By Keriayn Smith | Project Leader
We confess! We’re scientists – data crunching is something that we do!!
We introduce new activities in our STEPS workshops so that we appeal as many students as possible and to effectively show how applicable and fun science is. Because of this, we survey student participants to find out what they enjoy, what they don’t like and also try to gauge the benefits to the students and identify areas that we need to improve.
Here are some results from 126 primary school students!
What was their favorite activity?? Drumroll!!!
Students were evenly split between making their very own magnetic silly putty, making a test tube vanish, and the oldie but goodie – viewing microscopic critters in local water sources. The students continued to be fascinated about what cannot be seen with the naked eye!
What did they not like??
A number of students were already familiar with making an electromagnet using a battery, nail and copper wire, and so found this least stimulating. We’ve now know we have got to keep on our toes for Generation Z!
For some time now, SoSA has been considering going on the road – Heading into schools to work with kids in their environment. Students overwhelmingly responded to this idea, with 97.6% saying they would like it if SoSA volunteers visited schools and conducted experiments with students there.
We also took note of some positive trends – Just over 55% of students have interacted with scientists before the STEPS workshop. This is encouraging, but also means we have more work to do. This is exemplified by students’ responses, with 95% of students indicating that the interaction influenced the way they now think of science.
We also relish the honesty of those students who indicated that they were not influenced by the interaction with scientists - these students still responded that they had fun at the workshop – we’ll take that for now, while we further explore how to reach as many students as we can!
Thank you for your continued support - Stay tuned for feedback from high school students!
By Keriayn Smith | Project Leader
By Keri Smith | Project Leader
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