It is essential to prepare students to face challenges in the workplace; in a world of constant transformation and advancement. In this sense, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) approach has emerged as an answer to developing necessary skills and competencies in students, providing them with a solid foundation and exciting opportunities in both the academic and working worlds.
In this blog, we will explore how this approach provides opportunities for learning by doing and a solid foundation for students’ development in the workplace. It goes beyond knowledge acquisition, fostering critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity — essential skills in an increasingly innovation-driven world.
Likewise, CloudLabs, with its gamified simulation environments and pedagogical resources that integrate the STEM model, makes students the protagonists of their learning. The simulations allow them to strengthen their job competencies and acquire 21st-century skills. This through the exploration and development of environments, encompassing areas such as robotics, alternative energy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and more.
STEM approach: Opening to a comprehensive educational world
This approach focuses on integrating these areas of study to foster critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. It provides students with skills and knowledge relevant to today’s world and future career opportunities.
One of the significant advantages is the wide range of career opportunities available to students. In fields such as engineering, computer science, biotechnology, and renewable energy, the demand for professionals with STEM skills is constantly growing. According to the United Nations (UN), by 2050, 75% of jobs will be related to STEM areas.
Students have opportunity to develop cross-cutting skills and a deep understanding of the world around them by learning to collaborate, research, analyze data, and seek innovative solutions.
Learn more about→ How to integrate ICT in the classroom?
Preparing students for the challenges of the workplace
As the world moves towards a technology- and innovation-driven economy, it is critical to form students with the necessary skills to meet the challenges of jobs in the future. It is crucial to achieve this by adopting educational approaches that strengthen their competencies.
Integrating practical activities and projects into the curriculum is an effective way to prepare students for the future challenges they will face. By involving them in real projects where they must apply their knowledge in concrete situations, students gain practical experience and develop transversal competencies.
You might be interested → Learn about CloudLabs Virtual STEM implementation experience in Elizabeth District schools!
CloudLabs: An ecosystem to enhance job competencies
CloudLabs has been developed to strengthen the performance expectations proposed in the curricular guidelines of different countries and institutions. It contributes to the significant development of competencies in STEM areas and the acquisition of 21st-century skills.
The pedagogical approach of CloudLabs includes elements such as active teaching methodologies, knowledge construction, and the development of skills applied in scenarios and situations of everyday life for meaningful learning. CloudLabs’ challenges are posed based on real-life contexts that bring students closer to relevant phenomena they often experience day-to-day.
Let’s look at the following challenge:
In your city, there is a cycling team competition in the modality of time trial. It awards a direct quota to the national Olympics for those teams that achieve a race time of less than 87 minutes. The sports training institute where you work has decided to participate in the competition and has appointed you as the technical director. Therefore, you have the duty to plan the race strategy, which consists of a 40 km course. The considered parameters are the performance and power of the cyclists in each segment.
In the previous challenge, there was a cycling competition in which the teams had to arrive in less than 87 minutes. The student assumed the role of the technical director of a sports training institute. Given this situation, the question arises: What will the student learn? Surprisingly, the concept of a piecewise function will be applied in performance planning for the cycling race, allowing the student to relate a mathematical concept to its application in a real-world context.
These concepts are used in CloudLabs for students to understand and apply them in solving challenges. In this case, the student studies the function of the piecewise, which is a function that changes according to the values of the variable. The student identifies the functions, such as constant, exponential, linear, and quadratic. With these concepts, the student will be able to analyze and determine which function was used by the cyclist with the best performance in each section of the race. All of this is to get the cyclist to complete the race in the shortest possible time. Also, these mathematical definitions apply to professional challenges, such as performance reporting for professional cycling teams.
In these challenges, students assume a leading role and an anchor story that encourages them to ask questions, collect information, analyze, question, reflect, and construct explanations and hypotheses about phenomena and related problems connected to the real world.
By interacting with CloudLabs’ gamified simulation environments, students develop practical skills and knowledge relevant to tomorrow’s work challenges.
