Abstract:

The article presents educational strategies aimed at encouraging students’ involvement and consequential acquisition of new skills in the Database section of IT classes. Experience related to STEM training practices that took place at the “Geo Milev” English Language High School, Ruse, Bulgaria is shared. The described pedagogical practices present an eased way of achieving key competencies in a difficult and essential field of digital technologies and entrepreneurship.
The practices involve students actively participating in educational scenarios which simulate realistic situations of how businesses function, putting them in the roles of customers and entrepreneurs of various companies. This allows them to understand the importance of the various stages needed for the successful construction of a database – description of a real practice case, design of an optimal model, planning of elements and connections between them, implementation of the DBMS (Database management system) with IT tools. Through the applied approaches to training, students are encouraged to understand and use the basic terminology and build a functioning database that will allow the management of companies from various fields: real estate, recruitment, transportation services and more. Students make their first steps in building objects in the database and take on all the roles associated with creating database management systems – user, designer, and developer. The study provides details of the location of the study and the team implementing the student projects; the equipment used in the course of the project’s enforcement; the applied methods of work; the results of the projects and the way of assessing their progress. Learning scenarios are based on the acquisition of skills - students participate in the planning of each stage, perform team tasks, and are encouraged to be creative. The described strategies facilitate the first steps in the database section without the need of prior knowledge and students do not have to overcome the difficulties of building abstract models and imaginary structures. Simple steps are presented to turn the standard classroom into a learning environment enabling the acquisition of competencies, for building independence, thinking skills, cooperation and active learning. The article outlines some of the challenges faced by students and teachers and suggests ways to overcome them.

Keywords:

STEM, skills-based learning, feedback, entrepreneurship, role play, database management system.