Online technologies in STEM education

Abstract

STEM education has become the normative base for teaching natural sciences, physical-mathematical disciplines and engineering sciences in a number of countries. This technique has become the basis for a series of reforms for secondary and higher education in the USA, Australia, and some other countries. The method involves the integration of training in the fields of mathematics, technical specialties, scientific research and engineering. The widespread use of this technique and its active research throughout the world over the past ten years is due to the need to improve the quality of technical education and the everincreasing rate of technological progress. This research is devoted to studying the impact of the STEM education introduction for 3rd year students of technical and pedagogical departments for improving the quality of training. The study involved two groups of students from two universities in Russia and China. The sample consisted of 316 people from each university, and the same amount was for control group to verify the results. The two study groups underwent training using two different STEM methodologies - "amalgam" and "interconnect", which involve varying degrees of integration of various academic subjects within the coordinated STEM education. Both study groups used online-education integrated with STEM that helped to significantly increase the involvement of students in the learning process. All three groups passed pre-tests and post-tests on the learning outcomes before and after the introduction of the STEM education. The average grades received by students on studied disciplines show that the STEM education increases the academic performance with the statistical error of the study exceeded. The introduction of the "interconnect" method, which implies a greater integration of subjects during the training, showed provably higher results than the "amalgam" method. However, this study cannot be used to assess the quality and capabilities of each of these methods, since such an assessment requires additional research. © Kassel University Press GmbH.