Activities
Enterprise + STEM celebrates talented women who have taken their passion for STEM and turned it into a successful enterprise.
These activity-based resources are designed to teach enterprise and STEM in the classroom. These fun and simple activities are mapped to the curriculum and include:
Who can build the tallest structure using only 20 sticks of spaghetti, some tape and string, and one marshmallow? In this activity, students will develop:
- team building and collaboration skills,
- design and testing skills,
- and resilience in the face of challenges or frustrations
If you could design a paper plane capable of carrying $1 worth of coins across the sky, what would it look like? In this activity, students work in teams to design, create, and pitch their ideas for the perfect plane design to the class. Students will develop:
- team building and collaboration skills,
- design and testing skills,
- resilience in the face of challenges or frustrations,
- communication skills - practice pitching the idea, evaluate the pitch for a new concept, an understanding of the importance of communicating the pitch vs idea
- an appreciation prototyping as an effective way to develop a product or service in an unknown environment
What’s the ‘coolest’ product you can think of? What special expertise was needed to build it? Where did the technology come from? In this activity, students will blend technology and curiosity to explore the latest products in the marketplace. Students will:
- explore the potential for product and service improvements
- develop opportunities for innovation and improvement
- learn to look for opportunities in what they read and hear
- Develop communication skills: practice pitching an idea
Help your students develop interviewing skills, and imaginative and creative thinking. This activity assists students in exploring interests (beyond their own!) and to design entrepreneurial ideas based on information gathering.
This activity gets students exploring potential issues related to product improvement and to develop their communication skills by practising and pitching their ideas.
Enterprise+STEM Activity Sheets were developed as part of the Enterprise and STEM collaboration between the University of Tasmania, Griffith and Swinburne Universities through the generous support of The Invergowrie Foundation.
Case Studies
Enterprise+STEM have also created a series of case studies to promote women in STEM in Australia. These cases feature women who’ve combined their STEM backgrounds with enterprise skills to realise their dreams, and hopefully inspire your students to do the same.
Each case study includes a video, a case study designed for use in the classroom and teaching notes.