Are you looking for methods
to increase your students’ motivation towards STEM education? Do you want your students to be interested in
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers? Then look no further
than this post!
In this week, we will focus on a study that utilized virtual
labs and applications from the Go-Lab Sharing and Authoring Platform (http://www.golabz.eu/). The aim of the study
was to investigate whether students' engagement with computer-supported
learning environments
would stimulate their
attitudes and motivation towards STEM. For this purpose, an interactive
educational intervention consisting of three online learning environments and a
questionnaire designed in the context of the Go-Lab Project were used. The
online learning environments, which are called Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs),
were selected from the Go-Lab Sharing and Authoring Platform and were adapted
for the needs of the study.
The participants of the
study were 14 eleventh graders (16-17 years old) from a public secondary
technical school (A Technical School of Limassol) in Limassol, Cyprus. Students
completed the activities of the three Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs) during
their physics course and the duration of the implementation was 3 teaching
periods of 45 minutes. The
implementation took place in the e-Learning Lab and each student had its own
workstation. The teacher acted as a facilitator and students worked at their
own pace and were responsible for the procedure they had to follow and for the
completion of all the required tasks in the given period of time.
The data collection involved a questionnaire measuring
students’ attitudes and motivation towards STEM education, which was
administered before and after the implementation. The questionnaire consisted
of 21 items in 5-point Likert scale (1=Strongly disagree and 5=Strongly agree)
from which 9 items were measuring Learning STEM at School, 5 items Practical
Work in STEM, 3 items STEM Outside of School and 4 items STEM Career
Motivation. In addition, at the end of the implementation the teacher wrote
down notes about the progress of his students as they completed the activities
of the three ILSs.
The data analysis revealed that students agree that
computer-supported inquiry learning though Go-Lab makes STEM learning and
understanding easier for them, helps them to understand the work of scientists
and researchers and increase their interest to involve in scientific
discussions with their classmates. In addition, students indicated their
willingness to pursue a STEM career and they acknowledge the use of inquiry
skills in their future career. Regarding the comments of the teacher, students
understood better the basic concepts of the electrical circuits and that was
obvious from the learning products that they created in the learning
environment, i.e. hypotheses, experimental designs, virtual experiments etc. The implementation was so successful, that the author Mr Achillefs Kapartzianis won an innovation award at a local competition in Cyprus. If you want to find more information about the case study, visit the case study page. Are you interested in using the Go-Lab ecosystem in your own classroom? You can visit the Go-Lab support area, where you will find various materials to help you navigate and use the Go-Lab Ecosystem.
