What is STEAM Education and Why is it Important?
You might be familiar with the concept of STEM education. STEM education deals with education related to subjects in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. STEM education aims to build a workforce with the lateral thinking, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills expected of a technical professional in this age driven by technology and information.
STEM education leaves out professions in the arts, though those professions are just as crucial in ensuring the smooth functioning of affairs in the world.STEM missed out on supporting the creation of artists who carry out amazing work that makes the world a beautiful place with their creative genius through music, art, literature, philosophy, and design. STEAM education was created as an improvement over the pre-existing STEM education.
This article provides the reader an overview of STEAM education with its significance, aims, and advantages. Let’s get going!
What is the objective of STEAM education?
STEAM education widens the scope of STEM education by including art subjects in the roster of STEM subjects. The objective is to generate a course framework that utilizes engagement theory-based learning to create a learning experience that intrinsically motivates them to be more engaged in their learning process, thereby increasing the number of students capable of handling situations in their respective fields. While STEM does not cater to the needs of art students because of the apparent lack of technological advancements. STEAM education stands for Science and Technology interpreted through Engineering and Arts, based on Mathematical elements. Georgette Yakman, the creator of STEAM education, believes in creating an adaptable framework of education that highlights the relationship between engineering and arts subjects instead of keeping these subjects and their students apart. The creativity of arts subjects balances out the monotonous order and structure of things created by information. It builds a system that incorporates the best parts of both technology and arts.
The STEAM process, what is it?
STEAM education works by basing every lesson on six sequential steps. The goal of doing this is to help students develop a learning process.
- Focus: This is the first step. Behind every aspect of life, there is a question that needs to be answered or a problem to be solved. This step requires students to focus on a particular real-world situation or problem and identify the essential questions that need to be answered in order to solve the problem. Teachers are expected to identify how these real-world situations tie into the curriculum and how well they do that.
- Detail: In this phase, students have to get a deeper understanding of the problem. Specifically, they have to identify factors that brought this problem into existence, how these factors came together to create this problem, how these factors can be controlled to handle the problem itself, and how the problem impacts the functioning of the world. Identifying these elements and how they work will help students recognize what skills they need to solve or understand this problem and consequently decide how to chart their course of action.
- Discovery: In the discovery phase, students are expected to organize all research outcomes and detect things that align with the problem at hand. All research that does not align with the problem or the requirements put forward by the problem needs to be eliminated at this stage. This phase should also be used to discover the skills and tools required to solve this problem. Any gaps in skill sets or research must be bridged at this stage. Adaptivity is an essential requirement of the STEAM approach.
- Application: This is the stage in which students amalgamate all of the learning and research to answer the question or solve the problem at hand. At this stage, students begin to visualize how they can now create an innovative solution using all of the tools and research they have gathered up till that point in time.
- Presentation: Knowledge sharing is an integral part of STEAM education. Knowledge sharing is not one-way traffic in this situation. When one group of students presented their research and findings of a problem, another group could provide feedback to the first team. Feedback is an important part of STEAM as the steam approach is adaptive. Students must be able to adapt their solutions to new issues that arise. Students are expected to revisit the previous stages to incorporate changes into their learning or plans based on requirements.
- Link: At this stage, the students have the results from meticulous research, new skills, and tools to work on the project, along with feedback from other students or teachers. Once they have both, students can put them together to create a solution to their problem. The adaptive nature of STEAM requires students to revisit their findings to make necessary changes to create another solution in case of failed attempts.
The interesting thing here is that STEAM does not rely only on technology to drive progress or create solutions. STEAM systems use a combination of soft skills along with STEM skills or to understand STEM concepts in order to create new technology.
What are the outcomes of STEAM Learning?
The effectiveness of STEAM learning can be determined by its outcomes. An effective STEAM education will have the following outcomes:
Learning to make integral connections: The two-way approach of STEAM requires students to look at technical concepts and associate them with artistic concepts. An example of this lies in the field of 3D designing. Novel technologies like augmented reality or mixed reality require programming skills and 3D designing tools such as SelfCAD, which are required to create complex 3D structures that make the experience more immersive. In this situation, students must be able to make integral connections between the programming aspects and the design aspects. 3D modeling also helps students be more creative and prepares them for their future careers in design. There are a lot of 3D modeling software available that can help the students learn 3D designing but the challenge is that most of them are complex and take time to learn. But with SelfCAD, students can easily get started and be able to create both simple and complex designs with ease. There are also interactive tutorials that make the learning process much easier.
Inquiry: Asking questions is sometimes the best way to find answers. This is an important learning outcome associated with STEAM education. To relate to a situation, students must ask the right questions. Sometimes the best process to explore a question is to ask more questions, as in the case of complex technology such as the development of wearable technology. In this case, students working on the technology can understand the importance of complex functions by asking a counter-question as to how the end-user would react to such a feature.
Integrity: Integrity is an essential requirement of STEAM learning. Unlike STEM, which allows users to borrow elements from other technologies, STEAM stands out by requiring its students to think outside convention to make original technology or products.
Twenty-first-century skills: This is a collective term for collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. These skills are non-negotiable for professionals in the 21st century. One of the goals of STEAM is to help students attain these skills by working together with a group of other students from varied social or cultural backgrounds.STEAM education provides a natural place to incorporate and encourage these skills.
Adaptivity: Adaptivity refers to the ability to adapt to situations. STEAM requires students to continuously assess their work in order to discover any flaws or new developments that need to be changed or incorporated into their solution. People and their needs keep changing every day. The success of a user-friendly design lies in being sensitive to change and being adaptive.
Equitable assessment: Equitable assessment is an important part of STEAM education. This requires students to assess their work at every step to ensure that what they are doing will lead to the right outcome. Students are encouraged to assess their work even after completing their product to find more ways to improve their work.
Meaningful learning: STEAM content must be such that it has applications in real-world situations. This would allow students to relate to what they are learning and consequently develop an interest in what they are learning.
Why is STEAM Learning Important?
Disruptive technologies govern the day-to-day flow of events in today’s world. Technology is growing to the point that it leaves old technology completely obsolete as new technology becomes more human-like. New technology can continuously assess multiple aspects of human life and provide necessary feedback. Sending an email is as easy as asking a virtual assistant to send an email or even handle calls on your behalf. The creation of technology like this is not possible if the creators are only equipped with STEM skills. For technology such as a virtual assistant that may be used by people from different cultural backgrounds, creators must be able to incorporate details that make the technology like this more relatable to the end-user. An example of this is the Google assistant technology which features responses to voice commands in multiple languages. This application can also fetch results that are socially appropriate for that region or time. STEAM learning inculcates necessary skills in students from the beginning of their learning programs.
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