IDEIA SPACE’S STEAM PROGRAM, AN INNOVATIVE EDUCATIONAL PROJECT IN BRAZIL

Abstract

The universe has always been a fascinating subject to humankind. Since the very first time we looked
at the stars, we take it in magical, religious, philosophical and scientific ways, and it always gets us to ask more
questions about our universe, our world and ourselves. Therefore, because of Space’s multidisciplinarity
potential, it can grasp the attention of anyone who encounters space related subjects at some point. In Brazil, the
teaching of school subjects is still very antiquated and there is little incentive for children to follow scientific
paths. So, by using Space as a tool to better engage students in their own learning processes, the group Ideia
Space created an innovative program that engages middle school students and provides them with scientific
experimentation. Through active methodologies such as PBL and gamification, Ideia Space aims to motivate
students on learning and getting involved in STEAM. The program consists of a 20-hour course that simulates a
space mission using an educational PocketQube satellite model. Students are divided into groups of 4 people
and go through the 5 stages of a space mission. The first stage is the Mission Concept, in which they think
together what kind of data they want to collect and what experiments they will need to make based on their
grade’s curriculum. The second stage is the Mission Calculation, where students choose which sensors their
satellite requires to perform the mission. The third stage is the Project, where they use a provided kit to assemble
the PocketQube for their mission. The kit contains: one 3D printed structure that accommodates the electronics;
batteries and solar panels as the EPS; one CPU as the OBDH; altitude sensor, gyroscope and accelerometer as
the AODCS; antennas and GPS as the TTC; and a group of different sensors and modules of which the students
can choose their payload. After that, the fourth stage begins, which is a drone takeoff with the PocketQube
attached so it can collect the data and simulate a satellite in orbit. With all the data the student collected, the last
stage begins with the analysis of these informations. Through the educational program of Ideia Space, students
can have a first hand experience of a space mission, work interdisciplinary areas of knowledge, engage in
ONU’s SDG number 4 and also improve themselves by working with real problems and building data based
solutions since school’s age.
Keywords: STEAM, education, PocketQube, satellite,

1. Introduction notable that, in Brazil, the teaching of school subjects is

Education is a subject that nations
worldwide are concerned about. And because of its
many nuances, problems and possibilities, there are
several ways to improve education in a country. The
first step though, is universal, we need to analyze and
compare the education level in different countries to
visualize what they have been doing about it. The
OECD Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) is a good start point to apply our
first analysis. The exam seeks to find what students
know in reading, mathematics and science, and what
they can do with what they know. According to
OECD [1], “It provides the most comprehensive and
rigorous international assessment of student learning
outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the
quality and equity of learning outcomes attained
around the world, and allow educators and policy
makers to learn from the policies and practices
applied in other countries.”
Following this line of thinking, when we look
at Brazil’s position on the last PISA exams, we see that
the country's results are below the average and its
position on the world ranking is very low. It is also
still very antiquated and there is little to none incentive
for children to follow scientific paths. Therefore Brazil
cannot ignore the important areas of knowledge
STEAM approaches. So, a research was made relating
investments on STEAM areas (Science, Technology,
Engineering, Arts and Math) and the quality of
education in other countries. We find out that the
improvement of education in those fields, particularly
for minorities and other disadvantaged populations at
the primary and secondary levels, has become an
increasing concern across the globe, predominantly in
the United States where STEM related subjects are
deemed as essential to the overall growth and
advancement of the country. (Xie, Fang,&
Shuman,2015).
With this in mind, a group of students from the
University of Brasilia, in Brazil, began a project called
“Ideia Space”. Since Aerospace science encompasses
multiple areas, including all STEM related ones, those
students started building an extracurricular course to
motivate students on learning and getting involved in
STEAM. Ideia Space created its program to engage
middle school students and provide them with scientific
experimentation through active methodologies such as
PBL (Problem Based Learning) and gamification.
 The main goal of Ideia Space is to become a
teaching methodology that connects classroom content
to space and its technologies by solving real-world
problems with the students as the protagonist. To do so,
we need a good understanding of the problem, good
planning and lots of tests and improvements on the
program.
2. Problem
To understand the problem that the Ideia Space
program wants to face, the PISA exam can be used as a
thermometer of the quality of education in Brazil. The
last exam evaluation was carried out in 2018 and
delivered as a result, in addition to the OECD report, the
National Institute of Educational Studies and Research
Anísio Teixeira - INEP’s study analyzing the exam
results. These two studies showed that 68.1% of
Brazilian students, aged 15 years old, do not have basic
knowledge in mathematics and yet 55% do not have
basic knowledge of science. These numbers, stable
since 2009, show Brazil as a country below the average
of the countries participating in the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development and the worst
country in South America in mathematics and science.
Figure 1. Brazil mean score in PISA subjects
When looking regionally at the result for
Brazil, we see that the less developed regions of the
country (mainly North and Northeast) had much lower
results when compared to other regions. Regarding
mathematics, 41% of students who are at the basic level
of knowledge are unable to solve simple questions, with
the best performance averages in the south and
southeast regions, followed by the central-west region.
Regarding science, 19.9% of students were able to use
basic or everyday scientific knowledge to recognize
aspects of simple and known phenomena. Regarding the
maximum level of proficiency, no Brazilian student was
able to obtain it.
The Pisa 2018 database points out a series of
factors and contexts associated with the numbers and
averages of Brazilian education, mainly on the subjects
mentioned above. The main factor raised is the
socioeconomic factor, with students in socioeconomic
advantage surpassing the students in socioeconomic
disadvantage by 97 points on the proficiency scale. The
lack of school material, professionals and school
segregation between the best and the worst
economically acted directly on the low averages that
Brazil obtained in Pisa 2018, in relation to other OECD
countries and also to other economies.
Finally, an analysis was made in relation to the
school climate, that is, situations that the student
experiences during the school day. Among the factors,
the main ones are related to the lack of cooperation
between classmates and student-teacher interaction. In
percentage terms, according to the Pisa 2018 database,
48% of students report that their classmates cooperate
with each other and 57% report that there is competition
between them. In the student-teacher interaction factor,
17% of students report that the teacher does not
demonstrate satisfaction in teaching, directly impacting
learning and presence in the classroom.
A plausible explanation for the current
situation is related to the directions of Brazilian
education, which are strongly related to the political
context experienced by the country at each moment in
national history. It is no different with the teaching of
science in the country, it has always been directly
related to public investment policies in education. Since
the democratic model of government was established in
Brazil, in the 1980s, the thinking about science teaching
in basic education is no longer exclusively directed
towards training future workers (KRASILCHIK, 1998)
to become an instrument of critical interpretation of the
world that surrounds them through scientific thought
(CHAUÍ, 1997) and, using the scientific method as a
way to reach the truth, questioning the existing
relationships between science, technology, society and
the environment. Many authors argue that current
science education should incorporate themes related to
social and environmental changes, as they believe that
the potential for change in science can increase its
usefulness and foster student interest.
3. The Program
Faced with the problem of education in Brazil
and the opportunity to create something new to help
solve it, a group of students from the University of
Brasilia in Brazil began a project called “Ideia Space”.
Since Aerospace science encompasses multiple areas,
including all STEAM related ones, those students
started building an extracurricular course to motivate
students on learning and getting involved in STEAM.
Idea Space created its program to engage middle school
students and provide them with scientific
experimentation through active methodologies such as
PBL (Problem Based Learning) and gamification.
However, before engaging in the project, it was
necessary to test some assumptions and confirm some
hypotheses. For this, two tests were performed, which
took place at a tutoring school in the city of Águas
Claras, near Brasília. The team had the chance to
perform the tests on two different days with different
groups of students from the tutoring school. The
objective of the classes were to test the spatial theme as
a motivator for the class, generating more student
engagement, more interactions and more understanding
of the subjects taught. In addition, the objective of those
tests were to apply a differentiated class methodology,
with more interactions and conversations with students.
For the first test class, there were two students of
completely different profiles and ages. Student number
1 was a high school student who want to pursue a career
in the field of law. This student has a history of being
proactive in class, but a little shy in responding in class.
Student number 2 , on the other hand, is a sixth year
student, which is the first year of middle school who
was not quite sure of a chosen career yet but was
interested in working in some area related to firefighters
(especially rescue). This student has a history of being
shy in the classroom and having few interactions. The
test begun with an introduction to space related subjects
and to space environment. Then it followed a more
interactive lecture on which the students needed to
correlate satellites and space technologies that were
taught to daily life experiences and technologies. But
the class had little to none interaction with the students
and in a conversation after the test they explained the
points we could improve to enhance their experiences.
Given this, the following points about the class were
considered: for a better class flow, we can prepare the
concepts that will be used and worked on, so that it is
clear to the teacher and the student what each concept
means. And we can also prepare the hooks for how to
pull from one slide to another and how to transition
from concepts to an interaction or a curiosity in a way
that doesn't get too abrupt. In addition, a two-teacher
lesson model helps break the flow of the lesson and
make the presentation of concepts more dynamic. From
this test, it was possible to confirm the space as a
motivator, but it did not have the expected result
regarding student participation in the class, the most
likely hypothesis being that the class model is very
similar to a traditional class model, so students feel
trapped in interacting. Therefore, it was necessary to test
this hypothesis in the second class.
The second test had the same 2 students as
control factors, plus 6 students of varying ages and
profiles. About the diversity of the group of students, it
is worth mentioning a student with a degree of autism,
the difference in age of the students (some 12 years old
and others 16 years old) and the fact that most of them
do not know each other. With this in mind, it was
possible to confirm that the class process for different
levels of students brings different levels of questioning,
so the challenge of metaphorizing the language in which
the spatial concept is being explained becomes
something totally necessary in the class process. In this
second test, the class was performed differently, this
time the teacher formed a circle with the students and
everyone sat down, including the teacher. At the
beginning of the class, a group dynamic was held to get
to know the students better, so that they could get to
know the teacher better and, thus, “break the ice”. With
this change in class structure, the number of interactions
were extraordinary and it was possible to confirm the
hypothesis that the closer to the traditional class model,
the less students will interact and participate. Another
addition to this test was the use of social media during
class. At times, the teacher opened question boxes on
Instagram and students should interact there and in the
classroom as well, which generated an excellent result,
with the more shy students interacting through
Instagram until they felt confident to interact personally
in class also.
With the completion of these two tests, in
short, the main hypotheses and motivations for carrying
out the Ideia Space program and creating an
extracurricular program that connect classroom content
to space and its technologies were confirmed, solving
real-world problems. The proposal is for the program to
have 20 hours of classes divided between theoretical
and practical classes, demonstrations and discussions
addressing the topics of classroom, robotics and
programming. To better understand the structure of this
project, let's divide it into Methodology and
Technology.
4. Methodology and Technology
The Ideia Space methodology is inspired by
the PBL (Problem Based Learning) method and tries to
connect the student in the classroom with the solution of
real problems. The purpose of the program is, through
dynamics and work involving the areas of STEAM,
students leave with a mindset focused on analysis and
problem solving. The 8 classes run through the 5 stages
of building a space mission: Mission Concept, Mission
Calculation, Mission Design, Launch and Data
Analysis. During the course, students are introduced to
concepts related to space and the contents given in the
daily life of the classroom in a different way. Starting
with the organization of the classroom, where the
teacher does not present himself as a single speaker,
standing in front of the class. Students sit in a circle,
with a teacher and mentor sitting in a circle as well.
Alongside with a slide presentation, the first class
begins and, later, the second class in the same model.
The objective of the first and second classes is
to contextualize students about the project as a whole. It
explains to the students how the dynamics of the
program will be carried out and, in addition, an
introduction is made to important concepts that will
help students to think about their space mission. Among
the concepts discussed are: space, vacuum, gravity,
rockets, satellites and space missions. In the
introduction to the concept of space, students learn what
we consider space and especially why it is an important
subject in everyday life. In this part of the class,
students understand how the concepts of physics and
chemistry we learn while exploring space can be used in
everyday life. After this brief introduction, the concept
of vacuum, gravity and orbit is explained. With these
basic concepts of the space environment, we can
proceed to explain what rockets are and how they work,
and especially the purpose of rockets. Now students are
contextualized to understand the concept of satellites,
possible applications, how they are built and how they
are designed. During these two classes, the content
presented is related to the topics of the BNCC
(Common National Curriculum Base) and accompanied
by experiments, videos and other media to illustrate
them and bring them closer to the students' daily lives.
After this contextualization, the third class
begins. In it, the objective is to introduce students to
what space missions are and what possibilities exist in
this environment. In this class, students are divided into
groups of 4 people who will work together throughout
the program. Then, they are shown some examples of
space missions and how they are designed, from their
conception to their realization. With this, the groups are
separated and we can start a brainstorming session in
each group to decide which space mission they will do.
At first, this process is not concerned with whether the
mission is possible or not, the goal is to generate as
many ideas as possible. After the groups come up with a
list of missions they would like to do, they must
eliminate the missions from the list until there is only
one that will be performed by the group. Then, with the
chosen quest, the party must give that quest a name that
will be the group name as well.
Classes 4 and 5 aim to work with students on
project requirements. In these classes, the main point is
to encourage students to analyze and specify their
mission proposal. Initially, the design requirements are
worked out more generally, focusing on how to make
the space mission as a whole viable. Later the focus
becomes the satellite that the students will build, so the
requirements are now directed towards this step. In class
4, the concept of project requirements and how they are
thought and listed within a project is presented. After
students submit the first list of requirements, the fifth
class begins which introduces the principles of sensing,
electronics, data collection and processing. We
introduce students to how a sensor works and how data
is collected. We then describe to them the sensors they
have available and what data they each collect as well as
a demonstration of each sensor. With this, they can list
the requirements listed with each sensor and draw up
the final list with the components needed to complete
the space mission.
By this class, the first two steps are completed
and students can proceed to build their PocketQube. In
this stage, covered in the sixth class, students receive
the PocketQube assembly kit (1 kit per group of
students) which contains all the necessary components
to assemble the satellite. A step-by-step guide on how to
assemble and how to test each assembly step is
presented, in addition to providing monitors to assist
groups of students. During this class, students have the
opportunity to deepen their knowledge of electronics
and programming already applied to their own project.
Despite being very manual, this step has some
knowledge pills given during the construction of the
satellite to complement the skills worked.
In the seventh class, with the satellites ready,
the launch stage begins. A simulation of the launch of
the satellite is performed. Satellites are moved away
from the classroom environment and students begin to
capture data from the sensors. After collecting the data,
the students separated each of the necessary data based
on what they determined as they imagined their space
mission.
The last class consists of analyzing the data
collected and preparing the completion of the space
mission. Each group, at the end of the program, will
present the data collected and their conclusions about
the space mission to the rest of the class. With all
students together, a discussion begins about possible
improvements, possibilities and conclusions beyond
those elaborated by the presenter group. With this, the
program is completed and, depending on the contract
with the educational institution, students may or may
not take the PocketQube built by them home.
In summary, the specific skills worked at each
stage in general are:
 Table 1 - List of classes and skills
Classes Skills worked
Introduction to the space environment.
1 and 2 Mathematical principles and natural
sciences applied to everyday life and the
space environment. Historical context of
space exploration. Presentation of areas of
knowledge that have emerged and that may
arise from space exploration.
3 Group work, creative process, problem
solving
4 Group work, problem analysis, project
management
5 Group work, problem analysis, project
management, risk analysis, electronics,
programming
6 Group work, team management, task
sharing, problem solving
7 Data collection, data processing, teamwork
8 Data analysis, problem solving, group
work
As the Ideia Space program uses the
technology of its PocketQube kit as the main tool in the
students' learning process, one of the project's pillars is
the development of this technology. .For the
development of this educational kit, several
requirements were listed that the kit should meet. First,
the main points related to which points of the teaching
methodology the satellite should cover were defined.
From these points, functional and non-functional
requirements were generated, which could be essential,
important or desirable. Regarding the functional
requirements, there are: an LED to indicate whether the
system is on or not, battery powered system, ability to
record latitude and longitude, communication between
ground station and PocketQube, low noise in received
signals, altitude record during the mission, data
processing at the ground station, monitoring the
temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure of the
air, monitoring carbon monoxide/dioxide and nitrogen
dioxide in the air, and finally monitoring ultraviolet
radiation. As non-functional requirements, there are:
communication distance between ground station and
PocketQube of at least 512 meters in diameter, low
power consumption at times when communication
between PocketQube and ground station does not occur,
low data accuracy monitored, the components must be
connected to printed circuit boards, a system weighing
less than 2 kg, and displaying the sensors for monitoring
the aforementioned parameters.
Based on the aforementioned requirements, the
following components were defined: MPU6050,
BME280, GPS GY-NEO6MV2, MICS-6814 and
GUVA-S12SD, and for the definition was taken into
account mainly cost, technical specifications and power
consumption . The kit design took into account an
assembly logic that favors the students' understanding of
how the system works and the logic behind this
construction. For this, 4 printed circuit boards belonging
to Ideia Space's intellectual property were created.
6. Conclusions 
With the Ideia Space methodology and
technology, the next steps begin with applying the
methodology in schools in the country, expanding the
scope of the project to address students of a more varied
age group, improving the technology by incorporating a
simulation drone launch and, in the future, a space
launch. The ultimate goal of this project is to become a
teaching methodology in which schools throughout
Brazil can look to provide their students with a school
experience that really prepares them for life. Inspired by
Nelson Mandela's phrase: “Education is the most
powerful weapon you can use to change the world” and
that's the idea.
Acknowledgements
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