Our work on the AEROFAIR outreach project has recently been published and presented at the Regional Conference on Engineering Education (RCEE 2016) on 9 August 2016 in Kuala Lumpur. The article is “Outreaching and Engaging Students with STEM through AEROFAIR“. The PDF file of the article can be downloaded from the given link.
The article looks at the issues related to STEM in Malaysia, particularly on students’ diminishing interest in the fields and the major challenge in Malaysia to fill up sufficient capacity of about 500,000 skilled workforce in STEM by the year 2020. At the current rate, there will be a huge shortage of almost 48% from the target.
Our approach to contribute towards this issue is by promoting STEM to secondary school students through outreach programs and engaging them with hands-on activities related to aerospace engineering. Learning modules and resources are also developed to assist students participating in these programs.
Two outreach programs have been organized in our AEROFAIR project, which are further discussed in the article. Future works toward the goal of promoting STEM are also described to build a more sustainable effort in reaching out to more students to be involved in our outreach programs.
The summary of the article is:
One critical issue facing Malaysia’s aim to become a developed nation by 2020 is in the possibility of attaining only half of its targeted capacity of workforce in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This national challenge of motivating students towards STEM presents opportunities at many scales and levels, one being the urgent need for tertiary STEM institutions to conduct outreach programs to attract prospective students. This paper presents the development, implementation, and outcomes of AEROFAIR, a long-term outreach project by the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Universiti Sains Malaysia designed to promote STEM to secondary school students through hands-on activities related to aerospace engineering. Discussion on these activities focuses on indoor flight, a new outreach platform introduced in Malaysia through this project. The project has been organized into two consecutive outreach programs, each consisting of a half-day workshop and a half-day competition event participated by more than 240 students and teachers. Surveys were conducted to assess the outcomes of each program. Feedback from participants largely indicated positive impact of the activities in generating interest towards STEM, but recommended a few suggestions to improve the physical and organizational aspects of the programs. Recommendations from AEROFAIR 2014 had been implemented in AEROFAIR 2015, resulted in better students’ learning outcomes and in producing longer flight times during the competition. Further improvements will be incorporated in organizing the next AEROFAIR program in 2016, with the main aim of scaling-up the impact of this outreach project.