Abstract:

Art and science evolve together forging a strong synergy between them and contributing to the advancement of society. The fine line between them has been pointed out in many disciplines such as Chemistry [1], Medicine [2], or in Physics [3]. Consequently, more and more art concepts are being included in conversation about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and vice versa [4]. However, students are not usually motivated by disciplines that are not very related to their academic training. For this reason, the teaching of scientific subjects in university art degrees constitutes a true teaching challenge.

This work focuses on the application of active and experiential learning in university art degrees with the aim of increasing their student’s motivation for STEM subjects. In particular, the strategy was applied to “Forms, Materials and Techniques”, a first-year subject of the Degree in Comprehensive Design and Image Management, run by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Rey Juan Carlos University. This subject, belonging to the area of Materials Science and Engineering, was taught on three different campuses of the university. The implemented activities consisted of executing simple experiments in the classroom. These experiments included carrying out mechanical tests on different objects (chalks, pencils, blending stumps, pen cases, metallic barbecue skewers…) using a miniature replica of a Charpy impact tester and turning on a light-emitting diode (LED) with electrochemical cells built on-site. At the end of these practical sessions the students handed in to the teachers their answers to some key questions related to the performed experiments and the underlying theoretical concepts.

The evaluation of the delivered questionnaires showed that the applied methodology improves the students’ understanding of several concepts covered in the theoretical classes, such as the mechanical and corrosion properties of materials or the operation and utility of the electrochemical batteries. This not only enables a better academic performance, but also helps to awaken the interests of artistic disciplines’ students in scientific issues, as reflected by their high participation in class during the experiments and their positive responses in the satisfaction surveys. This demonstrates that the combination of conventional lessons with classroom experiments could constitute a very potent tool for effectively teaching science subjects in university art degrees in a more motivating way.

References:
[1] K. C. Nicolaou, et al., The Art and Science of Total Synthesis at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century, Angewewandte Chemie International Edition 39, 44-122 (2000).
[2] K. Malterud, The Art and Science of Clinical Knowledge: Evidence Beyond Measures and Numbers, The Lancet 358, 397 (2001).
[3] B. E. Husic, and V. S Pande, Markov State Models: From an Art to a Science. Journal of the American Chemical Society 140, 2386 (2018).
[4] J. W. Bequette, and M. B. Bequette, A Place for Art and Design Education in the STEM Conversation, Art Education 65, 40 2012.

Keywords:

Classroom Experiments, Experiential Learning, Active Learning, STEM conversation, STEM.