Students’ self-authoring mobile App for integrative learning of STEM

Abstract

This paper proposes the integrative learning of technology and science in which students create their own science applications on smartphones. The proposed learning aims to help students experience what science is and how it is technically utilized. In addition, discipline-specific representations were emphasized in the learning design to help students translate between those in different disciplinary and build up their meta-representational competence, central to engineering professional practice as well as learning about engineering design process in school. During the integrative learning, students were also expected to experience the shift of coding from studying how to write a program code to how to control a device to solve a problem, the computational thinking. The proposed learning practice was held and evaluated with 85 participants from high schools and universities. The results showed that students were motivated, and valued the proposed learning practice. Students perceived the usefulness and ease of use of the tools adopted in the learning practice. The study results suggest that the use of smartphones in education may support the orchestrating of the teaching and learning of science and engineering.

Mobile Learning with STEM Approach in Physics Learning

“…Integrating mobile learning applications with problem-based learning models and STEM approaches is one of today's learning alternatives (Tseng et al, 2018). The mobile learning application developed using the RASE learning design framework namely Resources, Activity, Support and Evaluation .…”

Covid-19 Effect on the Assessment of the Use of Smartphone Apps in STEM Learning

“…A number of researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of teaching students STEM disciplines using applications created by students themselves with the help of App Inventor (Karahan et al, 2021;Tseng et al, 2018). Using such apps is proved to enhance motivation to learn, promote confidence in one's studies, and awaken mental pleasure from developing own applications.…”

“…The intention to develop a good application should always go in line with students' opinions collection. The evidence from practice shows that direct learners' involvement in application development may well increase their motivation and confidence (Tseng et al, 2018), as well as promote employment in the STEM field (Luo et al, 2021;Nethi & De, 2019).…”

“…These encompass difficulties associated with the assessment of the degree of assimilation of the learning material and mechanisms for solving problems without the help of applications and many others. The introduction of distance learning models based on a mobile application (or applications) may be accompanied by problems related to content perception (Jacinto & Carreira, 2021;Nithia et al, 2016), failure to complete tasks (Ahmed et al, 2021;Tseng et al, 2018), excessive use of technology, and inability to complete tasks independently or find solutions to problems outside of the digital space.…”

“…At the same time, students' results directly depend on motivation, cognitive skills development, and the ability to self-study (Olszewski & Crompton, 2020). Better learning outcomes require students to work on their technological skills constantly: during class time, when doing assignments independently, or when searching for training material (Tseng et al, 2018). The experimental results obtained by Rivera et al (2018) show that advancing the technical capabilities of the educational institution is possible if their leaders allocate time and money to improve the skills of teachers and students in handling mobile applications.…”