Effective Synergies at Technical Universities to Actively Promote STEM at K-12 Schools

Promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education at K-12 level motivates pupils to pursue technical careers at universities, which is of high importance due to skilled labor shortage and other factors. In particular, in Germany the population with a tertiary education level is less than the average in the European Union (35–41 %. Motivating the study of technical careers, this paper features a model for promoting STEM at the K-12 education level by developing joint teaching platforms with students at technical universities. The model is derived from hands-on experience at TU Berlin targeting a climate change topic: As part of student semester projects, Bachelor students integrated a humidity sensor into a drone and conducted atmospheric measurements. The resulting hard and software components provided by the students allowed the preparation of a lesson plan to promote STEM at the K-12 level. In this way, we synergically connect the means from the university with hands-on activities as means to promote STEM topics with K-12 students. The resulting benefits are manifold; students at the university develop technical skills and become part of a social intention to promote STEM topics on the one hand. On the second hand, pre-university students might have first-hand experiences with hardware prototypes and their applicability to relevant topics like climate change surveillance. The developed model may illustrate straightforward means for educators to design lesson plans, including actual practices at university and pre-university levels.