Pune Campus Watch: To make STEM learning fun, universities, science institutions offer hands-on lessons for school students

As Science and Mathematics seem to be the biggest pain points for students, these shortcomings can be overcome by enrolling in several clubs and workshops that offer fun learning batches, for conceptual and hands-on learning, added the experts.

One of the most popular centres for hands-on training and live workshops are the Science Parks in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

Located on the campus of the Savitribai Phule Pune University, the Centre for Science Education and Communication (CSEC)—formerly known as the Science Park—has more than 1000 kits, interactive exhibits, demonstrations experiments, and innovative do-it-yourself (DIY) laboratories in all branches of science. Conceived to help young minds explore ideas and learn principles of science by experimentation, its present focus is on school children from classes 4 to 9.

Its latest initiative for learning science at the school level is a 25-week hands-on training session for students of classes 4 to 9 titled “Understanding Science through Experiments”. One session of two hours each will be held every week and these sessions will be conducted according to vacations and examinations schedules of schools. From June 20 and ending in January 2023, these sessions will discuss topics which may go slightly beyond the expected level of the standard concept. The sessions for which registrations are ongoing till June 19th will take place in the new premises of Science Park in both modes (online and offline) and will be conducted by the staff of CSEC, Science Park.

At the Pimpri-Chinchwad Science Park too, science outreach activities for school students are a daily activity, beginning with a 30-minute 3-D science show, children’s corner for activities and experiments, sky observation, and more.

“Every Wednesday, we have a session for school students wherein we focus on their school syllabus and design a hands-on, fun, interactive workshop. The idea is to make students realise that science can be fun. As surveys after surveys show that learning outcomes are poor, it may be because conceptual learning is not strong. To do that, we need to connect students to science and our offline lectures are one such attempt. However, we have limited capacity, only 100 students per week,” said Ashok Rupner, programme manager, science activity centre at IISER Pune.

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However, Rupner cautioned that these programmes should not be considered as a replacement for classroom teaching but as a tool to engage students.

Ankish Tirpude, a technical assistant at the centre, said that while making science fun is the main idea, the centre has activities mapped to the school curriculum so even teachers can learn about how to take the chalk and board method forward in classrooms. “We also have 110 lesson plans which we have made not standard-wise but subject-wise. Teachers can refer to them and we even have video plans,” said Tirupude.

Speaking of video lectures to overcome the challenge of being able to cater to only a few in physical workshops every week and taking into account the fact that children have taken to the online medium in a big way during the pandemic, IISER started online demonstration sessions last year with its Next-Gen Science Camps: Exploring Fun Activities at Your Doorstep, which has crossed 1.5 million viewers. At its 54th episode featured Sunday, Tirpude taught students the Magic of Prime Numbers.

To ensure learning isn’t a one-way street in online sessions, moderators from the centre picked up students’ questions from the chat box and incorporated them into the live sessions and quick polls were also run to gauge conceptual learning. “The video lessons helped us reach a larger audience and cover more subjects. Also, the lectures are available on YouTube for viewing later, so it helps in revising concepts too,” said Tirpude.