Seminar

Enhancing STEM Students’ Engagement and

Learning Outcomes with Innovative Pedagogy
By

Dr. Nalin Sharda, B.Tech. Ph.D. IIT Delhi

Life Senior Member IEEE, Distinguished Lecturer IEEE Education Society

Summary

Traditional pedagogy of lectures, laboratories and tutorials is falling short of the expectations of the
current students of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Consequently, in
many countries students are moving away from STEM related courses. This seminar expounds how
innovative pedagogy, such as Digital Storytelling and Drama-based learning, can help to enhance
student engagement and lead to better learning outcomes.

Combining aspects of the creative arts with the technical content of STEM units can help to tap into the
students’ creativity, making the technical content more interesting and memorable. This leads to the
concept of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.

Dr Sharda will show how Digital Storytelling and Drama can be combined with STEM content to make
it fun, and a pleasure to learn at the school as well as university level education. The example of
Educational Drama (EduRama) will be shown as an innovative pedagogical model for enhancing
learners’ interest in Mathematics.

Dr. Nalin Sharda

Dr. Nalin Sharda was awarded B.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees by the Indian Institute
of Technology, Delhi.
He has held teaching positions at Curtin, Murdoch and Victoria Universities in
Australian, and visiting positions at Aachen University-Germany, Karlstad
University-Sweden, Jaypee University of Information Technology-India, and
Florida Atlantic University-USA. Presently he holds a honorary position at
Victoria University, Australia. More recently, he has presented a course on People
Management at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. Currently he is the Lead
Instructor for a Cloud Computing bootcamp with Generation Australia.
Dr. Sharda’s publications include the Multimedia Information Networking textbook published by
Prentice Hall, and over 120 articles, papers, and handbook chapters. He has researched the efficacy of
innovative pedagogies such as Digital Storytelling, Games and Drama for enhancing student engagement
and learning outcome in the context of eLearning and other applications.
Dr. Sharda has been invited to present lectures and seminars in the Distinguished Lecturer Series of the
European Union’s Pro-learn program and is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Education Society. He
has presented over 60 seminars, lectures, and keynote addresses in Austria, Australia, Bangladesh, China,
Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Macau, Pakistan, Japan, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden,
Switzerland, UAE, and USA.