Abstract:

By the year 2009 “discovering scientific talents” was the first motto from a young professor belonging to the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Talca-Chile that leaded to strength the connection of school communities and the university. The selected strategy was to challenge students inviting them to propose functional solutions to a wide set of problems, in a context of a technological and scientific contest in a STEM environment. The problems provided requires to match sciences, technology and transversal skills to develop functional prototypes as solutions. The process includes three milestones during a year solving progressively complex problems, assisted by engineering students and professors who were motivated volunteers.

Over 10 years now, since the first “challenge”, the initiative that begun as a local communal activity was extended through private and public grants to all 30 communes in Maule Region and other regions in Chile during 2018, covering nearly 62 communes.

During 2020 pandemic forced the cancellation of face-to-face activities, which motivated to the engaged team to think in new strategies to accomplish the initiative. One of the main objectives of the challenge is to provide a creative and experimental environment to share knowledge with other students and teachers from different backgrounds considering the socioeconomic differences in public and private schools. Thus, new contexts are driving the initiative towards developing new blended and virtual strategies to reach the high school community.

In this article the main achievements of this STEM experience are presented, according to the objectives and the strategies to be implemented in order to maintain the participation of the students in a context of a global sanitary emergency towards a “new normality”.

Keywords:

STEM, competences, contest, virtuality-adjustment.