(Duration: 12 minutes 58 seconds)

[Red and blue logo revealed reading ‘STEM 2022 on demand’.

Screen shows a drone shot of a university campus.]

Simone Blom:

[Simone appears on screen, walking outside and beginning to enter a building.]

Hi, my name's Simone Blom, and I'm an associate lecturer with the faculty of education here at Southern Cross University.

[Screen reads, ‘Simone Blom, Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Education’.]

I've been in STEM and science and environmental education for the last two decades, with the last decade focused on tertiary education, and in service teacher education.

Ben Roche:

[Screen shows a series of shots of young people interacting, indoors using laptops and outside on picnic tables.]

At Southern Cross University, we're passionate around the role that education plays in building sustainable futures.

[Screen reads, ‘Ben Roche, Vice President (Engagement), Southern Cross University. Screen shows Ben inside a classroom.]

And so we see education as the key to how we are going to transform tomorrow, and work with educators across the country, to respond to the kinder challenges that our communities are facing on a day to day basis.

Zane van den Berg:

[Screen reads, ‘Zane van den Berg, STEM Project Officer, Rivers Academy of STEM Excellence’. Screen shows Zane inside a classroom.]

We're finding that unlike many years ago, where students were happy to sit in a classroom and learn what the teacher told them, now they're really wanting to know that there's some meaning to what they're learning.

So if students are asking, "Why are we learning this?" Then we're kind of in trouble. So teachers, they look for real world applications and contexts for the students with what they're teaching.

Simone Blom:

[Screen shows Simone inside a workshop. Simone appears on screen.]

For so long, STEM subjects have been so abstract and students haven't been able to contextualize what it really means to study science or maths. There's been no application for them to actually engage in their higher years of schooling.

Ben Roche:

[Ben appears on screen.]

We know that around about 50% of young people are disengaged in their learning at this point in time. And so not only do we have an imperative to respond to sustainable futures, but we also know that it is also good education, and the best way to engage young minds in an inspired and engaged way as they start to think about how they step into their future after school.

Simone Blom:

[Screen shows a teaching and research flume. Water runs down a channel and reaches sediment at the bottom. The machine reads, ‘Armfield’. Simone appears on screen.]

Sustainability is a cross curricular priority, offers students and teachers a way to engage with sustainable futures, and apply solutions to real world problems in a way that students can actually get a sense of how they will address the complexities of the current environmental disasters and emergencies that we're currently facing.

[Screen shows an instructor speaking to a group of people, outside surrounded by trees.]

Zane van den Berg:

[Zane appears on screen.]

What it looks like in schools, tend to be sort of small projects that we can undertake within school, with the sustainable futures and sustainable context, they provide an easy gateway for some authentic experiences for students.

Simone Blom:

[Simone appears on screen.]

You could say that they kind of almost disappeared from the agenda for a while, but they've certainly come back strongly.

[Screen shows a sign that reads, ‘Welcome to Capricornia Cays Nationbal Park, Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area’. Screen shows a series of shots of young people on a beach, around boats, and swimming underwater, photographing coral.]

The Australian Government Department of Education sees real world contexts as a priority in STEM learning, as the benefits are huge in enabling students that ability to connect with their future, to give them agency to go through a process, to understand life beyond the walls of the classroom.

Ben Roche:

[Screen shows hands taking a specimen of coral. Screen cuts to show students in labs, working with various specimens. Ben appears on screen.]

Industry is super critical for having education that is both relevant, that has currency. So that is, I mean, not only relevant to the current challenges that we're facing in day to day lives, because we know that industry is the front edge of how we respond and how they generate solutions to the kinds of challenges that we're faced with.

[Industry shows a series of shots of people working, outdoors among nature.]

But industry also provide really rich context for learning, we use industry to engage professions, and notions of what is it like to be a professional in that particular context of practice. And so just as the universities grapple with this idea of theory and practice, we need to really grapple with the realities of education, and also the realities of industry.

[Screen shows groups of people among trees, measuring soil with a ruler, marking mushrooms with a pencil and a group of constructed beehives.]

And we want our students to be engaging with these real contexts and these real challenges that industry are trying to solve for on a daily basis. So industry brings both relevance, it brings authenticity, but most importantly, it brings a level of significance to the learning that otherwise doesn't exist when you're working on a theoretical assignment in isolation of the rest of the world.

Simone Blom:

[Screen shows a blue Kombi van exiting a driveway with a sign that reads, ‘Southern Cross University’.Screen cuts to show the Kombi van driving on sand towards a beach. Simone appears on screen.]

The more recent Southern Cross University Kombi conversion project, something very exciting, very engaging for students. It's a little bit different, a little bit left of field, and this to me, surmises Southern Cross University's creative, critical, and often quirky approach to engage people in really different and exciting ways.

Ben Roche:

[Screen shows people in a workshop, working on the Kombi. Ben appears on screen.]

To bring the electric Kombi project to life, there's been a really deep collaboration, particularly with the New South Wales Government, because they recognized the need to generate really exciting and stimulating curriculum for young people in areas that are critically important for the future of our nation, and that is energy futures and energy security, are probably the greatest challenges that we are currently faced as a society and as a country.

[Screen shows someone remove electric charging cables from the back of the Kombi van and plugging it in to charge. Screen shows a phone app that reads, ‘your car is charging’ and a drone shot of the Kombi van beside a building with solar panels on its roof.]

But we also partnered with the New South Wales Department of Education and their STEM in schools program, but we also worked within the university community as well. We partnered with our alumni, we partnered with local industries and local partners who have expertise in electric vehicle conversion.

But we also partnered across disciplines as well, in thinking about how do we bring the experience of our our engineers to life, in a way that has power and influence within the education context, so to have our educators working with our engineers is a great example where, if we're going to respond to these complex challenges, we need to bring all sorts of perspectives to bear on how we formulate solutions.

Simone Blom:

[Simone appears on screen.]

What was really exciting about that was kind of culminating a lot of the research that happens at Southern Cross University into a really tight package that can be used in schools with teachers. Now this project is real, this is happening. It gives you a sense of what's actually possible for students for the future. And so not only does it give students the opportunity to engage with a real project, it also shows that even though they may not be aware of what their career is going to be, there are huge possibilities through STEM.

That is the magic and the beauty of engaging in real world context and industry partnerships.

Zane van den Berg:

[Zane appears on screen.]

The universities are really well placed in that a lot of their work and their research is all around cutting edge developments that are being applied in industry settings. So they have a lot of industry partners as part of that work.

So having links between schools and universities, where the universities can actually put schools in contact or develop those partnerships with local industry, is really important.

We've actually had access through Southern Cross University with the likes of young change agents, who will run programs through there, and the academy of enterprising girls. We had the incubator hub, that was a three day program where students got to develop an idea and prototype a product. And as part of that, they had industry mentors come in, so the students actually got to work with representatives from the industry.

Simone Blom:

[Simone appears on screen.]

Another application was the climate change and me project, where children and young people were engaged as co-researchers, to find out their views about the issues that concern them. That project was funded by the New South Wales environmental trust, and had some really amazing outcomes in looking at different ways of approaching sustainable futures, and also in supporting teachers through a curriculum resource.

Ben Roche:

[Ben appears on screen.]

So schools, just like universities, really need to think about how they connect to industry in ways that are both mutually beneficial, so useful for industry, but importantly, that meet the learning outcomes that we're striving for as educators. And you can involve industry in so many different ways, and really it is a design challenge for you as educators, as folks who are designing curriculum, to think really laterally around how you involve industry.

Zane van den Berg:

[Zane appears on screen.]

And there can quite often be a concept or a conception that industry may be too busy to give up their time for schools, which when you start to reach out to industries, particularly smaller local industries, they're very generous with their time when it comes to educational settings.

Simone Blom:

[Screen shows a series of shots of people working in industries Simone mentions. Simone appears on screen.]

What we enjoyed most about this was we could see that the resource would give students the opportunity to see beyond their classroom, and it involved real people, it involved real engineers, researchers, educators. It's something very tangible that takes science and STEM learning out of the abstract, to places that are exciting, innovative, creative, and will actually address these huge issues that involve them.

Ben Roche:

[Ben appears on screen.]

By engaging with industry partners, and working on real world projects as part of their learning at university, same context in school, what they're doing is they're building experiences and capabilities that are really suited to getting work, to winning work, and to being competitive in what is a very, very challenging labor market at the moment.

So for example, our students, as a result of their experience on the electric Kombi, are now in work, they're sought after by our industry partners, they've gone onto placement with industry partners, with much more confidence, because they've got that experience of pitching, of delivering a report to a real industry partner, of thinking about solutions to problems that are real, are not theoretical.

[Screen shows students working in computer design program ‘SketchUp’, drawing on a whiteboard, and cutting pieces of metal in a workshop.]

And so all of this builds a level of confidence we've noticed in our students, that then allows them to be more ambitious about how they pursue some of their other challenges in their learning journey ahead.

Zane van den Berg:

[Screen shows a timelapse of a structure under construction inside a room, with people and robotics equipment. Zane appears on screen.]

I think it would be achievable to set up some space in schools where there can be an ongoing project that students can sort of dive into and out of over their school career. So at different times of their schooling, they can be involved in different capacities, so that there's much longer term, and much more meaningful and deeper projects, because as much as we try to make the projects we run meaningful, I don't think they go as deep as they could. So having more longitudinal type projects that the students can look back over, and there's records of what's been achieved and what's been observed over a number of years, and then they can see where they're playing their part in that project would be something that I think we could certainly look at developing further.

Ben Roche:

[Ben appears on screen.]

So there's real opportunities for you to bring them into the classroom as guests, but you can also go to a far deeper level where you work collaboratively with industry to co-design some of your learning activities, to think deeply around working back from the kinds of problems that industry are trying to address and saying, "Well, let's look at the learning dimension of that exact same problem."

[Screen shows surveyors working outdoors.]

So that in actual fact, the inquiry and the curiosity that you're sparking in your students, can actually be a valuable input to a broader process that actually may involve industry trying to solve a very real and challenging problem for society. So there's lots of opportunities, but the main thing is the mindset you need to have as an educator. And that mindset needs to be, there is no difference, the contexts are the same, you are educating in the world, so engage with others also in the world, and trying to work and tackle on the same issues and challenges that you are also trying to build an awareness and an understanding of in the classroom.

Simone Blom:

[Simone appears on screen.]

Thank you for your time today in watching our presentation. We hope that you've enjoyed it, and that you've taken away some of the benefits and importance of including real world contexts, industry partnerships, and sustainable futures, as part of your STEM learning programs. We wish you all of very best in your teaching and learning.

[Screen shows the Southern Cross University logo. Beneath this, screen reads, ‘Transformning Tomorrow starts at Southern Cross University. scu.edu.au’.

Video concludes by displaying the NSW Government logo.] 

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