Using arduino in service learning to engage pre-service stem teachers into collaborative learning

Engineers must be able to collaborate with colleagues to successfully respond to the complex challenges of a contemporary workplace, but the related training and research are limited, especially in the curriculum design. In addition, service learning uses community service to provide students with field experiences, situating concepts and objectives in the authentic context making links to students’ theoretic learning. When service learning is embedded in the context of learning and connected to a specific course, it could contribute positively to students’ content knowledge and professional growth. In a program of teacher education, service learning has the potential to help pre-service teachers realize the challenges they are going to face in the context of school, and aids them in becoming reflective practitioners. This issue is more challenging for STEM education, in which pre-service teachers have been trained to teach students how to integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics knowledge and build up real-world problem-solving skills. The current study adopted Arduino as a technology tool for pre-service teachers to create teaching artifacts for elementary school technology education. Arduino has features of low floor and high ceiling, supporting many different types of projects so users with many different interests and backgrounds can all become engaged from the aspect of STEM education. The participants of this study were fourteen pre-service teachers. Multiple methods were used to examine the learning benefits in this study, and included diary methods, thematic participants interviews, documents such as photos of making Arduino-supported artifacts and school carnival, and intrinsic motivation inventory and a reflection worksheet. The results show participants’ positive attitude to the collaborative service learning. Reflection sheets indicated that participants appreciated the opportunity in gaining different views of what they had learned in classrooms and how a STEM curriculum could be implemented in an elementary school. Participants had gained better understanding of STEM. The results seemed to support the proposed use of Arduino in a service learning to make pre-service teachers teach kids for STEM education. It hopes to broaden the spectrum of service learning, STEM education, and teacher education.