STEM IN HIGHER EDUCATION: THE USE OF AN ADVANCED COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT TO DEVELOP FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS FOR UNIVERSITY CAREER AND THE WORLD OF WORK

According to much research, with the fourth industrial revolution the set of skills required in both old and new professions are changing. At a time when revolutionary technologies are penetrating more and more into everyday life, it is important that students, during the university courses, develop cognitive abilities (such as logical reasoning and visualization), content skills (which include ICT literacy), complex problem solving skills and technical skills (such as programming and computational thinking). One of the tools to enhance teaching and learning of STEM disciplines with technologies is an Advanced Computing Environment (ACE), a system that allows to perform numerical and symbolic computations, to make graphical representations in 2 and 3 dimensions and to create mathematical simulations through interactive components. The objective of our research is to understand if the use of an ACE in the university education of STEM disciplines allows students to develop important skills, such as problem solving, logical reasoning, mathematical reasoning, visualization, computational thinking, that will facilitate their university career and their entry into the world of work. To answer this question, we involved 48 university students in a 15-hour laboratory on the use of an ACE. The students were enrolled in degree courses in various STEM disciplines (Energy Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Physics, Mathematics Engineering, Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, etc.) and they attended different years of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. During the laboratory, the students learned the functionalities of an ACE and used it for visualization and modelling, to write procedures for problem solving and for the creation of interactive materials. In the second part of the laboratory, the students worked in groups or individually on the creation of an interactive worksheet involving a STEM discipline of their interest. As a final product they could opt for the resolution of a problem with the generalization of the resolution, the study of a problem situation or of a theoretical concept, or the development of an interactive application. Their attitude toward the use of an ACE for the development of skills, previous knowledge on STEM software and their reasons for learning how to use an ACE were measured through an initial and a final questionnaire that students were asked to fill in at the beginning and at the end of the laboratory. The worksheets produced by the students were classified into three main categories (independently of the discipline of interest): problem solving, problem solving applications, applications (function studies or theoretical formulas) and interactive files (such as "program" or "app"); they were analysed and cross-checked with the answers to the questionnaires. The results obtained show that the use of an ACE in the STEM disciplines can develop, in different ways, the key skills mentioned above for the university career and for the world of work.