Abstract:
This Teaching Development Grant (TDG) project piloted a set of STEAM courses to strengthen creative arts students’ competency in applying STEM skills for artistic solutions. STEAM is one of the variations that add arts to the STEM curriculum by drawing on design principles and encouraging creative solutions, which fosters students’ ability to integrate and apply the knowledge and skills across different subject disciplines through problem solving with creativity and innovations. Two undergraduate courses, titled Virtual Reality and Immersive Space in Practice and Exploring Interactive Design were implemented as major elective in the creative arts degree programmes and Experiental Learning Course in the General Education curriculum. A series of live coding workshop has also been implemented that allows the broader communities including school students, teachers, and the general public to participate in the STEAm-related activities. Through participating in the STEAM courses, students were able to incorporate STEM skills for creative outputs and design solution, therefore developing and fostering their computational and design thinking, computer-mediated creativity, as well as other generic and STEAM attributes.
Code:
T0205
Principal Project Supervisors:
Keywords provided by authors:
Start Date:
01 Feb 2018
End Date:
30 Apr 2019
Status:
Completed
Result:
Two STEAM courses are offering in a continuous basis in the creative arts and general education curriculum. Student artists' creative outputs, including virtual environment design and 360-degree videoworks, were displayed in an exhibition as well as an online gallery. More than a hundred primary school students enrolled in the live coding workshops and learnt music-making with computer programming. A website has been developed that contains teaching and learning resources for the virtual reality course with artwork examples made by students who enrolled in this course. Academic outputs from this project includes conference papern and journal article were presented and published reaching out to international audiences, which highlighted the skills achievement by students who participated in the STEAM courses and related activities. Participating students developed their STEAM skills and build the capacity to generate cross-disciplinary and innovative ideas for artistic solutions. Students' artwork demonstrates their creativity and innovatice ideas that could only be fostered by means of the new media and art forms made possible by the STEAM initiatives.
Impact:
Through participating in the STEAM courses, students will be able to develop a set of STEAM skills. These skills could help develop students' ability for problem solving with interdisciplinary and divergent thinking. Apart from the soft skills, students could also develop the technical skills to utilize technological equipment including VR camera, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and related software for arts production and practices. These technical skills help students to gain their competiveness in the media-driven creative market.
These project initiated a series of STEAM courses in EdUHK, especially on the topic of virtual reality (VR) that was not offered before despite the resources available in the campus. While VR and its application are the current and future trend among the education, entertainment and other sectors, developing students' VR knowledge and skills would better equip them for future career and challenges.
Deliverables:
Books/ Book Chapters/ Journal Articles/ Conference Papers
Cheng, L. (2018). Teaching live coding of electronic dance music: A case study. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture, 10(1). (Retrieved at: http://doi.org/10.12801/1947-5403.2018.10.01.10)(https://repository.eduhk.hk/en/publications/teaching-live-coding-of-elec...)
Cheng, L. (2018, July). STEM/STEAM initiatives in undergraduate music education. Paper presented at the 33th International Society for Music Education World Conference, Baku, Azerbaijan. (20 participants)
Seminars/ Presentations/ Sharing Sessions
Cheng, L. (2019, October). STEAM education: Virtual reality, creative coding, and interactive design. Seminar conducted at the Education University of Hong Kong.
Cheng, L. (2018, July). STEM/STEAM Live Coding Music. Workshop presented at the Community Engagement & Outreach Academy for Creative Arts, Department of Cultural and Creative Arts, The Education of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. (No. of participants: 10)
Cheng, L. (Curator) (2019). Dialogue Immersive [Exhibition]. Department of Cultural and Creative Arts. Hong Kong: The Education University of Hong Kong.
Teaching and Learning Resources/ Materials (including online resources)
Teaching packages for STEAM course on the website: https://www.eduhk.hk/ccaproject/vr/material.html
Financial Year:
2017-18
Type:
TDG