The research aims to design and develop learning innovation to enhance higher order thinking skills for students in Thailand junior high schools. The design development research model of Richey and Klien (2007) is used and divided into two phases: (1) to design and develop innovative learning and validate of its quality based on the interviews and survey from 13 experts, 10 teachers and 30 students, and (2) to test the tools' validity by three experts and 153 students from five junior high schools at five provinces in Thailand. The findings indicate that analytical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving thinking and critical thinking skill are developed by researchers, and experienced and practiced by learners in their lessons. The higher order thinking skills of learners after experiencing the learning innovation have a higher average score than the previous one. Following the students' perspectives on the learning innovation, 1) The design of content is in line with students’ knowledge levels, easy to understand, and enable to connect science contents to their daily life. However, some contents cannot fully cover into all classroom lessons; 2) Multimedia. A navigation design is easy for students to find information and direct to their needs. The icon symbols could hint the meaning of various information sources and have links to these sources. Also, multimedia could considerably explain scientific processes and help students understand better; 3) The design of problem scenarios supports easier connection to the daily life. In addition, using videos as a learning resource could suitably illustrate scientific process, and improve communicative and collaborative skills in problem solving.

In this study, we constructed a new algorithm to determine the optimal parameters for friction stir welding including rotational speed, welding speed, axial force, tool pin profile, and tool material. The objective of welding is to maximize the ultimate tensile strength of the welded aluminum. The proposed method combines the response surface method and the modified differential evolution algorithm (RSM-MDE). RSM-MDE is a method that involves both experimental and simulation procedures. It is composed of four steps: (1) finding the number of parameters and their levels that affect the efficiency of the friction stir welding, (2) using RSM to formulate the regression model, (3) using the MDE algorithm to find the optimal parameter of the regression model obtained from (2), and (4) verifying the results obtained from step (3). The optimal parameters generated by the RSM-MDE method were a rotation speed of 1417.68 rpm, a welding speed of 60.21 mm/min, an axial force of 8.44 kN, a hexagon-tapered tool pin profile, and the SKD 11 tool material. The ultimate tensile strength obtained from this set of parameters was 294.84 MPa, which was better than that of the RSM by 1.48%.