Transforming Your Teaching: An E-guide to Support Educators in Enhancing Student Learning Outcomes

The purpose of this guide is to provide a selection of strategies and factors that are directly relevant to STEM educators in a University setting. Selections of topics were based on strength of existing evidenceand ease of implementation. This is not an exhaustive list and instead aims to provide you with a concise selection that can be integrated with your existing practices. The roots of STEM education can be traced back to the second half of the 20th century when countries started to focus on improving science, mathematics, and technology instruction [1]. Since then, STEM education has become a key focus of educational reform efforts around the world, recognising theimportance of preparing students for future careers in STEM-related fields. Looking towards the future, STEM education will continue to be a critical component of education, as governments continue to
recognise the social and economic need for high quality STEM graduates.
According to EU Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027)[2] the majority of stakeholders believe that how we teach and how our students learn has been permanently changed as a result of pandemic adaptations. The report outlines how a significant proportion of educators had never adopted blended learning strategies previously, but now intend to keep using the most impactful strategies after the pandemic restrictions passed. However, this in turn highlighted a lack of evidence-based guidance designed to support these educators. This guide was developed with the support of funding from an EU-project called Enhancing Digital STEM. This project addresses the need to provide accessible evidence-based material to help educators make informed decisions within STEM education. Currently, educators practicing within digital STEM environments face an unreasonably high barrier of entry to evidence-based strategies which are frequently presented within research papers leaning heavily on social science methods. The typical STEM educator is formally educated in the natural sciences or engineering disciplines and as a result, has not had the opportunity to develop social science related expertise that is often required to engage with research paper-based reports of evidence-based practice. The project was funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union with a start date in 2021 and an end in 2023. The participants of the project are the University of Limerick, Chalmers
University of Technology and RWTH Aachen University.

The goals for the project have been broken down to 3 objectives:
Objective 1: Collate evidence-based practices that are compatible with STEM online learning environments and needs.
Objective 2: Increase capability to critically engage with the evidence base through Professional Development Events.
Objective 3: Create a Digital STEM Hub to support adopters of evidence-based practice. This guide is part of the results of the third objective and contains strategies and factors, which will help educators to enhance their ability to educate.