Research On The Development And Practice Of STEM Course In Intelligent Vegetable Planting

STEM education,for its emphasis on interdisciplinary,hands-on practice and inquiry,is conducive to cultivating students' STEM literacy and 21 st century skills,and has attracted wide attention from researchers around the world in recent years.How to use emerging technologies to promote STEM teaching and learning has also attracted increasing attention.Currently,the STEM education practice combining hardware and software has been upsurged in China,but the curricula that can truly integrate interdisciplinary knowledge are still in the opening stage.The integration of artificial intelligence technology and STEM education provides an inquiry-based learning mode for students,while meeting the goals of interdisciplinary teaching,focusing on problem solving and project-based learning,inspiring students to explore independently and assist in learning,and to some extent enhancing students' sense of social responsibility.Based on the cooperation with the project of MIT Media Lab Open AG EDU,this study uses the domestic open source hardware XUGU,with the theme of intelligent vegetable planting,to develop a localized STEM curriculum and carry out practice and teaching evaluation.This study used Quasi-experimental Research,designed a STEM course on intelligent vegetable planting.The course design was modified by the opinions of Educational Technology,Science Education experts and front-line teachers,and implemented in a middle school in Shanghai in the form of interest expansion course.The course consisted of 11 modules and 14 weeks of teaching activities.Data collection includes pre-and post-test questionnaires,semi-structured interviews,student learning manuals and works,videos of reports and teachers' observation.The research results showed that the STEM curriculum of intelligent vegetable planting could effectively improve students' learning attitude about intelligent technology,promote students' concept understanding of intelligent technology,selfconfidence and learning motivation such as open source hardware and sensors,Internet of Things tools,intelligent applications,etc.,but there was no significant influence in the learning of programming and algorithm.Through learning the STEM curriculum of intelligent vegetable planting,students' knowledge and learning motivation in agricultural field could be significantly improved.Finally,some suggestions were put forward for the development,implementation and evaluation of STEM curriculum.