(1501.pdf) STEM (SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATH) LEARNING: A GUIDE TO IMPLEMENTING STEM EDUCATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION

摘要

Industry leaders and educators agree that we need to address STEM subject areas in order tomaintain and strengthen the role of the country as an economic and technological leader. In someform, our students are already learning about STEM in subject areas. My intent is to use this paper toprovide a brief, simple overview of what I perceive to be the key topics and some strategies forenhancing STEM connections at the university level.Elementary school students see the connectivity between the different educational disciplines quitenaturally. Since most of their structured learning takes place in the same room, it is easy for them tomake the link between ELA, Math, Science, and Social Science. This connection is much harder tomaintain once young people start their secondary education. And, it becomes almost impossible whenstudents are at the university level due to the focus on the major course of study.Ever since the advent of the Technology Education program it has been the perfect vehicle to bringtogether the disciplines of Science, Math, and English Language Arts.In a relatively short time period (8-9 weeks) during a few of their college level courses students canenhance their understanding of Science and Math concepts and, most importantly, understand therelevance of these subjects by using their knowledge in the context of exploring the things they useand rely upon every day.This provides an ideal opportunity to utilize differentiated learning techniques, use multiple methods tocover concepts, and allow students to practice using the higher order thinking skills that will makesuch a difference to them throughout their lifetime learning.