The Design and Development of a Mobile Phone Application for STEM based on a Novel Engineering Approach

Abstract

STEM education provides students with interdisciplinary knowledge to improve problem-solving ability. The purpose of this study is to explore whether students could achieve the goal of STEM education by mobile learning. This study developed a mobile application which was named Borrowing Your Enemy’s Arrows to support mobile learning about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). According to the textbooks for Grades 5-7，the teaching content of the APP was designed to help students get a better grasp of teaching contents and to help teachers save time in preparing classes. The central narrative，like cartoon or the dialogue of cartoon is used for APP to bridge the teaching contents. Therefore，learners can construct a real-life situation by App. To inspire learners' interest in STEM courses, the APP used games to test how well students did in learning. A shipbuilding task with the narrative background was set to improve learners' skills and interest in engineering learning. The educator could make the assessment of learners based on all their performance in the process of learning, including the design sketches, final products, the messages from students and the grade of game. For the purpose of improving the APP, teachers and students were interviewed to investigate users’ feedback in this study.