This week, I met with my mentor, Victor Villegas, for the first time, set up a blog, and researched STEM vs. STEAM education.
MENTOR MEETING
During the meeting with my mentor, we discussed some of the logistics about the URSA program (weekly meetings, workload, what to expect, and professional development activities). We also discussed some potential projects I can work on during the URSA program which include:
- Producing Viva Veggie Vida videos (puppet videos in Spanish about vegetarian recipes for social media)
- Developing an AirGlow music controller
- Contributing to organizing and preparing a Mariachi STEAM Camp
- Writing STEAM-related camp songs for OSU’s outdoor school program
- Exploring any other questions or research topics I have about creative STEAM outreach
SETTING UP A BLOG
In addition to discussing potential projects, I also set up a blog. I created my first blog post where I introduced myself and reflected on my goals for the URSA program. I learned that creating blogs through WordPress is a resource available to me as a student at OSU. In addition to this resource, I also learned about student access to library research databases online.
RESEARCH ON STEM VS. STEAM
An assignment I had this week was to do research on the difference between STEM and STEAM education, so learning to access the library reseach database was very helpful. Here is a list of the sources that I looked at as a part of this research:
- “From STEM to STEAM: How to Monitor Creativity” by Cathérine Conradty and Franz Bogner (journal article)
- “STEAM vs. STEM: It’s Time to Embrace the Power of “A” for the Arts” by Dawn Reese (journal article)
- “STEM vs. STEAM Education and Student Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review” by David Aguilera and Jairo Ortiz-Revilla (journal article)
- Part 1 of “STEAM Power: Infusing Art Into Your STEM Curriculum” by Tim Needles (book)
To summarize, I found that STEAM is a variant of STEM that includes art as a part of the curriculum. Many studies support promoting the arts as a part of STEAM to foster student creativity. Whereas STEM promotes mostly convergent thinking, STEAM curriculums encourage students to engage in divergent thinking. Encouraging students to participate in creativity-related activities also improves students’ problem recognition skills, problem solving skills, and ability to come up with creative solutions for problems. It has also been found that STEAM education especially benefits students from underrepresented and marginalized communities.
One example of a STEAM organization that I looked at is called The Wooden Floor, which promotes exploratory dance education alongside academics for students from low-income communities in Orange County, California. The organization has been nationally recognized, and students who have graduated from the program have been more likely to pursue STEAM-related majors and to enroll in higher education. Overall, I learned that encouraging creativity in education through a STEAM curriculum can have great impacts on students by allowing them to develop additional skills that they would not have developed through a STEM program.
GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK
I will meet with my mentor again next week, with weekly meetings to be continued throughout the duration of the URSA program. I will present some of the information that I collected on STEM versus STEAM education, and I look forward to learning more about the potential projects I can help out with.
