Sustaining Interest in Stem: New Norm in Enrichment Program

Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Research in Education, Teaching and Learning

Year: 2022

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/5th.icetl.2022.06.250

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Sustaining Interest in Stem: New Norm in Enrichment Program

Suganty Kanapathy, Azizah Zahidi

ABSTRACT: 

Digital transformation is not a novel phenomenon. However, Covid-19 pandemic has initiated digital transformation tremendously and has led to novelty in education due to global shutdown of several activities, including STEM-based enrichment programs. During the outbreak of Covid-19, all the enrichment programmes conducted physically were changed to online mode to provide sustainable learning among the students. Thus, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness and perception of enrichment programme which was conducted in online mode for gifted and talented students. Twenty gifted and talented students from Be A Scientist module, aged 9 to 12 years old were selected as the respondents of this research. The respondents participated in the Summer Camp Program, organized by Pusat GENIUS@ Pintar Negara, UKM. Mixed mode approach was used, where the data were collected quantitatively and qualitatively. Data for quantitative study were collected as pre and post-test, while data for qualitative study were obtained based on perception of the students and parents via online survey. Students’ interest was found to be a crucial role in engaging the students with learning activities regardless online or face-to- face mode. However, parents’ choice was to  face-to-face teaching and learning, since the effectiveness of the program can be evaluated clearly than online mode.

keywords: enrichment program, STEM, online, gifted students