Students' perceptions of a middle school STEM innovation and design course

Abstract

Students across all grade levels and schools generally expressed positive attitudes toward the STEM-ID curriculum. Students enjoyed engineering design challenges and having opportunities to do hands-on activities. Further, students indicated that the STEM-ID curriculum seemed very different than their other classes. Even though students found the class enjoyable, they expressed some negative perceptions regarding some stages of the engineering design process, and the pacing of the course. Further, some 7th graders described the 3D CAD software as being hard to follow. Additionally, students learned that collaboration is an important component of the STEM-ID curriculum. In real-life settings, engineers collaborate with their peers throughout the design process. It is important that students be able to collaborate because a critical stage of the process is the selection of the most promising solution among several competing ideas. Collaboration among classmates was perceived as a positive experience by STEM-ID students across all grade levels. Finally, students viewed the STEM-ID courses as allowing them to put their science and mathematics knowledge into practice. They also identified multiple specific math and science concepts that they applied to the engineering design challenges.