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Developing a Hands-On STEM English Course #1274

In recent years, the importance of STEM education has been gaining increased attention. To thrive in the new technology-driven society, tomorrow’s graduates require excellent technical capabilities and well-refined soft skills. In Japan, STEM students face the additional task of improving their L2 competency. This poster will outline the development, implementation, and participants' impressions of a 15-week STEM English course for non-English major, Japanese university students. The course was developed to allow students to apply STEM content knowledge to improve communication skills, team-work, and higher-order thinking skills. The course covered five units, with each unit requiring two to three weeks to complete. The units included i) STEM Fundamentals, ii) The Scientific Method, iii) The Bernoulli Principle, iv) Parabolic Motion and v) Global Water Resources. The pattern for each unit was as follows: Lesson 1 - the main content and principles of the topic were introduced; Lesson 2 - students were tasked with planning and completing a simple hands-on experiment related to the main topic; and Lesson 3 - students reported their experiment findings to their peers through oral presentations.