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Designing Meaningful STEM Lessons

By Maeve Liston

Summary

The Engineering Design Process (EDP) is a tool that can help shape STEM classroom lesson plans. The technique encourages students to think and act like an Engineer and follow the EDP through activities and challenges. In this paper titled “Designing Meaningful STEM Lessons”, Dr Maeve Liston, Director of Enterprise and Community Engagement and senior lecturer in STEM at MIC highlights examples of how you could introduce EDP to students through a variety of STEM challenges.

Abstract

In a previous article of Science (Volume 53, No. 3) entitled Unravelling STEM: Beyond the acronym of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, I discussed that there is quite a lot of uncertainty around the design and understanding of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) activities. The article questioned what is STEM education? and explored the emergence of STEM, and the characteristics of true authentic STEM activities and lessons. This article will explore the concept of STEM education in further detail i.e. characteristics of STEM literacy, what do STEM lessons look like? attributes of a STEM classroom and the Engineering Design Process (EDP). The article will finish with examples of how you could introduce EDP to your students through a variety of STEM challenges.

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Designing Meaningful STEM Lessons

Reference

Reference: Liston, M. (2018). Designing Meaningful STEM Lessons, Science, 53 (4) pp 34-37.

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