Sparking a new way to learn science
by
Michele Nardelli
Sometimes the best educational outcomes are born out of a desire to
fix a problem. Michèle Nardelli reports.
When Associate Professor Brenton Dansie began working on the Robotics
Peer Mentoring Program the problem was an observable decline in people
qualified in engineering and electronics.
And just under the skin of that was a steady decline in the uptake of maths and sciences at high school level.
At the other end of the spectrum, South Australia needed more expertise in those very fields. Electronic engineers are still in demand and new business development in the state, across some major engineering, telecommunications and electronics companies is still growing at a rate of eight to 10 per cent.
In nutting out a long-term solution to the problem Associate Professor Dansie has been at the helm of one of the most successful educational programs around – one which has gathered the threads of school education, university education, industry partnership and state economic goals and sewn up a success story.
That success has been rewarded with an Institutional Award in the 2004 Australian Awards for University Teaching and just this month Associate Professor Dansie won the SA Premier’s Science Excellence Award for Educator of the Year for his role in leading the program.
Today some 25 South Australian Schools and seven businesses take part in the mentoring program and in the three short years since it began as a pilot involving just a handful of students; more than 1500 high schools students have had a “hands-on” opportunity to learn more about electronics and engineering in the real world.
Associate Professor Dansie says while the hands-on approach is one of the key success factors for the project with school students, it is the strength of the partnerships that underpin the program that have made it a success.
“This is a systemic model of learning that has a huge benefit to the community at every level,” he said.
Put in the simplest terms the program enlists university students to go out into schools and work with years 10, 11 and 12 students on robotics activities which include industry based projects. These projects involve students in developing products and solutions for prominent South Australian companies. The undergraduates also deliver 20 hours of curriculum in the schools which takes the students through building and programming small robotic vehicles. This engages their students in a way that would ordinarily be difficult in the everyday running of the school and it gives teachers a unique professional development opportunity at the same time.
“The project has layers of positive outcomes,” he says.
“We are about to start measuring what sort of take-up to university and other tertiary education we have from our first school students who are now just reaching school leaver age and that is something we will continue to monitor.
“With our own university students the program has a transformational impact. It really does nourish their development of graduate qualities – communication, leadership, problem solving, project management – and it does that at both the commercial or business end and the teaching and people management end of the project.”
Associate Professor Dansie says the next step is to ensure the sustainability of the project
beyond the three years of significant government and industry funding that it
has attracted. The project team is working on ways to further embed the program
into school and University curriulums.