Got humor? It might be the key to STEM engagement

A new survey has found that to make STEM more engaging and to add fun to learning for high school students what might be needed making the learning have real world relevance with a little bit of humor. The survey was carried out on 1,100 high school students who were asked on how the school and educational system can make learning more relevant for them, especially STEM learning activities. More than 60 percent of the students state that they wanted their teachers to be more creative in their teaching. The suggestions they gave to improve on the teaching is for teachers to use out of the box teaching methods and science projects that are fun along with holding competitions for the students once in a while. About 49 percent of the students wanted STEM teaching to have more relevance to real life while 35 percent said they would like to have more technology in the classroom because that would make STEM more interesting to them. Then another group recommended adding humor to STEM teaching sessions. The students were drawn from a Math competition that involved high performing students in Math.

Key Takeaways:

  • In one survey, 60 percent of students said they want their teachers to be more creative.
  • It is challenging to keep kids engaged in STEM subjects as the kids grow older, the material becomes more difficult and no longer cool among peers.
  • Students, especially girls, need to see how STEM subjects are used in the real world and connect with adult role models who are working in those fields.

“Those students say out-of-the-box teaching methods and fun science projects and competitions are two ways to increase STEM engagement and interest.”

Read more: https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/04/26/humor-stem-engagement/

About Sensory Edge 174 Articles
Articles written by SensoryEdge are a combined effort of the SensoryEdge publishing staff. At SensoryEdge our focus is to educate, inform, and inspire each person caring for children to be and do their very best. It is not always easy and sometimes we don't take action (or we take the wrong action) because of a lack of understanding the real issues. We hope that the conversations that occur here will help in some small way better the lives of children, their families, and the professionals who work with them.