STEM is defined as a curriculum based on the idea of cultivating students in four specific disciplines through interdisciplinary and applied approach. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Instead of teaching the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM assimilates them into a cohesive learning paradigm base on real- world applications (Hom, 2014).The education of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields have always been at the forefront of utilising technology for teaching and learning as a way to foster interest in these fields from the calculator up to computers. As mobile and computing technologies are rapidly developing, emerging technologies in STEM education are very crucial and important. This essay will review on the examples of emerging technologies in STEM education, the advantages and challenges or limitation of emerging technologies, and including the future improvement for better ways of emerging technologies in STEM education.
There are many ways in which educators can infuse technologies in their teaching methods. The high usage of mobile phones, computers and other smart devices among students enable the infusion of technologies in STEM education even easier and possible. Other than that, most of the school nowadays are equipped with LCD projector and some of the schools have their own smart classroom that will assist the educators to perform their teaching of STEM subjects with the help of technologies. Nowadays, so many educators all around the world are sharing their inputs and materials that can easily accessible on the internet. Also, there are so many online learning platforms that has been set up to help educators in conducting online learning. The examples include Google Classroom, Edmodo, Social media and many more. Since students nowadays use a lot of social media in their daily life, so educators can use this opportunity to use social media in conducting e-learning.
As for the assessment, there variety of technology-based assessment available that can be used by the educators to assess their students’ understanding in the topic. Technology- based assessment generally refers to the use of electronic systems and software to assess and evaluate the performance of the students in their learning. It is also known as a digital assessment that enables more flexibility responsiveness and contextualization. Since it provides personalised and flexible learning among the students and building their 21st century skills, this assessment is suitable to be used when the educators are emerging technologies in the STEM education system. This assessment is embedded in learning, universally designed to suit students’ ability, adaptive and most importantly gives instant feedback regarding the students’ performances. This will enable the students to identify their strength and weaknesses and hence assessing students’ learning in STEM education system will become much more effective and easier.
The infusion of new technology has had a dramatic effect on the wat we send and receive information (Carmen C. Lewis, 2013) . In a traditional classroom, the educator is the sender of any information, while the student as the receiver of the information. Nowadays, we find a generation of students who are extremely savvy about technology and media. They use digital media almost as if it were their first language in communicating with each other. Students nowadays spent most of their times with their devices mainly for playing games, social media and entertainment. Thus, it is very important for the teachers to be able to use technologies in their teaching methods. This is because, students tend to get bored if the educator is still using the traditional method in teaching. Some students may not be paying attention and might end up playing in the class. This is highly important to emphasize on since students found that STEM educations are among the critical subjects or course in lower education classroom as well as higher education classroom. The old methods of teaching may not as effective as emerging technologies in STEM education because the students need to taught according to the demand of the future where they need to be fully equipped with the 21st century skills.
Besides, with the help of technologies STEM education will become more advanced in the future. The learning process with infusion of technologies will promote high level of learning. The students will be able to explore more on the subjects by fully utilising the technologies available in their learning process. Students are also very curious at times and eager to learn something new. For example, there are virtual learning and virtual lab that can be used by the educators to teach subjects that require much more than just series of pictures to understand such as chemistry as these platforms will enable to students to see abstract things that cannot be seen by naked eyes such as the movement of atoms and molecules.
In addition, according to (Italo Masiello, 2005), computer-based systems have great potential for delivering learning material especially for those who involves advanced visualisation such as microbiology. The results of their studies revealed that students showed readiness to and positive attitudes towards information technology in education and exposed a possible benefit from its use in the long run. This is because students can visualize the mechanism by using virtual learning instead of depending on the pictures only. The level of understanding will also be better with the aids of technologies in learning microbiology.
Apart from that, the usage of technologies in STEM education provides a flexible learning for the students. Students can use the online platform to study at their own pace. This will help the students with different rate of abilities in understanding the subjects. Students no longer need to depend solely on the teachers to improve their learning. Students can also take their own sweet time to learn and to really master a topic. Students can always refer to the online learning platform to help them in their revision. With the ability to use technology, the students can easily access the materials on the internet.
However, there are also drawbacks in emerging technologies in STEM education. The students are easily distracted when they are using their smart devices. If they cannot control themselves, they will end up not using their smart devices for study purposes. Apart from that, it is highly possible that students tend to get disconnect from social interaction and this will make the students to be lacking in social skills as well as soft skills. Emerging technologies in STEM education can also foster cheating in class among the students, especially during assessment if the students’ activities are not monitored thoroughly.
Overall, emerging technologies in STEM education illustrates well the relationship between the use of technology and the need to carefully organize it in order to maximize the benefits from it. Emerging technologies in STEM education will not be possible without a well-developed internet. This is one of the challenges faced in our country, Malaysia where not all place has a good or at least stable internet connection. This is something that need to be further investigated to solve the problem. More research should be conducted in order to improve the current technologies or methods that are being used in teaching STEM subjects to ensure a more effective teaching and learning process. All in all, I order to emerge technologies in STEM education, it needs to be properly organized and well structured, so that it can promote a wider range of educational provision.
References
Carmen C. Lewis, c. E. (2013). Faculty Use of Established and Emerging Technologies in Higher Education: A Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology Perspective. International Journal of Higher Education, 22-32.
Hom, E. J. (2014, February 11). Live Science. Retrieved from What is STEM Education: https://www.livescience.com/43296-what-is-stem-education.html
Italo Masiello, R. R. (2005). Attitudes to teh application of a Web-based learning system in a microbilogy course. Science Direct, 171-185.