Abstract:

This paper presents a learning activity developed by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Education Office in collaboration with space experts, aimed at boosting student engagement and secondary level STEM learning through systems thinking and concurrent design. The strength of the activity lies in immersing students in real-engineering practises, while empowering them with 21st century skills such as collaboration, problem solving, creativity, communication and self-regulation. This paper outlines the activity’s educational framework, aiming to inspire educators to facilitate similar interdisciplinary learning experiences. Inspired by ESA’s Concurrent Design Facility (CDF), the activity uses concurrent design to immerse students in real-world engineering practises. Concurrent design is a fast-paced iterative session where subsystem expert groups work simultaneously on the design of a complex system. Systems thinking teaches students how complex systems, such as satellites, work by role-playing the interconnections between the subsystems. A bespoke Excel-based system model was developed to provide students with real-time feedback, allowing them to understand how their design choices influence other subsystems and the overall system. The activity was successfully delivered on four occasions as part of ‘Space Engineer for a Day’, the culminating event of CanSat, a school project initiative in which students design a soda can-sized satellite. Each session was conducted with c.a. 70 students, aged 14-19, from a variety of countries. The international setting of the activity stimulated cross-cultural collaboration and mimicked the collaborative nature of ESA as an agency. Observations from four participant groups showed how the concurrent design method can effectively introduce interdisciplinarity within STEM curricula. The phases through which the students progressed, consistently aligned with the four stages of competence, showing the power of real-time feedback to turn failure into a source for progress. Key lessons learned highlight the importance of moderation and the availability of expert knowledge. Noteworthy challenges included the need to develop an intuitive shared cloud-based model and accurately assess and adapt to the student’s pre-knowledge. The discussion provides practical suggestions for adapting the activity to diverse educational settings and curricula, while identifying educator needs to run a similar activity independently. In addition, the paper shares lessons learned to further optimise the cloud-based model. By presenting these and other valuable insights, the paper seeks to inspire educators and demonstrate the potential of concurrent design to transform STEM learning experiences and develop 21st century skills among students.

Keywords:

Education, STEM, systems thinking, 21st century skills, design thinking, concurrent design, model-based learning, collaboration, space, engineering.