Teaching Competences Involved in the Design of Immersive Literary Environments: Combining STEAM Projects and Maker Culture

Abstract

This research comes from an innovation project implemented in the Infant Education Teaching Degree of the University of Oviedo (Spain). It combines STEAM methodology and maker culture, through the design of Immersive Literary Environments (ILE) with Augmented Reality (AR). To be more concrete, the participants (N=162) designed physical environments, enriched with AR, which recreated the fictional world of children’s literature texts, complemented with a didactic programme. It is aimed here at assessing the didactic, digital, socio-collaborative and creative competences of the participants, as shown in the ILE, and to determine the relationship between the digital competence and the other competences involved. The validated instrument COMPASS-AR is employed, consisting of 30 indicators (α=0,977). The results show a high level in the didactic, socio-collaborative and creative competences. Although the mastery of technological tools is high, the digital competence reaches a medium-high level, due to the limited integration of self-made resources. There is a high correlation between all the competences involved in the ILE design, especially the digital and creative ones. This strong relation between competences highlights the integrative character of the proposal, for the global development of all of them. It also reveals the necessity of stimulating the creativity of future teachers, as well as their mastery of emerging technologies to create original resources adapted to the educational context. In conclusion, these projects are extremely interesting for didactic and technological training of teachers, as they combine innovative methodologies, such as STEAM and maker culture.