Dissemination and evaluation of the autostem project: example of an exhibition in a school context.

Abstract

The Erasmus + AutoSTEM project, nr 2018-1-PT01-KA201-047499, which pretends to analyze the potential of the automata construction as a motivation strategy to learning sciences, tecnology, engineering and mathematics areas, was implemented at the Agrupamento de Escolas Eugénio de Castro, within the scope of the Erasmus + Program, in partnership with Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação of Universidade de Coimbra, in the school year of 2019-2020. This works describe the activities of the project dissemination, in particular, the evaluation of an exposition of the automaton construction workshops of the 1st study cicle of the Agrupamento de Escolas Eugénio de Castro, after posters were displayed in the schools that participated in the activities. These posters contained examples of prototypes developed by children and teachers. To this evaluation, we developed a questionnaire that pretended to evaluate the children reactions, participant and non-participant, as the learnings and the interest in the activities. To fully understand the obtained data, some of the children and teachers were accompanied at their visits, where participant observation was carried out. The results of this work show the children’s curiosity regarding the autorship of the works, the stimulation of the creativity and the willingness to participate again in this kind of activities. This work made possible the existence of new researches in this field.