The Study on Integrating the Design Thinking Model and STEM Activity Unit for Senior High School Living Technology Course

Mechatronics is a interdisciplinary integrated course that covers the related knowledge of STEM among the subjects. Through the performance curriculum, it enables the student to know how to apply the knowledge of STEM on the work and solve the problems that they meet. Besides solving the problem, the design of the work also has to meet the needs of the users. Design thinking is a mode that centers on humans. We hope that through the integration of the strategy, the student will not just acquire the understanding and the application of the concept and the use of the tool, producing for no reason. Rather, they should start with the need to produce the work that meets the need. The study is a quasi-experimental design that is based on the unit of Mechatronics in high school sophomore's living technology class. It guides the student to use Arduino, LED, infrared sensor, buzzer, 3D printed automatic sensor light. The objects of the experiment are the high school sophomores in a high school in Taoyuan, Taiwan, and they have never learned design thinking mode and the related curriculums of STEM integration. The number of the participated people of the experimental group is 118, and the number of the control group is 96, with 3 to 4 people as a group. The curriculum totally runs for 4 weeks, and there are two classes (100 minutes) in a week. Before the curriculum starts, we do the pre-test of the achievement. The score of the work adopts the evaluation standard criteria, Creative Product Assessment Matrix(CpAm), which is evaluated together by the researchers and the cooperating teachers. Furthermore, we do the post-test of the achievement in the end of the curriculum, and the experimental group and the control group are both taught by the same teacher. The experimental group adopts the strategy of “Design thinking mode merges with STEM activity” to conduct the instruction, and the control group adopts “traditional practical activity”. After the instruction, we conduct the analysis of variance between the achievement of the experimental group and the control group. Through the learning, the achievement of the two sides both improves. As for the performance of the practical ability, according to the analysis of variance, the ability of the experimental group is better than that of the control group, and the product they make meets the need of the user more. According to the result above, the design thinking mode that is applied to the high school practical class is helpful for the students. It not only helps the students integrate the related knowledge of the subject they learned before but also enhances the students' practical skills and the ways of thinking. Moreover, it will improve the learning achievement, motivation and the ability of the students.