Developing STEM Learning Makerspace for Fostering Student's 21st Century Skills in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Era

Abstract

The need for higher education to respond is urgent as the power of 4IR technologies and 21st-century challenges for either positive social impacts or devastating environmental damage. Recent researches on how to make an alternative solution in the form of STEM learning methods and strategies to address the challenges of the 21st century and 4IR technology had been widely investigated. However, the implementation in the term of the integrated-STEM field.The implementation of integrated STEM was still fragmented so that the essence of a whole STEM meaning had not been described. Recent studies oriented to the development of learning strategies had not emphasized the Makerspace concept, even though a good understanding of makerspace concept was the start point in implementing integrated-STEM essence. Makerspace in STEM is the deliberate positioning of student learning in contexts that require the drawing together of skills and knowledge from the areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to create, construct, and critique a product or artifact. The research presented in this paper describes a type of STEM makerspace that was defined by its purpose: to foster Student's 21st Century Skillsin 4IR technologies and 21st-century challenges. This approach is innovative in STEM education. A new model of STEM makerspace that is currently being validated in an extended, funded project framed this research that involved secondary students in Indonesia. A large set of qualitative data was collected, this paper reports on the progress and reflections of the teacher education students, and shares insights into their personal learning and development as teachers. A quasi-experimental study in Heat transfer STEM makerspace was conducted. Results of samples paired t-test showed Sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 which indicated that there were differences in results pre-test and post-test when STEM makerspace was implemented with the effect size data was in a high category.