childhood will help students prepare for jobs in the future.
From the recommendation of the STEM alliance, many regions have started to take an interest in solving the problem of leaving out the engineering design process, of which some notable examples will be discussed in this article.
Phù Ninh: Not only robotics
In the previous articles, we have known that the campaigns to remove programming incapability are a noticeable part of the STEM festival of Phù Ninh district (Phú Thọ province) during the Hung King commemoration this year. But the most effort was put into the topic of “Process of engineering design” which is the most interesting and prepared.
Experience from STEM Festival 2022 shows, even though the products were exhibited variously and in large quantities, most suffer from a basic error which is not including the blueprint, an important step in the process of engineering design. To improve this situation, one month prior to the STEM festival, the Department of Education and Training of Phù Ninh districts trained 134 teachers and principals of all 19 secondary schools in the district about this topic. Teachers were taught the theory and practice in the class under the instruction of professor Đặng Văn Sơn and STEM educational expert Đào Thị Hồng Quyên, who just got a prize for spreading knowledge power 2023 nominated by UNICEF.
The process of engineering design in STEM education doesn’t require complexity like engineer’s design but also has sufficient steps: identify problems; research basic knowledge; recommend and choose solutions; manufacture product; test and evaluate; and share, discuss and adjust.
After the theory, in the practical part, teachers were asked to design and create planting models using materials such as cartons, paper, and tape. The class was divided into groups and products were tested using peanut seeds. Homework for teachers was working with students to make a planting model to present in the STEM festival with the compulsory requirement being each product needs to include a basic blueprint, accept hand-drawn, but needs some basic measurement. Besides, teachers were asked to hand in an online video of about 30 minutes about the testing of these planting machines.
Due to having preparation, schools in Phù Ninh district were fully creative and the result is STEM festival 2023 was much better than the older one about this special topic. There are three important points:
1- Every product needs to have a blueprint, even simple.
2- Every product needs to be tested.
3- Every school created one type of product and can be as creative as possible.
When visiting the booths, teacher Đào Thị Hồng Quyên was surprised by the creativity and passion of teachers in Phù Ninh district: almost 20 models of planting machines made from all kinds of material like cartoons, bottles, steel, and water pipes – some run by hands, some are programmed. In many booths, she met many excited students presenting the products
The STEM Festival 2023 of Phù Ninh District was organized successfully but the Department of Education and Training of the district still invites STEM educational experts to continue instructing teachers to create products and improve them. Afterward, the department can host the best teacher competition in this matter.
It should be emphasized that Phù Ninh’s education learned the role of training to improve degrees for principals and teachers. There would be no STEM education if teachers weren’t taught theory and practice on many levels, like making products and designing lessons.
Si Ma Cai: Doing hard things in easy ways
From April to August last year, Professor Do Yong Park came to Vietnam as a scholar of Fullbright about STEM education. In his lessons, he always emphasizes the importance of teaching STEM lessons engineering oriented.
When Professor Park received some photos of the STEM festival 2023 of Si Ma Cai district (Lào Cai province), he was delighted and asked for a picture of three primary schoolgirls wearing the traditional costumes of the Mong ethnic minority laughing by the bridge made from ice cream sticks with two water bottle on top. As a STEM education expert, Professor Park immediately understood the meaning of two bottles as two trials for the bridge made from recyclable materials – an interesting example of a very important step in the process of engineering design, which is testing after design and creating a product.
For STEM educational experts in America, designing, and creating products was always an important theme. They usually give many examples about using recycled material easily found to build STEM lessons that stick to daily life. Lessons are not complex but there are steps needed to be taken, for example: designing needs a blueprint, and products need testing. About the blueprints, students were reminded that they needn’t provide many measurements or make measurements like engineers, but they need to understand the source of some measurement on the blueprint in one of these ways: measure in real-time, calculate, from testing, or some other ways.
The reality in Si Ma Cai districts shows that the Department of Education and Training’s training for principals and teachers of schools bẻoe the STEM festival has improved the quality significantly of this event.
Besides the competition to build the bridge from ice cream sticks for primary students, many products presented at the festival include blueprints. Secondary students have an engaging competition of designing, and making a flag pole with a truckle system, simulating the ceremony of salute in Hồ Chí Minh mausoleum. Each team has 5 students and a teacher, who were handed materials, and tools the same as the others and had to hand in the product as well as the blueprint in 60 minutes. Judges also asked the teams to test and present the products along with the blueprints in place.
The process of engineering design was introduced to students in such a way that is simple, thorough, and effective in the STEM festival at the beginning of this year. Ways of Si Ma Cai confirm the necessity of training principles and teachers in local areas about this process in teaching and learning STEM.
Awareness of the Process of engineering design also spread very fast to some other regions. At the STEM festival – Beauty of hometown tradition organized by Quang Trung secondary school (Yên Bái City, Yên Bái province) hosted prior to the Lunar new year 2023, visitors can easily notice a common thing among 29 booths presenting costumes and cuisine of ethnic minorities: attached to each costume is a blueprint, noted some measurements; foods also have a poster that present process procedure process. This result came from the request of the school that the content presented must be easy to understand and easy to perform.
Another example: at the STEM festival of Đông Các secondary school, Đông Hưng district, Thái Bình province, at the end of April, students on their own host a water puppet, they include an exhibition of puppets and their blueprints next to the stage after the performance.
Worth mentioning that, prior to the STEM festival, the principals and teachers of Quang Trung and Đông Các secondary schools actively find STEM educational experts to gain some experience before organizing the events.
The pre-mentioned examples show that the promotion of STEM education is not difficult if the training of principals and teachers is taken seriously. That experience was proved in many regions such as Thái Thụy district (Thái Bình province), Nam Trực (Nam Định), and Thanh Chương (Nghệ An), places where training for principals and teachers are usually held so that after a training session, STEM educational quality is step-by-step improved.
(To be continued)
Đỗ Hoàng Sơn
