ILLY IRDINA BTE MOHAMAD R H
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
During my WOW! attachment with the Physical Sciences team in Science Centre Singapore, my group and I were tasked with two main projects; creating user guide videos on the Young Scientist Badge Scheme website for teachers, as well as creating a new course, I am a Young Scientist for Sustainable Development, for the Young Scientist Badge Scheme. Through this attachment, I learnt both hard skills, like how to use open-source softwares, creating videos, sourcing for useful materials, as well as soft skills such as understanding user experience and beginning with the end in mind.
Science Centre Singapore
Science Centre Singapore is an educational institution that aims to promote interest, learning and creativity in science and technology, through imaginative and enjoyable experiences, contributing to the development of Singapore’s human resource. Science Centre is not only a place where people of all ages can come to view exhibitions to learn about various science principles and current global issues, but is also a platform that inspires others to do something that will create change in the world. The Science Centre provides people with a deeper understanding of concepts and a greater appreciation for science by producing scientific magazines, conducting many different types of school programmes that align with the school syllabus and also promotional activities for the general public. The department mainly in charge of all of the outreach programmes was the education branch in the Science Centre and we had the honour of being part of their team during our WOW! attachment.
Young Scientist Badge Scheme
The Young Scientist Badge Scheme is an online platform where students complete 17 courses created by Science Centre to learn about different topics. Students earn a badge for each course after gaining 15 trophies from completing tasks in the said course. After submitting the completed tasks, teachers would grade, give feedback and track their student's progress. The site ran on the Moodle platform and when we first started our attachment, the site was already running. However, since the site was still relatively new, many teachers had problems understanding how the system worked. Our first task was to create a few instructional videos that could guide teachers who were unfamiliar with the system. We were also tasked with creating a whole new course on the site called Young Scientist for Sustainable Development.
Aims of the Young Scientist Badge Programme:
- to stimulate interest in science activities among students
- enable students to carry out self-directed activities in various disciplines of science
- provide opportunities for students to develop initiative and creativity.
Though our project sounded pretty simple and straightforward, a lot of research had to be done before actually starting on our end product. We had to first understand how the software the site ran on worked. The Young Scientist Badge scheme ran on Moodle, an open-source learning platform that allows learners to take courses created by educators. Educators then can grade the submissions of learners and provide them with feedback that help them progress in the course. Moodle was unfamiliar to us and it was quite tricky to really understand what Moodle was initially. The process of understanding Moodle was very tedious. After piecing together small bits of information we each found through watching multiple long videos and further research, we finally figured out Moodle.
Although we knew how the site ran on Moodle, we still did not have a good understanding of the problems faced by users of the site. Hence, we logged onto the site as a student as well as a teacher, to understand the user experience of students and teachers. Through completing a few courses each and then grading our completed courses, we gained a much better understanding. Additionally, we found a few errors in the running of the programme and alerted this to our mentors who made the programme.
Creating User Guides
At first, the website looked complicated to use and it was quite tricky to understand what the different terms and tabs were for. However, after exploring a little more, we found it to be quite cool. The platform was really interactive and students could learn a lot through the programme, especially because they could get personalised feedback from their teachers.
Only after three full days of research, we finally began creating the videos. We brainstormed for video ideas. We created a list of what we thought were the most common problems teachers faced. After submitting our list of video ideas to our mentors and getting their approval, we ended up with 4 video ideas. They were; brief summary of what the scheme is about, how teachers login and change their profile, how students submit their work, and how teachers grade and give feedback. No one in our group had prior experience in using the video creating website, Powtoon, and because of this, we had to take a little time to figure out how to create the video. Soon, after sending in a round of drafts and making some edits, we managed to complete our videos.
I am a Young Scientist for Sustainable Development
Next, we were tasked with creating a new course on the Young Scientist Badge programme, titled: I am a Young Scientist for Sustainable Development. This course was created in light of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) and the Young Technopreneur Challenge for a Sustainable 2030. This course aims to educate the youth on sustainability and three of the UNSDGs, Goal 7; affordable and clean energy, Goal 11; Sustainable cities and communities, as well as Goal 12; responsible consumption and production. We created 3 different tracks for this course, based on different age groups (pre- junior at aged 9 and below, junior at aged 10 to 13 and senior at aged 14 to 17), so that learning would be more targeted and appropriate for the various age groups. Each track varied with the difficulty level of the tasks assigned, depth of the topic as well as the demands of the project’s deliverables. Again, though this task seemed straightforward, we needed to do a lot of research in order for us to create a course that met the learning objectives. We had to learn more about sustainable development, understand the UNSDGs, as well as familiarise ourselves with the Young Technopreneur Challenge for a Sustainable 2030 and its objectives. Then, for each track, we had to come up with 20 different tasks, each varying from one to three stars, depending on the difficulty of the task. The biggest challenge we faced was the young scientist website being down on the first day. We could not access the site and refer to the other courses, but instead, we had to come up with all tasks by ourselves. In addition to that, we had to source for videos, websites, and also infographics that could become additional resources that would complement the topic of each task and could provide participants with better understanding of the topic.
After getting approval from our mentors, we learnt the ropes of how to upload our tasks on the Young Scientist Badge site from other interns working there. Seeing our proposed tasks become an actual course on the site was exhilarating and we were proud of our hard work.
1. How to use an open-source software
Knowing about open-source platforms is a good skill to have as one is able to create a platform that is easily accessible to everyone. Through this, people can create open sites like the Young Scientist site, that benefit many
3 Skills Learnt
2. Creating videos
Learning how to use Powtoon, an online software that allow people to create animated videos, is a very beneficial skill to have. Powtoon can be used in various scenarios and can help me make presentations a lot better
3. Sourcing for useful materials that complement learning
Knowing how to source for good and relevant materials can benefit when conducting research and finding for additional materials that can help with understanding
2
interesting aspects of learning
mentors hands-off approach
Our mentors did not walk us through the project and told us what the different sites were. Instead, they left us to our own devices, letting us have a hard time trying to piece everything together. They also gave us the freedom to decide what we wanted to include in our deliverables. This made us take control of our projects
work goes into programmes
through our attachment we realised the amount of thought that went into creating the programmes. A lot of prior research and presentation that had to be done. We also had the opportunity to sit in a workshop and help pack activity packs for a future workshop. This made us truly realise the amount of hard work that went in.
An important lesson I learnt during my attachment was that being thrown into the deep end and not knowing anything is not something to worry about, but instead something to embrace. Initially, we had a hard time figuring things out and we felt quite frustrated at times. In the end, we not only figured everything out, we also learnt a lot more than what the mentors expected us to do and our tough time ended up being very rewarding.