Abstract:

Active learning methods play a key role in sustainable education, which is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) announced by the European Union for the next decades. One of the interesting didactic methods that activate students is the eduScrum method. The article describes the basic principles of this method and ways of introducing it into the teaching of STEM subjects at technical universities. Various scenarios are available, but individual work or work in small teams appears to be the most advantageous approach when applying the eduScrum method in basic mathematics courses for engineering students. Students, individually or as a small team of 4-5 persons, have to solve several sprints during the semester, each covering a different core topic of the respective subject. Each sprint consists of several problems, starting with easier ones, then slowly increasing in difficulty, with the last problem being an applied problem related to the specific professional orientation of the student cohort. The applied problem is a kind of miniPBL approach, where students are asked to work together in a small team and develop a short summary paper, prepare a presentation and present their solution in front of their classmates. Teamwork helps students in need to progress faster in acquiring knowledge, allows better analysis of the problem and tasks to be solved, as these are deeply thought out, understood and properly solved thanks to discussions among team members. Another advantage of this educational scenario is the opportunity to train and develop social soft skills, such as cooperation, building team spirit, individual responsibility for own contribution to the team benefit, the ability to talk about mathematical models when solving applied problems, etc.

The poster presentation will explain various other aspects that teachers and students can benefit from when using the eduScrum method in teaching STEM subjects.

Keywords:

EduScrum, social skills, STEM education.