STEAM-Active

<< Background >>The motivation of STEAM-Active was deeply linked to the effects that technological evolution generates on companies and their constant need of innovating products, services and processes.STEAM-Active project was grounded on the consequential need of Higher Education to produce more meaningful STEAM learning, and engineering learning in particular, by reinforcing students’ preparedness to apply knowledge within real and problem based situation so to be able to meet market needs.Within this context the project identifies the following target groups:- University engineering teachers who need to reinforce their expertise on how to tackle low achievement in engeneering degrees and on how to promote vocations in STEAM with a special attention to gender inequalities- Engineering Students in need of an improved educational offer able to prevent underachievement and drop out and of a better capacity to adapt to the needs of the job market through a stronger link between theoretical learning and practical implementation - Women potentially interested in STEM studies and careers and who need teaching methodologies and study programmes more tailored to their strengths to prevent underrepresentation in engineering degrees and jobs.<< Objectives >>The aim of STEAM-Active was to design and implement a set of interdisciplinary and innovative teaching-learning sequences, tailored to the needs of higher education engineering students, in order to address underachievement and dropout and make them better prepared to respond to the expectations of the labour market. All this aims to make future workers capable of managing and applying knowledge, skills and competences from various disciplines to solve real and complex problems.STEAM-Active also aimed to contribute to tackle the inequalities in terms of female gender representation in scientific academic courses.For the purpose the specific objectives were:SO 1: Provide Universities with a complete methodological framework of STEAM based approaches and active teaching strategies to improve educational offer in STEM and engineering and tackle gender inequalitySO 2: Provide university lecturers with STEAM based methodological approaches and teaching tools to answer to students lack in adapting their theoretical learning to a more practical, problem solving and interdisciplinary mind-setSO 3: Provide universities with consistent, re-usable and up-scalable Teaching-Learning Sequences based on the STEAM education methods<< Implementation >>In order to ensure the full achievement of the objectives identified above and to respect the expectations formalised in the application, the project partner institutions that are part of the STEAM-Active consortium were involved in the implementation of a coherent work plan designed to enhance the capacity of higher education institutions. This involves integrating new learning and teaching methods in line with the STEAM framework to incorporate sector-specific knowledge, with particular reference to engineering programmes, with transversal competences fundamental to developing students' flexibility and adapting the acquired skills to any real-life context.Full picture of the overall Workplan implementation is available in a specific section of the STEAM-Active Portal (https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/project-results.php) that conveniently lists and when relevant provides direct link to the main Results (Outputs) and the evidences of the activities carried out to create the related contents, to the management, evaluation, dissemination activities and also to the working documents used to ensure appropriate consistency of the working methods. The Section is password protected and specific credentials are available for the evaluator to are:Username: national.agency.erasmus@gmail.com Password: 44project88The same credentials can be used to access all protected sections of the portal.These are the main activities implemented:Involvement of target groups representatives. Project partners identified, selected and involved in the development, improvement, piloting and evaluation of the results contents: University engineering professors / lecturers / researchers, Engineering Students and Higher Education managerial staff and decision makers.Development of Project Result 1Partner institutions dedicated their full effort in creating and making available on the Portal the first of the three main results of the project the “Protocol for teachers illustrating the methodological framework of STEAM based approach with active teaching strategies”.In order to ensure that the contents of both the Collection of references and the Protocol met the expectations of the end users, provided the necessary added value in terms of innovativeness, transferability and overall consistency the project partners teams worked cooperatively according to a coherent and logic process and shared working tools and standards.This is the summary of the step by step activities:1.1: Creation of all the templates needed for carrying out the activities.1.2: Development of the dedicated project portal section. UPV/EHU (ES) and Pixel (IT) planned the technical structure of the Section of the Internet Portal hosting the contents and monitored and validate the technical consistency of the contents produced.1.3: Bibliographic Research. Each academic partner identified and reviewed academic publications related to STEAM methodology. To do so, first UPV/EHU (ES) developed a selection of 214 articles using different searching criteria at Web of Science (title, timespan, journals…) and they were distributed among the project participants. By reading the title and abstract, each group chose at least 10 articles and summarized them. The result was the collection published on the web site.1.4: UPV/EHU (ES) developed of the draft version of the protocol for teachers that will illustrate the framework of the STEAM project design methodology with active teaching methodologies. This activity was carried out by using the reviews developed during the previous activity.1.5: Partners' analysed the draft version of the protocol, making comments in order to improve the contents1.6: UPV/EHU (ES) developed the final version of the protocol according to the feedbacks, comments and suggestions of the project partner1.7: Online publication of the contents. All contents have been uploaded, checked, validated and made available on the Portal at: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/methodologies.php and https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/protocol.php 1.8 Piloting and evaluation of the protocol with a sample group in each country of potential beneficiaries including lecturers, students and decision makers and creation of related reporting documents.Development of Project Result 2Partner institutions dedicated their full effort in creating and making available on the Portal the “E-learning course for engineering teachers on STEAM methodology and active teaching solutions” second main result of the project.Experts of the 5 higher education institutions duly supported by Pixel were involved in planning, creating, testing and evaluating the contents of the E-learning package so to provide help to engineering professors, lecturers and researchers in having a better understanding of how STEAM based approaches and methods should be performed and which kind of topics, difficulties, and strategies they should take into consideration and master in order to make full use of them.This is the summary of the step by step activities:2.1: Creation of all the templates needed for carrying out the activities. Project partners, starting from the proposal of UPV/EHU (ES) discussed, modified and jointly adopted the oTable of ContentsoGuideline for content developmentoGuideline for participation in the forum2.2: Project partners produced a draft version of the contents of the course, focusing on the needs of lecturers in engineering, related to the protocol as emerged during the activities for the creation of PR 1. The draft version of the contents of the course were circulated among the partnership2.3: Project partners analysed the draft version of the contents making comments, providing suggested integrations, contributing with ideas and requests to benefit from each institution expertise and promoting a real knowledge sharing transnational added value for the e-learning contents2.4: Development of the final contents of the course. Starting from the contribution emerged in activity 2.3 project partners finalised each own contents of responsibility2.5: Testing of the course with sample groups of the potential beneficiaries, representing lecturers, students and decision makers to collect their feedbacks. The information collected were presented in analytical reports.2.6 Technical implementation of the E-learning package contents and upload on the dedicated portal section to make it fully available at: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/e-learning-course.php Development of Project Result 3The STEAM-Active consortium focused then on the planning, creation, implementation and evaluation of the third and conclusive main tangible output of the project the “Collection of STEAM based Teaching-Learning Sequences”. Project partners teams cooperated at transnational level with the ambitious goal of providing educators of STEM and engineer subjects with highly transferable and usable Teaching-Learning Sequences (TLS) based on the STEAM approach and make full use of Problem-Based Learning active methodologies for implementation of skills to help students to learn to apply knowledge concretely and effectively, through activities based on solving proposed socio-scientific-technological problems.This is the summary of the step by step activities:3.1: Creation of the templates needed for carrying out the activities using the design protocol published together with the PR1 document as a full reference. 3.2: Identification of socio-scientific-technical problems selected as the most appropriate to improve student capacity to manage and implement their competencies. Each academic partner identified 5 socio-scientific-technological problems on which to build the STEAM based Teaching-Learning Sequences. 3.3 Alignment of each problem definition h with the teaching perspectives defined in PR1.3.4: Full analysis of the socio-scientific-technical problems assessing the proposals of the other partners in order to cover all the thematic areas and to avoid duplication.3.5: Selection of the final list of the socio-scientific-technical problem based scenario most suitable to be assigned to the students.3.6: Definition of the contents of the Teaching Learning Sequences for each socio-scientific-technical problem. The sequences was designed in order to provide all the necessary instructions, methods and tools to guide the lecturers in using them with students to support their full understanding of the basic practices of science and engineering and enhance their capacity to apply knowledge to real life case scenarios .3.7: Availability of the TLS contents on the Project Portal and integration with the online course. Pixel (IT) will be making the contents easily accessible for the target groups: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/learning.php 3.8: Testing of the TLS in each partner HEIs with sample groups of beneficiaries and presentation of the related findings in dedicated reports.As integral part of the Workplan of the project the partner institutions have ensured the appropriate implementation of a set of key transversal activities includingPreparatory activitiesStarting from the first month of the project partners have cooperatively:- Defined and signed the contract(s) ruling the applicant / project partner interaction- Defined the administrative and reporting strategy and templates - Agreed on the Calendar of activities and related deadlines - Discussed, defined and adopted a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote measures to enhance eco-friendly and greener practices, as well as to raise awareness about environmental and climate change issues.- Approved the templates and working tools needed for ensuring the appropriate creation of the contents- Defined and agreed on the democratic decisional process and a coherent leadership to prevent and solve eventual conflictsManagement and CoordinationProject partners were constantly committed to ensure effective management and coordination of the activities both at national and transnational level, ensuring the sharing of solutions and appropriate circulation of information, implementing administrative and narrative reporting and contributing to the update of the portal. For the purpose project partners representatives also participated in a total of 7 transnational meetings, three online and four in presence, to check the project state of art, evaluation the results achieved and agree the main following steps (https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/meeting.php).Monitoring and evaluationThe monitoring of the project achievements was implemented through:- The adoption of the Quality Plan defining the indicators of performance and related benchmarks to ensure the consistency, innovativeness, transferability and quality of the project results produced - A detailed calendar of activities defining intermediate and final deadlines for each of the tasks demanded to the project partners. The evaluation process was implemented involving representatives of the project partners and the target groups (i.e. Academic lecturers and students of STEM subjects). The evaluation strategy, through questionnaires and testimonials, allowed assessing each deliverable from a qualitative point of view and present the overall findings in the Transnational Evaluation Report.Dissemination As planned among the contractual duties project partner were committed to the implementation of an agreed upon dissemination strategy aiming at ensuring the most extensive diffusion of the project information, objectives and achievements, making full use of the partner institutions networks.The information about dissemination activities were reported in the specific section of the Portal https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/dissemination.php Exploitation For the purpose project partners took care of:- Publishing articles and web articles to present the project results, activating exchange links with other Portals dealing with STEM education (starting from the institutional websites of the partner institutions), organising social media and media campaigns. Please see: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/press-reviews.php - involving associated partners that expressed their interest in the STEAM-Active project, their willingness to further use its outputs and their intention to contribute with their respective networks for the future sustainability of the project. Please see: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/associated-partners.php Multiplier EventsProject partners organized events at national level to present the project objectives and its results to potential stakeholders ensuring further knowledge about the three main results achieved among almost 200 among lecturers, researchers, decision makers, students and public officers. Please see: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/conference.php << Results >>STEAM-Active project produced three main concrete outputs: -Project Result 1: Protocol for teachers illustrating the methodological framework of STEAM based approach with active teaching strategies-Project Result 2: E-learning course for engineering teachers on STEAM methodology and active teaching solutions-Project Result 3: Collection of STEAM based Teaching-Learning SequencesThe three results are available and accessible on the STEAM-Active Portal (https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/index.php) each through a dedicated Section.As planned Project Result 1 was built to provide academic professors and lecturers of engineering with a direct access to set-theoretical and pedagogical foundations to support them in designing teaching-learning sequences and develop, implement and evaluate STEM interventions for higher education students according to a complete and consistent STEAM methodological framework.For the purpose the Result includes:- A Database of relevant publications / articles addressing in depth the aspects related to the STEAM methodologies and academic debate. Each item is presented outlining the main concepts and/or approaches and/or methodologies to reimagine higher education and according to the answers of a number of relevant qualifying elements such as: which are the disciplines and contents? Which type of integration? Which methodologies were used? How was the evaluation performed? Which are the main results and conclusions? In addition the theme of gender inequality, students difficulties, sustainability and circular economy tackled (if any), as well as what interpretation of STEAM framework has been done is explored.The Database includes offers, indeed, a very complete collection of tools for educators to explore in full the possible changes in teaching approaches. The Database is available at: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/methodologies.php- A Protocol, available at: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/protocol.php providing a comprehensive theoretical presentation of the definition of STEAM education according to the agreed paradigm of the Consortium as a teaching method that integrates content, skills and beliefs from at least two disciplines that form the acronym and that focus on real-world contexts. The document continues by mentioning the different types of integration that STEAM-Active proposes to use when implementing the TLSs and the relationship that these have with the different educational contexts. The three integration types proposed are; Interdisciplinary, Transdisciplinary and Metadisciplinary. The second part of the document discusses the design, implementation and evaluation of the Teaching Learning Sequences. Project/problem-based learning is proposed as the implementation methodology for the sequences. The process is then specified for the case of proposals in engineering, which is the focus of this project. This second part of the document concludes by specifying the steps to follow for the design of a STEAM proposal that complies with the definitions and methodologies proposed above. In the third part of the document, the transversal elements of the STEAM-Active project are addressed: Circular Economy and Gender issues exploring why and how they must be included in the designing sequences as a transversal axis. Project Result 2, that is the eLearning course, was designed and now targets teachers and professors in engineering faculties to be trained on the defined STEAM teaching approach, preparing them to plan and design their own teaching materials and use them with their students to overcome their underachievement and better prepare them to use a problem-solving mindset and respond to the needs of the labour market.The E-learning package is available on the dedicated section and accessible for free, at: https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/index.php As expected the E-learning package contents are organised in 3 Modules and implemented making full use of ICT based solutions, integrating hypertexts, bibliographic links, videos and media, interactive tests and supplementary suggested activities and documents. At the end of each of the 3 sections, there are activities to help teachers test what they have learnt.Module 1 provides basic knowledge about STEAM and its application in practice allowing learners to differentiate STEAM definitions and approaches one from another. The different levels of STEAM integration are also discussed guiding the learner in choosing the appropriate level of STEAM integration in the implemented teaching scheme.Module 2 deals with the ingredients of STEAM-Active methodological approach, ingredients of STEAM-Active teaching techniques approach and with Teachers’ characteristics/ingredients to be good applying STEAM-Active approach in teaching. Module 3 explains in full the design protocol, expanding on the new terminology and how the contents of the previous modules are applied in the agreed STEAM Active project protocol. In addition, throughout this module explanations are provided on how to use a Teaching-Learning Sequence (TLS) that has already been designed within the suggested protocol and finally, based on all that guidelines on how to adapt Teaching-Learning Sequences (TLS) to different contexts by explaining different techniques to modify the sequences to multiple educational contexts is provided.The third result is in some way the culmination of the STEAM-Active project's process and provides beneficiaries with a full access to a set of specifically designed STEAM-oriented Teaching-Learning Sequences. Each sequence is designed to empower lecturers in guiding STEM and specifically engineering students, with a focus on reducing gender gaps, through the application of project-based learning methods aimed at addressing socio-scientific-technological challenges.The dedicated section https://steam-active.pixel-online.org/learning.php contains a total of 24 TLS addressing different socio-scientific-technological problems among the 36 cooperatively identified as most relevant by the project partners.Each Sequence is presented:A) Through its main characterising elements such as: Study Programme suitability (e.g. Master), main thematic area (e.g. Artificial Intelligence in Computer Science), most suitable study year, subjects involved according to an interdisciplinary approach (e.g. Informatics, Math, Resource management, Engineering), definition of the sequence’s topic (e.g. contributing to circular economy by planning the placement of the recycling containers in the urban area with considering the network of the recycling points and the local features such as buildings and population density) and main guiding question (e.g. does properly planned network of recycling points in urban areas contribute to the increased level of waste sorting and therefore more recycled materials? The problem is related to sustainable development goal 12 Responsible consumption and production).B) A full .pdf document illustrating step by step the entire process to be implemented by describing in depth: The contextThe Axes to be considered including: Gender Equality, Circular Economy and Team workThe TLS structure: Main guiding question, Learning objectives, Learning demands, Learning pathwayThe Relationship between different stages of the TLSThe Activities to be implementedThe Evaluation strategy to be adoptedThe practical application of transversal axesIntangible but fundamental achievements of the project are also:A) The identification, selection and involvement in the development, improvement, piloting and evaluation of the results contents of:- 38 among University engineering professors / lecturers / researchers that were keen and motivated to improving their expertise on how to tackle low achievement in engineering degrees and on how to promote female vocations in STEM and especially in engineering. - 166 Engineering Students who experienced low performances, were at risk of early drop out and were motivated in enhancing their problem solving oriented mind-set in order to better adapt to the needs of companies. Project partners made a special effort to balance gender representation, managing to increment by 5% to 10% the participation of female students compared to the standard average on the matter.- 13 Higher Education managerial staff and decision makers who declared their willingness to support the mainstreaming of STEAM-Active deliverables and results in internal practices, programmes and strategic interventions of the Universities involved and beyondB) Reaching the conditions of scaling up and mainstreaming project achievements and results into the universities part of the consortium and in higher education institutions that joined as associated partners to develop long term innovative educative designs and ideas that have the potential to fundamentally reshape the student-subject-teacher relations by both increasing the teachers knowledge through new methodology as well as tackling the students difficulties when facing difficult STEAM concepts, leveraging the gap and contributing to make STEAM subjects ever more accessible and thus, education as well.