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AbstractBlended teaching, as a teaching model that integrates the advantages of offline and online teaching, is more conducive to promoting students’ autonomous learning and is more suitable for project-based learning aimed at solving real-world problems. This study takes the “Intelligent Product Design and Production” STEM course at Shanghai High School in Shanghai as an example to analyze the front-end preparation of blended teaching design, activity and resource design, and teaching evaluation design, and explains how blended teaching promotes students’ deep learning supported by technology tools, iterative learning, and complex inquiry processes.
KeywordsProject Learning STEM
The STEM curriculum integrates science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in an interdisciplinary manner. It emphasizes the authenticity of problems, the constructiveness of knowledge, the practicality of processes, and the openness of results. Blended teaching refers to the combination of traditional face-to-face teaching with student-centered online learning based on information technology, fully leveraging the leading role of teachers and the主体作用 of students, thereby achieving a more personalized learning process and optimizing learning outcomes for individual student development. In blended teaching, students also experience blended learning. The “primary teaching principle” as one of the theoretical supports for blended learning posits that effective learning only occurs when learners engage in solving real-world problems. Therefore, project-based teaching of STEM based on real-world problem-solving is more suitable for blended teaching.
1. Background and Objectives of Course Development
The General High School Curriculum Standards (2017 edition, revised in 2020) state that “focus on the student learning process, create realistic situations related to life that are task-oriented, promote students’ autonomous, cooperative, and inquiry-based learning, emphasize the evaluation of students’ learning processes, advance the rational application of information technology in teaching, and improve the implementation level of the curriculum.” Compared to traditional teaching activities, students prefer learning activities that involve uncertain outcomes and include peer collaboration and personal creativity. The “Intelligent Product Design and Production” course was developed and implemented in this context. This elective course adopts a curriculum design based on real problem-solving and interdisciplinary research learning, while guiding students to pay attention to society and enhance their sense of social responsibility.
This course has different design and production themes each term. Taking the first term course on the theme of “Smart Cane” as an example, this theme is set for the first semester of the second year of high school, with about twenty students enrolled in each term. The course content involves using knowledge from science, engineering, mathematics, and technology to design and produce a smart cane suitable for visually impaired individuals, helping them better participate in social life. The course objective is to enable students to clarify research questions through investigation, combine knowledge from various disciplines to solve practical problems, and experience a series of processes that transform concepts into products, during which they understand the travel difficulties faced by the visually impaired, as well as knowledge in urban planning, product design, patent protection, etc., enhancing students’ sense of social responsibility and awareness of using technology for the benefit of humanity.
2. Constructing Blended Teaching
The design of blended teaching includes three stages: front-end preparation, activity and resource design, and teaching evaluation design. Among them, front-end preparation involves analyzing students’ characteristics, learning habits, and existing knowledge base. Taking the “Intelligent Product Design and Production” course as an example, students have undergone learning in the first-year STEM foundational courses “Open Source Hardware and Sensor Basics”, “Design and Production”, and “Electronic Technology”, mastering the connection and control of Arduino controllers and some common sensors and display devices, and being able to use the school’s 3D printing and laser cutting equipment to create models for their designs. Students opting for this course typically exhibit strong interest, strong learning ability, some project research experience, a love for challenges, and diverse ideas, but also have some shortcomings, such as a lack of systematic thinking, a lack of design thinking based on real products, and difficulties in teamwork.
The “Intelligent Product Design and Production” course generally adopts a role-playing teaching method. Role-playing is a group participation model with high teaching value, especially suitable for classroom teaching in primary and secondary schools. In this course, the teacher plays the role of an investor, while students form project teams, each including roles such as designer, project manager, engineer, and financial personnel. Specific course content includes project background introduction, research communication, group formulation of research plans, writing design proposals, circuit building and programming, program refinement and debugging, structural production, experimentation and data collection, analysis and debugging, prototype construction and testing, writing product user manuals, designing display boards, and presenting and improving. Existing teaching resources include classrooms equipped with projectors and desktop computers, engineering laboratories equipped with various controllers, sensors, and other materials, as well as workshops with equipment such as bench drills, band saws, and 3D printers.
3. Specific Implementation of Blended Teaching
Blended teaching breaks away from the teacher-centered teaching model, fully leveraging students’主体地位 in learning. In blended teaching, the teacher’s role is mainly that of an organizer, coordinator, and guide, encouraging students to organize their thoughts by comparing viewpoints, analyzing information, posing questions, and drawing conclusions. Student teams employ various online and offline learning methods, purposefully utilizing multiple learning resources to overcome deficiencies in their knowledge and skills based on project needs.
1. Preparation Stage
The preliminary preparation for this course includes offline foundational knowledge, online advanced knowledge preparation, and pre-class teaching resource preparation. Among them, the foundational knowledge preparation is arranged in the first semester of the first year, in the form of offline STEM courses, named “Open Source Hardware and Sensor Basics”, totaling 6 class hours, focusing on the use of Arduino controllers and sensors; the advanced knowledge preparation is online, totaling about 6 recorded class hours, named “Design and Production of Simple Non-contact Thermometers”, allowing students to learn online according to their own foundations, engage in hands-on operation, and experience the general process of design based on real needs. Pre-class teaching resource preparation includes controllers, sensors, tools, computers that students may use, and electronic resources and teaching PPTs that may be needed, as detailed in Figure 1.
2. Implementation Stage
Project-based learning does not mean letting students explore freely without any constraints. According to constructivist learning theory, building the “scaffolding” of knowledge is an important part of teaching. Since each student team designs different solutions and uses different controllers, sensors, and other materials, concentrating on teaching a large amount of foundational knowledge offline may not only lead to homogenization of solutions but also affect the progress of students’ projects. Therefore, this course only focuses on teaching the general steps of design thinking in the first class, reviewing the foundational knowledge of Arduino controllers and sensors, and adopts a flipped classroom teaching format, where the teacher sends organized electronic resource libraries to each student team. The resource library includes existing data on controllers and sensors in the laboratory, as well as other sensor data that may be used. Students can update and share the resource library in real time by consulting literature. During the implementation of the project, each group of students is equipped with a tablet and a desktop computer, with the desktop computer mainly used by the “engineer” for programming and debugging the work, while the tablet is mainly used for real-time display and communication through projection, tracking project progress, consulting materials, making electronic posters, and budgeting, etc. The course content arrangement and the core competency performance in each stage are shown in Table 1.
3. Evaluation Stage
The course adopts a combination of process evaluation and presentation communication for evaluation, where process evaluation accounts for 70%, and students need to submit research process records and evaluation forms; the evaluation from experts during the presentation communication accounts for 30%, with experts including professionals in electronic engineering, project management personnel from technology companies, and guiding teachers. The presentation adopts the form of a “product launch conference”, where student teams publicly present product concepts, performance, testing data, and conduct simulated demonstrations on-site. The key evaluation points are to consider safety, cost, user-friendliness, financial management (the difference between budget and actual usage), teamwork, product design concepts, and functional innovation while essentially achieving assistance for the visually impaired to avoid obstacles.
4. Conclusion and Reflection
After the first term of the course, students completed the design and production of eight smart canes and held a “product launch conference”. From the performance of the works, each piece can achieve basic obstacle-avoidance prompt functions while considering safety and cost. Although some works could not be successfully demonstrated during the presentation, each team was able to analyze the target customer group and propose solutions, materializing design ideas into actual product prototypes, and attempted simulated testing (real testing with potential customers was not conducted due to limited class time). Two experts participating in the work review provided professional opinions from different perspectives, including theoretical foundations, the product design processes of real companies, functional expansion of the works, and cost control. Before the course, a survey on design thinking was conducted, and feedback from the questionnaire indicated that students had limited understanding of design thinking. For design based on actual problems, they often sketched functions and appearances based more on their imagination and observations, without forming a systematic thinking for materializing solutions. From the research process materials submitted by students, it can be seen that students have a preliminary understanding of the general path of problem-solving based on real needs, reflecting an awareness of using systematic thinking and design thinking to solve complex problems. Interviews and exchanges with some students participating in the course revealed that students were exposed to immersive role-playing learning for the first time. This role-setting enriched students’ perspectives on problem-solving, and the model of online learning combined with targeted guidance from teachers allowed students more space for independent thinking and free discussion.
References:
[1] Huang Ronghuai, Martin, Zheng Lanqin, et al. Course Design Theory Based on Blended Learning [J]. Research on Educational Technology, 2009(01).
[2] Cai Min. The Principles and Evaluation of “Role-Playing Teaching” [J]. Educational Science, 2004(06).
(The author of this article is Cheng Lin from Shanghai High School)
(This article was published in “Modern Teaching” January 2021, Special Issue on Blended Teaching)
