Abstract
STEAM education is currently one of the most important parts of the elementary school curriculum. If STEAM learning can cultivate good problem-solving ability, it will also help improve judgment and thinking abilities. Several voices in the literature have argued for cooperative learning in STEAM courses. Although the effectiveness of course learning often is evaluated using course feedback forms, there is comparatively little emphasis on whether a course succeeds in realizing cooperative learning. For a course involving self-propelled toy-brick cars, there is little research on the application of low-grade pupils. Therefore, based on the integration of STEAM courses into self-propelled toy-brick car learning, this study applied two learning strategies of cooperative learning and individual learning to low-grade pupils in the second grade in elementary schools. After completing the course problem-solving ability indicators were measured and analyzed using the problem-solving ability test. The results show that the mean score of the experimental group in the problem-solving ability test was higher than that of the control group. In the problem-solving ability test, the scores of the two groups were also significantly different, which suggests that cooperative learning is more effective than individual learning strategies.
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Acknowledgments
This work is partially supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan under grant MOST 107-2511-H-224-004-MY3, MOST 108-2628-H-224-001-MY3, MOST 108-2321-B-027-001, and MOST 108-2221-E-027-111-MY3.
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Lu, YC., Liu, WS., Wu, TT., Sandnes, F.E., Huang, YP. (2019). A Study of Problem Solving Using Blocks Vehicle in a STEAM Course for Lower Elementary Levels. In: Rønningsbakk, L., Wu, TT., Sandnes, F., Huang, YM. (eds) Innovative Technologies and Learning. ICITL 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11937. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35343-8_6
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