Resumen de Sculpture development as an informal activity for learning engineering abilities in K-12 students
Carlos García García, Vicente Chulvi Ramos, Julia Galán Serrano
The social changes thathave taken place in recent decades have determined the evolution of the educational system. Societynowadays demands new learning methods, focused on an appropriate selection and processing of information instead ofmemorization. The rise of the Information Technologies has led to different ‘‘Emergent Pedagogies’’. One of them isInformal Learning, which proposes shifting the generation and acquisition of knowledge from the individual to thecollective plane.The present research expects to raise K-12 students’ interest in engineering by adopting some methods that are typical ofinformal learning in the field of formal learning. The objective is to stimulate the group learning processes for thegeneration of collective knowledge through multidisciplinary team interaction and dialogue. For this purpose, a group of25 K-12 students organized in subgroups carried out a co-creative project. This project consists in the development of asculptural assembly made of glazed ceramics over a steel structure, which will be installed in the educational centre. Aconcurrent project methodology was used to create the sculptural assembly. Here, each student must perform differenttasks related to design engineering. An educational model based on Blended Learning was used, which proposes thecombination of in-person sessions with virtual work by means of social networks as a group communication medium.Thus, each creative team member contributed with their own Personal Learning Environment in order to enrich the grouplearning process and provide it with their own personal singularities, thereby turning it into a Personal Learning Network.The experience allowed K-12 students to discover the working process typical of design engineering through arecreational methodology based on Informal Learning. The students were able to make up for their shortcomings interms of technical and creative skill, while becoming aware of their chances within the field of engineering. The project hasbeen shown to be an incentive for K-12 students regarding their interest in starting engineering studies once they finish theirK-12 stage.
