The potential of the Internet of Things to promote participatory citizenship

• Author(s): Santos, Manuel ; Carlos, Vânia ; Moreira, António
• Date: 2022
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/42216
• Origin: RIA - Repositório Institucional da Universidade de Aveiro
• Document Type: Conference object
• Language: English

Description

This study is based on the issue of the poor involvement of students in their respective educational community, as far as participatory citizenship is concerned. To gather answers for the research question ?What strategies can be developed within the scope of a Smart School Lab, with the aid of the Internet of Things, to enhance the participatory citizenship of students??, open and interventionist design-based research (DBR) strategies were applied. An iterative evolutionary approach was also used, involving action and reflection in an interchanging way, with integrative activities that fueled the project in a cyclical process. In the first phase of the DBR study, three semi-structured interviews, two data gathering surveys and a teachers? focus group were implemented and analyzed. The data collected provided a closer analysis of students? participatory citizenship and their engagement in community issues, as well as the teachers, parents, and municipality?s perspective of the dialogue and communication among local participants. To achieve the addressed goal, a fifty-hour teacher training course was implemented in a cocreation process within a smart educational community, supported by a network of mentors (students, teachers, parents, local actors, and municipality). We report on the first design cycle of open learning guidelines on citizen sciences by reviewing the open learning guidelines created by the teachers on a co-creation process with stakeholders in the teachers? training course and teachers? self-awareness reflection notes. In the second DBR cycle, implemented in the current school year, teachers from STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) areas attended an initial workshop, where the didactic kits built in the first DBR cycle were presented. Based on this work, teachers designed/ adapted new kits that were implemented in their classes. Data from classroom observation, teachers? self-awareness reflection notes, and two surveys, students? pre and post-test, were gathered and analyzed, provided a closer analysis of students? participatory citizenship and their engagement in community issues, after the implementation of the didactic kits. Regarding the results expected with this study, we highlight: design principles and technology innovation, i.e., the production of ?education? and ?citizen? didactic kits, which will contribute, per se, to the common good, with the detection of environmental problems in the target city of study; the improvement of the students? citizen science skills and their participatory citizenship; and the realization of the potential of the IoT by the teachers who took part in the study, mainly as far as the development of pedagogical-didactic and social-communicative skills are concerned.