Influence of Design Elements of STEAM Educational Toys over Creativity of Children in TaiWan--on the Basis of Teaching Practice Research on Educating Robot Toys with Children

Abstract

In recent years the concept of children STEAM education has become increasingly popular among people It advocates the combination of games and studies in education so more and more parents have transferred their focus to the educational value of toys In this context many toys related to children's STEAM education have appeared in the market Among them toys designed with robot assembly program are especially popular among consumers As an emerging industry that combines toys and education educating robot toys are considered to be helpful for children's education However there are few studies exploring their educational value for children Therefore this study will focus on the impact of the designing factors of educating robot toys on children's creativity In this study the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) is used as a research tool to evaluate the creativity of subjects before and after the experiment Evaluation results of two groups are both analyzed by paired sample T-test to determine whether there are significant differences among and scores of the five dimensions of TTCT and the total score The formal experiment adopts the experimental contrast method and sets the experimental group and the control group to find out which educational factors of children STEAM educating robot toys will influence children's creativity Through the focus group method the expert team in the STEAM education field first screens out 25 elements that they think educating robot toys could affect children's creativity Then the expert team asks parents to fill a questionnaire including 25 elements based on the Likert Scale which can investigate the degree of parents' recognition on the statements of 25 elements They consider the five most recognized elements as experimental independent variables Considering the ethics of academic research subjects in the control group are given the choice to participate in the whole teaching experiment The results show that after a month of six STEAM courses of robot educational toy the total score of overall creativity performance in the pretest and the post-test of two groups has been significantly improved (p<05) and the creativity of the experimental group was better than that of the control group indicating that STEAM robot teaching has an impact on the creativity of students The five independent variables of this study are important in improving children's creativity in STEAM robot teaching The results of this study can deepen our understanding of STEAM education As a reference for follow-up research it can also be applied to STEAM robot educational toy design practice

Date of Award	2018 Sept 3
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chun-Heng Ho (Supervisor)