Ms Roxanne Lau, a final-year student from the NTU-NIE Teaching Scholars Programme (TSP), has been named the 2021 Global Winner in the Education category by The Global Undergraduate Awards (UA). Her winning entry, titled “Designing Problem-Centric Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Activities”, had been chosen from over 2,500 submissions received by UA 2021 Programme. In securing the accolade, Roxanne’s coursework had attained the highest score in her category, based on rigorous evaluation by a panel of experts.
The UA is the world's leading academic awards programme. It recognises top undergraduate work, shares this work with a global audience and connects students across cultures and disciplines. Out of over 2,500 submissions, only the top 1% of students were selected as the highest performing entrants in their category for the 2021 programme. The awards were presented during the UA Global Summit 2021 (15 to 17 November 2021), where proceedings were held in a hybrid format.
The study submitted by Roxanne focuses on the relevance of STEM education in 21st century education models. She had examined a teacher’s instructional practice and the questions asked by the students as they engaged in a problem-centric STEM activity.
To enable her study, Roxanne designed a series of science and engineering-focused activities on the theme of photosynthesis and agricultural engineering. The activities involved 19 secondary-two express students in a class conducted by a science teacher with professional STEM training. The lesson was video recorded and transcribed. The group problem-solving sessions were also monitored, and a randomly chosen group of students was video recorded and their discussion transcribed for analysis.
From the transcripts, the teacher’s and student’s questions were categorised and tabulated. Findings show Socratic questioning was most frequently used by the teacher to guide students in understanding the problem at hand. Productive questioning and making real-world connections allowed the class to effectively comprehend the problem. During group problem-solving and the design process, students raised mainly clarification and task-procedural questions. These activities demonstrated the evidence of science inquiry and informed design patterns in students’ thought processes.