Short Term Visitorship at HBCSE

4 min readDec 24, 2021

I am writing this post to document my learnings during short term visit at Design & Technology Education lab, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education (HBCSE) — Mumbai. (Website: https://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/)

What I have done in one month :

Gave presentation about my previous work (link of PPT)
Read papers on Design & Tech education and other subjects
Interacted with PhD Students, faculty members, Research Scholars, Post Docs, short term visitor (Coffe pe charcha, attending moc presentations, attending defence of PhD, after lunch walks and discussions during dinner)
Designed activity and tested first version of that in school
Translation and Proofreading of Vigyan Pratibha Modules

Learnings :

I have started exploring new world of Research Papers and PhD Thesis
Critical thinking skill (How to ask right questions, how to see things with critical lense)
I got to know about the working style of research scholars, PhD students and Faculty members
I got to know little bit about academic writing and activity development process (how to write resonal, how to find reference, taking consents, analysing the data and re design your activity, how to write clear instructions)
I found some very interesting work which I can use with children directly

Vigyan Pratibha :

I like the module of VP modules because of inquiry based approach
I see these as part of my ‘project based learning’ intervention

But I feel we should do proper mapping of topics and develop module. Also instruction design of the module should be improved

Ankush sir shared with me his vision behind the VP. what I have understood from that “we are trying to create module which localised / contextualized and from that local situation children observe and realise scientific principles and use it in the same or different context” he gave the example of poetry where poet observe and feel something and share it with symbolization.

Website: https://vigyanpratibha.in/

Source : https://www.gnowledge.org/projects/stemgames.html

CUBE :

I find the cube project very interesting. I personally like biology and when I saw cube’s work it was very relatable. I will try to some of cube project myself and after that i will introduce it with my children

Website: https://www.gnowledge.org/projects/cube.html

STEM game platform :

Metastudio is a very interesting platform which I find very useful for learners to communicate, collaborate and learn through discourse.

Website: https://metastudio.org/

Project based learning technical report by Saurav Soham:

I read a technical report by Saurav Soham & Chitra mam. I found a few very interesting things like samples of rubrics and how to evaluate team / group work, types of curriculum integration.
Apart from that I didn’t find anything new about PBL. I realized that these projects are focused on very narrow learning outcomes. There are no affective domain learning outcomes included in the list.
All the projects seem very technical and abstract. For me real life connection is not the things which are available in the real world but the things / concepts which I feel excited about. There should be my feeling involved in the project.
Also there should be some beyond textbook learning outcomes like self awareness and self management skills. So my philosophy of education is little beyond the cognitive domain.

Socio Scientific Issues (SSI), Science Technology and Society, History of Science :

I got to know about these terms after coming to HBCSE. I wish to mix up project based learning and SSI as pedagogical tool. I feel I can use SSI in my classroom and it is very powerful tool.

Read about SSI here — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-scientific_issues

I am also interested in history of science which includes : How science is not value neutral, it is biased by the values of researchers and scientist, how can we be reflective about the science.

Work of Sugra mam, Aswathi di, Deepa mam, Ankush sir is very inspiring.

Source : https://dnte.hbcse.tifr.res.in/tpd/

Design and Technology Education lab :

The Design and Technology (D&T) Education research at HBCSE is guided by (theoretical) issues of collaborative design, cognition and action, and concerns about the development of language, quantitative and problem solving skills among school students.

It is carried out through collaborative participation of school students in design, making and evaluation of need-based artefacts and systems. The activities would integrate aspects of affect (wants, desires and aesthetics) and judgements (making strategic alliances, choosing materials and evaluating products). We engage school students in using knowledge, skills (thinking, manual, procedural, artistic, social, etc.) and values (aesthetic, social) through structured design and making tasks.

Here you can read my understanding of D&T education.

Website: https://dnte.hbcse.tifr.res.in/