Stem@Home Module For A Sustainable Virtual Stem Mentoring During Lockdown Schooling

Abstract

The STEM outreach program is important in fostering the interest of students to pursue the STEM field as well as facilitating them in developing their STEM skills. The rise of COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 has forced lockdown schooling in most affected countries. Thus, there is a demand for a home-restricted STEM module to facilitate STEM education both online and offline. The STEM@Home module has been designed by the university lecturers to assist lockdown schooling and a case study has been conducted to measure its effectiveness as a STEM outreach module. In this study, 140 students from 2 secondary schools in Kuala Selangor, Malaysia have been selected as mentees and 28 university students from Universiti Selangor played role as mentors. The mentor guided the mentee virtually using the online platform to facilitate the mentee in conducting the module at home. Mentors were instructed to record their observation and answered a survey after every session to monitor the progress of both mentors and mentees. Based on this study, the module received positive feedback from mentors, mentees and teachers. There was also a significant improvement recorded on the STEM skills portrayed by both mentors and mentees. This finding is beneficial to the government, universities and schools as the results portray the strength of this module and sustainable approach. Similar programs could be implemented in other schools and this study could provide relevant input in strategizing future outreach programs for a higher quality education in line with goal 4 in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).