Abstract:

The European Space Agency (ESA) develops educational resources, using space as a context to introduce STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines to primary and secondary students. The key of this educational programme is the collaborative networking between different ESEROs (European Space Education Resource Offices), located in the ESA member states.

CanSat Challenge is an ESA Education school project for secondary school students. Students’ Teams are supervised by a teacher. They have to develop an operational CanSat project as if it were a real space mission. A CanSat is a simulation of a real satellite, integrated within the volume and shape of a soft drink can. The CanSat is then launched by a rocket up to an altitude of one kilometre. Then its mission begins: carrying out a scientific experiment, achieving a safe landing, and analysing the data collected. Therefore, CanSat challenge is a multidisciplinary project, which uses space as a context to introduce STEM disciplines to students. In the European CanSat competition, one team per ESA member state raised to win the challenge. In order to select the winning team in each country, there are national competitions between all teams registered in the challenge. In Spain, the national CanSat organiser is ESERO Spain, which has been located in Parque de las Ciencias de Granada since 2017. The first CanSat Spain national competition was in 2017. There were only 10 teams registered. In 2019 this number increased to 26 teams. This situation was due to the fact that the CanSat challenge is usually perceived as a really complex project. At a first glance they feel not capable to achieve any CanSat missions. We can extend this feeling to students also, as it is considered for high level students only.

ESERO Spain, as part of the space for education strategy of esa and taking advantage of the space as source of inspiration had to take action and change this situation, in order to give all students and teachers the opportunity to participate in such a fascinating space challenge. During 2020, ESERO Spain began with a CanSat regional competition pilot plan, including a specific teacher training programme. The structure of this course implements regional phases to select regional representatives and a final national event. Such regional competitions are network through ESERO office and a are also adapted to regional necessities. The teacher training plan was designed as a hybrid format with face-to-farce and online. In addition, ESERO provides engineering support for teachers thanks to another network collaboration with universities, and an impressive rocket launch campaign. This plan is based on scaffold-type methodology and life-long learning during the school year, in which teachers can develop the CanSat project with their students, step by step, starting with the most basic aspects.

The results for the first year were incredible, we put into practice 5 regional competitions, in which 2 integrated the teacher training programme. The number of teams increased to 110 teams. During 2022, 9 regional competitions were organised, with a total of 250 teams involved and 3 teacher training programmes. Nowadays we are working with 14 regions to follow this regional competition and teacher training program during 2023. CanSat is a multidisciplinary project which inspires and engages teachers and students to learn more about STEM disciplines, space missions and space industry.

Keywords:

STEM, teacher training, network, space missions, context, challenge.