Investigating the use of non-digital visual interaction tools in STEM education

Abstract

Collaborative tools such as Post-it® notes are widely used in business settings in exploring new ideas, visualising processes and organising priorities. Businesses are moving towards open office space settings to encourage spontaneous collaboration and networking between workers and similar scene is implemented across education sector to generate synergy in student-student and teacher-student interaction. To facilitate such interactions, a vast array of digital tools is available, yet with greater focus in remote interaction, benefits of face to face engagement are diminished and students are under threat of losing the articulation skills in a face to face collaboration environment. It is speculated that use of Post-it® related products can enhance the student-student and student-teacher learning experiences in promoting expressive thinking process especially for informative, evaluative and generative collaboration. Data will be gathered during the conference through facilitation of interactive dialogue between the researcher and conference participants. The participants will be engaged to write a note on a piece of Post-it® note describing current state of student-teacher non-digital visual interaction and how Post-it® related products can be used in facilitation of STEM education. Information gathered will be sorted into three core areas of Informative Collaboration – Delivery of STEM content through shared ideas Evaluative Collaboration – Understanding of core STEM concepts through collaborative interaction Generative Collaboration – Exploration of STEM content through ideation Expected outcome will provide a valuable data on the current state of use of non-digital visualization methods in student-teacher interaction in aiding understanding of core STEM content.