STEM Industry-School Partnerships Proposed

A 103 page report on  Optimising STEM Industry-School Partnerships: Inspiring Australia's Next Generation has been  released by the Australian Education Council. The Forum recommended a national online toolkit on STEM partnerships. Also a dashboard of STEM educational performance. Minimum national requirements are propped for teacher professional learning for primary and secondary teachers, along with VET in schools. What is not covered in the report is how much all this will cost, or who will pay for it.

Contents

Note from the Chair     5
Executive Summary     9
Recommendations    13
Snapshot of Recommendations     17
Definitions and how we use them in this report     19
Introduction    21
Chapter 1. National and International Trends     23
Chapter 2. Teacher Professional Learning     37
Chapter 3. Solving Real World Problems     47
Chapter 4. Optimising Industry-School Partnerships     59
Chapter 5. Outcomes and Impact     69
Conclusion    77

Appendix 1 – List of Forum members    80
Appendix 2 – Existing guides and resources     81
Appendix 3 – Blueprint for a National STEM Resources Toolkit     82
Appendix 4 – STEM Education Data Dashboard metrics    83
Appendix 5 – List of Submissions     95
Appendix 6 – Acknowledgements     97

 

Education for Innovation

Greetings from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where the "Education for Innovation Workshop" just started. The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) organized the event to work on Australia’s approach to science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). This is of interest, as I just published a book on what to do: "Digital Teaching In Higher Education: Designing E-learning for International Students of Technology, Innovation and the Environment". Speakers include Dr Lachlan Blackhall, Co-founder and CEO of Reposit Power, and Dr Sarah Pearson, CEO, Canberra Innovation Network.

My worry is that this may be just another talk-fest, rather than communicating what has been shown to work and proposing new solutions. There is little point in just repeating that STEM is in demand but enrollments are declining.

Education for Innovation, UTS, Sydney, 24 February 2017

The University of Technology Sydney is hosting "Education for Innovation - Creativity, Professionalism and Diversity" 24 February 2017. The program includes Dr Lachlan Blackhall, Co-founder and CEO, Reposit Power and who also set up the ANU Innovation program (now Innovation ACT) and Dr Sarah Pearson, CEO, Canberra Innovation Network.

• "How can educators inspire creativity through the STEM curriculum?
• What professional skills do STEM graduates need to enhance their creativity?
• How can engaging diversity improve creativity in STEM?"

I will be interested see what senior educators think of my idea of teaching innovation and professional skills online, as well as face-to-face through programs such as ANU Techlauncher.

Social Networks Reducing Student Achievement?

Posso (2016) in a study of Australian adolescent school students concludes that online social
networks reduce their maths results, whereas online games increases results. However, I suggest this may be a correlation, not a causal relationship. Students who are better at maths may prefer games to social media.

References

Posso, A. (2016). Internet Usage and Educational Outcomes Among 15-Year Old Australian Students. International Journal of Communication, 10, 26. Retrieved from http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/download/5586/1742

Coordinated STEM and Innovation Education Strategy Needed

The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) have released an 82 page report "Australia’s economic future: an agenda for growth". The report recommends "... all students have familiarity and competency with ICT as a very significant portion of the Australian population lack these basic skills.", also "To improve Australia’s innovative capacity, the government should give greater weight to translation activities in funding universities ...". To do that, I suggest Australia needs to first train its teachers in digital technology, so they can teach the students (this can be done online*). It would also be worthwhile making entrepreneurship as part of the curricula generally for universities. To that end I have proposed an on-line innovation course.

* See also "Proposal for Distance Education in Technology and Entrepreneurship to Train Teachers ...'".

Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

InfoSys have released a study "Amplifying Human Potential: Education and Skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution" (18 January 2016). This presents the results of a survey of young people's attitudes to education and work. It suggests that the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" will require both technical (STEM) and soft skills. The study finds Australians less enthusiastic about this. However, just to be clear, this is not a study of tech skills, just attitudes to skills. I suggest that Australians not wanting to code mobile apps for startups shows good common sense. Your chance of earning a living this way is minimal and it is the 21st century equivalent of sewing t-shirts in a sweat shop.

Similar points to the InfoSys stydy were made by Brandenburg, Taboadela  and Vancea (2015) in describing the ERASMUS Impact Study. Employers wanted graduates who could work in multi-national teams and solve problems.

It is useful to have a grounding in STEM and business skills. But working in a start-up is much like putting all your money on a roll of the dice (except you have about ten times the chance of winning at dice). A job in a large company, with a regular pay-check is not to be turned down lightly.

Last year ANU started offering IT students the option of a start-up for their group project. Students still have the option of doing a software development project for an existing company, or government agency, but they can instead opt to start their own business. This is called "ANU TechLauncher" and works with the existing "Innovation ACT" business planning competition for Canberra's university students.

A start-up project as part of education, I suggest, is a useful learning experience so the students can experience failure in a safe environment. This is, in effect, a real world version of the fictional Kobayashi Maru test of Star Trek, where Starfleet Academy cadets are faced with a no-win situation. The chances of the student's start-up project succeeding are about 1 in 100.

Having mentored winning Innovation ACT start-up teams for a few years and assessed TechLuancher students, what struck me was that the skills they learn are just as applicable in large organizations. If you are doing IT in a large organization then you need to know how to plan, cost and pitch a project (and fail most of the time). To that end I have starting producing mobile based e-learning to help with this.

References

Brandenburg, U., Taboadela, O., & Vancea, M. (2015). Mobility Matters: the ERASMUS Impact Study. International Higher Education, (82), 5-7. Retrieved from https://ejournals.bc.edu/ojs/index.php/ihe/article/viewFile/8863/7934

IT Vendor Certification and Vocational Qualification Bundles

The most innovative thing I have seen at the Reimagination Summit (Star Casino in Sydney) today is IT Vendor Certification and Vocational Qualification Bundles from Northern Sydney Institute of NSW TAFE. This was on a brochure in the conference pack, saying NSW residents can get Microsoft and  Cisco certification, along with vocational training units at low cost. This was while I was listing to a panel session on STEM, which seems appropriate. The idea of bundling industry certifications with educational qualification is a good one and along with maths bridging courses can allow people who ,missed out on university education into STEM careers

ANU STEM Teaching and Learning Colloquium

The Australian National University is holding a free STEM Teaching and Learning Colloquium, in Canberra, 9am to 1pm, 2 June 2015.

PROGRAM

STB 1

9.00 Welcome: Professor Barbara Van Leeuwen, Director Science Education and Dr Jochen Trumpf, Associate Dean Education, College of Engineering and Computer Science

9.10 The Indigenous Health Stream (IHS)- experiential learning, mentoring and leadership training in Indigenous Health: Amanda Barnard, Samia Goudie, Phyll Dance, Christine Phillips, Kirsty Douglas, Jill Bestic, Gaye Doolan

9.40 Putting the Social in Science: teaching medical students cognitive flexibility through social sciences – Associate Professor Christine Phillips, ANU Medical School

10.10 Parallel session

STB 1 Distributed constructionism and the Jigsaw classroom:  Chris Browne – ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science My Maker Tutorials TEG extends the concept of student-facilitated tutorial by making available sophisticated hands-on learning activities. This builds on my Jigsaw classroom, for which I was awarded an AAUT in 2014.

STB 2 Physics Project Market Day: An event that enables students to 'shop' for a research project and chat to staff in an informal environment. Associate Professor Jodie Bradbury ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Science Physics Project Market Day is a unique event at ANU that promotes research as an integral part of the undergraduate student experience, fosters interactions between staff and students and presents the breadth of student physics research projects available.

10.40 morning tea

STB 1 11.10 Making Expert Thinking Visible - Dr Salman Durrani, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science This talk will discuss some strategies, in the context of electronic engineering, for making expert thinking visible and enjoyable for both students and lecturers.

11.40 How might we better support tutors and demonstrators? Associate Professor Kristen Pammer, ANU College of Medicine Biology and Environment Kristen will outline the QUT model for supporting sessional staff to begin a discussion on how we can progress in our Colleges at ANU.

12.10 Working with industry to extend student research and professional skills using student run start-ups: Dr Shayne Flint, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science TechLauncher is an RSCS initiative, which enables students from any discipline to develop the research and professional skills required to use technology to bring great ideas to life and have a positive impact on our society. Students develop these skills by working closely with industry professionals, technology experts and entrepreneurs to create start-up companies or to work on complex real-world problems. In 2015 we have 120 3rd and 4th year students enrolled in the course which runs over two semesters.

Many of our 3rd year students will continue with the program in their 4th year. In this presentation we will describe the TechLauncher program and how our students engage with industry, government and innovation sector. Some of our students will talk about their involvement in the course and demonstrate their work. We will conclude with our vision for the next few years.

For further information please contact Science Teaching and Learning Centre or Marina Lobastov (CECS).

STEMing the Decline in Science and Maths Teaching

Greetings from the Shine Dome in Canberra, where I am taking part in an IMSITE (Inspiring Mathematics and Science in Teacher Education) Dissemination forum. This is sponsored by the Office of Learning and Teaching to reverse the decline in science and maths teaching in schools. This adversely effects student's interest in, and ability to undertake, technology and engineering programs at university. This is an area being researched in Australia, as well as other countries.

The event is is being chaired by the always enthusiastic, Dr Judy-Anne Osborn, Lecturer, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Newcastle. She described the "online-ificaiton" of some of their MATH2910 course and MATH2920 invited other institution to collaborate in the teaching of this.

University of Wollongong is part of IMSITE. They offer a teaching minor for science degree students and are hosting a STEM Teachers Conference 25 July 2015

It occurs to me that there are some obvious ways to  foster teaching and learning maths and science. One would be to use the link to the exciting careers, which are the other two letters in the STEM acronym: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It is the areas of technology and engineering which have the career prospects.

A way to improve the teaching would be to use on-line education, both for teacher training and, for direct student education. It seems to me that teacher educators are making their job harder than it needs to be, by not using e-learning techniques. It seems that educators don't think computers can be used for teaching in schools and so should not be used for teaching teachers. I suggest "flipping" the approach to place e-learning at the center of education. As I explained to one of the attendees, you can make your on-line materials backward compatible with paper and classroom teaching, whereas it is much more difficult to design for paper and the classroom, then adapt for on-line.

My rule of thumb is that the average university student needs to spend about 20% of their time in class (one day a week), with the rest on-line. Extending this to school, might see the youngest students starting at 80% in class, 50% for primary students, and about 30% for high school students.

This is not to say students will not be actively engaged in learning, just that this need not be in a formal classroom setting. The least useful activity is to have students sitting passively listening to a teacher, they should be doing something, mostly with other students. Where students are required to "attend" school, they can spend most of their time in a learning center (what used to be called a "library"). Only a few teacher-librarians are needed to watch over several hundred students.

STEM Education Underpins Our Prosperity

Dr Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics writes "STEM: part culture war, part cargo cult" (Online Opinion, 17 February 2015). STEM is short for "Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths" and as Dr Gruen points out there are numerous calls for more of it in schools and universities. But I suggest there are good reasons for this, and don't agree it is a "cargo cult" (I could hardly do that when I teach Computer Science and Net Technology). Australia's economic wellbeing and much of its society, depends on STEM. Our agricultural and mining sectors depend on science and engineering. The systems in our cities which keep the citizens fed and healthy also depend on science and engineering. Our fourth biggest export industry is education, which is  dependent on technology and scientific research.

Dr Gruen claims that "old-fashioned entrepreneurialism" has been the dominant input to the success of Silicon Valley. This is not quite true, as what has emerged is a sophisticated blending of STEM and entrepreneurialism. Computer coding is not the only contribution of STEM to Silicon Valley, there is also engineering of hardware, product design and sophisticated project management approaches which make large and complex projects possible.

There are practitioners who've taught themselves, but they are making use of billions of dollars of government investment in STEM, which is a legacy of the cold war and the space program. Even now the US government and US military fund research which enterprises can then commercially exploit.

As Dr Gruen points out, there are free resources online. But there is little future for a country which relies on the education offered free by the government and companies of another.

Australia can hope that a few crumbs from the US entrepreneurial table will fall on the floor for us, or we can invest in our own future. One way to do this is to teach entrepreneurial skills to STEM students. I am helping do this trough the Australian Computer Society. My class of "New Technology Alignment" students are up to week three of their on-line course. They first have to find a business opportunity and then propose technology for that opportunity. Those working in an organization have the opportunity to do their project, for their boss, in the workplace. At the Australian National University I am helping with TechLauncher where students have to option to set up a new company as part of their for-credit project. I will be discussing how to teach innovation, at CSIRO in Canberra, 27 April 2015.

We do need STEM in-service training for existing teachers. This can be on-line, but needs to be more than just telling them to go a look at a web video. What is required is properly designed on-line education programs for teachers and for stud nets. Australia has had such programs, particularly for rural and remote students. Those programs could be broadened for all students..

STEM Teaching Needs More Innovative Approach Than Chief Scientist Proposes

Professor Ian Chubb, the Chief Scientist, has released "Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: Australia’s Future" (2014). I did not find it a very innovative document. In particular it proposes developing science literacy in schools by: "... ensuring every primary school has at least one teacher
with specialist STEM skills". This is unlikely to be adopted due to the resources it would require and is not a good way to teach. I suggest instead providing online resources for teachers and students, plus team teaching specialist assistance to in-classroom teachers. This is the approach used for remote area teaching in Queensland and NT, but should be adopted as normal practice across Australian schools.