Thank you to everyone who took time to complete our Educator Survey. The feedback you provided will help guide us in the coming months. Now, without further ado, here are some of the highlights of what we learned.
K12
Which electronics-based STEM topics are you interested in teaching your students? (Choose all that apply.)
Almost 92% of you are interested in teaching coding, with robotics coming in at a close second at 89%. Taking third place was circuit boards at 80%. This is all great news, especially since all three off these topics can be learned at the same time!
Do you personally integrate Computer Science in your instruction?
This one was exciting to see - 75% of respondents teach computer science in one form or another. But most exciting of all is the revelation that 20% of respondents teach computer science outside of a computer science class. In other words, computer science is being used to teach subjects other than computer science!
What coding language(s) do you teach? (Choose all that apply.)
Most of you teach block-based coding programs, with Scratch being the most popular, closely followed by MakeCode. When combined with the fact that 56% of survey respondents teach elementary or middle school, these top languages start to paint a picture of what students are learning when.
Do you plan on teaching computational thinking?
We’ve been hearing a lot about computational thinking over the past year or so and now you’ve confirmed that it is important to you, with 79% of respondents saying they intend to teach computational thinking.
Resources
A lot of you shared some great ideas for resources we can provide in the future to help make things easier for you. Now that we have these ideas, we will be sure to see what we can do to make them a reality. One thing that stood out is how many people asked for more project ideas for their class. We’re always working on new ideas for this and recently launched a new Activity Portal to share them all in one place. If you have activities you’d like to share as well, please let us know and we will be happy to work with you to share your tutorial on the site.
One other resource request you shared was a desire to see reviews from other educators. This is something we’ve been working on. We’ve collected a few stories so far, which can be found here. As always, if your class or school is doing something neat with SparkFun products, please let us know so we can share your story too.
Higher Education
Does your school have a hands-on freshman engineering class?
89 percent of you shared that your school currently offers a hands-on freshman engineering class. This is great news as study after study has shown the benefits of getting engineering students hands-on faster rather than relying on textbook learning. Which is reflected in the answers to the next question as well…
Do you believe hands-on learning can support retention goals for undergraduate students?
Once again, 89 percent of you agreed that hands-on learning supports undergraduate retention.
How is the course material (ex: syllabus, required textbooks, etc) for your classes determined?
Excitingly, 100% of respondents said they are involved in creating course material. It’s fabulous to hear so many of you are directly involved with creating the course you teach.
Thank you again to everyone who filled out the survey. We hope you find this information as interesting as we do!
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