Workshops

School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University 

rachel.sheffield@curtin.edu.au; susan.blackley@curtin.edu.au; r.koul@curtin.edu.au 

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Curtin University 

n.maynard@curtin.edu.au 

Makerspaces provide creative spaces where people can gather to make or create new things. The Makerspace approach is a hands-on creative approach to learning. From a teaching perspective it provides an authentic space where a considered and integrated approach to STEM education can be implemented with a focus on learning by doing. This approach also supports the development and demonstration of the 21st century learning skills of communication, collaboration, creativity and problem solving. This workshop is designed to: (1) support participants to make two different Makerspace-type STEM artefacts, (2) reflect in small groups on the Makerspace approach using some guiding questions, and (3) share the Australian and Indonesian projects conducted in 2016-17, including the impact of a new model of professional learning and the associated data. Whilst the Australian and Indonesian projects targeted pre-service teachers, this workshop is relevant to any teachers of science, maths and technology. It is envisaged that participants will develop a sound understanding of the potential affordances of this approach to integrated STEM education and experience first-hand a more engaging and authentic approach to science, maths and technology education within an engineering context.

Faculty of Psychology and Education, Universiti Malaysia Sabah 

layyoonfah@yahoo.com.my 

This workshop will provide an overview of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) databases with a particular emphasis on the most recently released database (i.e., Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). During the workshop, participants will be instructed on how to use the IEA IDB Analyzer. The IDB Analyzer is an application developed by the IEA-Data Processing Centre (DPC) to facilitate access to and analysis of the largescale assessment databases available from IEA. The IDB Analyzer creates SPSS code that can be used with SPSS to conduct statistical analyses, taking into account the complex sample structure of the databases. This workshop is aimed at individuals who have limited or superficial familiarity with IEA databases and analysis procedures. Participants are expected to bring their own laptop PC with Windows and SPSS installed that are required to use the IDB Analyzer. IDB Analyzer is freely downloadable from the IEA website or free copies of the IDB Analyzer will be distributed at the workshop. The following topics will be covered during the workshop: (i) Using the IDB Analyzer to combine datasets: -Merging data from students, schools, teachers, and parents; -Combining data from different countries; and -Modifying and recoding data for analysis. (ii) Using the IDB Analyzer to conduct analysis: -Performing factor analysis and reliability analysis; -Calculating percentages, means, and standard deviations; -Calculating percentages of students meeting achievement benchmarks; -Calculating correlations and regression coefficients.

Integrated STEM Education Using the CDIO Framework

Natalie Lloyd and Esther Matemba 

Curtin University, Perth, West Australia

The workshop will explore how the CDIO framework can provide a structure for STEM education. The workshop will:

• introduce the CDIO framework and explain the Standards that are applicable to STEM fields beyond the original context of CDIO (engineering).  This is the key focus of the workshop – how the CDIO framework can provide a structure for STEM education and is based on the facilitators’ experiences plus cross disciplinary experiences described in CDIO as a Cross-Discipline Academic Model, 2016,  12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland and Application of CDIO in Non-Engineering Programmes – Motives, Implementation and Experiences, Johan Malmqvist, Helene Leong-Wee Kwee Huay, 2016 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku, Finland
• explain how STEM educators can assess their teaching using the CDIO implementation kit – a tool for assessing areas of strength and areas for improvement that are most applicable for STEM fields: that is, Standard 2: Learning Outcomes , Standard 8: Active Learning  and Standard 11: Learning Assessment.
• help participants to reflect upon and evaluate their teaching against  Standards 2, 8 and 11 of CDIO using scaled rubrics provided by the facilitators e.g., Standard 8- Active Learning– where does your teaching fit on the scale from no evidence of active experiential learning methods to regular review of the impact of active learning? How can participants develop more active learning for their students, outcomes based curriculum and constructively aligned assessments?
• evaluate and modify a STEM active-learning activity (mousetrap car)