A presentation from the STEM Annual Conference 2014.
With the use of a proprietary handheld Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) Hygiene Monitoring System National STEM Ambassadors visit local schools and test surfaces for levels of cleanliness. The use of students to run and participate in STEM activities such as these allows school children to see that studying science can be great fun and can provide diverse opportunities. This type of activity provides university students with enhanced learning opportunities and introduces them to diverse and fulfilling aspects of STEM that they may not have previously considered.
To demonstrate the cleanliness of an object to Year 1 students (age 5) requires considerably work but allowing these students to rank objects/surfaces in an order of cleaner to dirtier allows them to make judgements. Applying a numerical output provides these young students with tangible reasoning skills. Year 5/6 students have much developed skills in maths and science. Using a similar approach but incorporating the application of number in their estimations of surface cleanliness these students have to calculate means of estimated values and then compare these to actual numbers. Year 12/13 students can learn much more about the biology and chemistry of the system and start to apply statistical analysis to the predictions and outputs.
Our approach in allowing our Student STEM Ambassadors to run sessions has produced some fantastic undergraduate opportunities. Feedback from students suggests their student journey is very much enhanced through delivering these STEM activities.
