Underpinning new teaching approaches to be further developed, SYSTEMIC will build a network of STEM schools involving STEM Teachers, guidance counsellors and head of schools. The project, through its close collaboration with STEM Alliance, will also contribute to a European STEM awareness campaign organising and promoting in all European schools a STEM Discovery Week, which will be the culminating event of a school year campaign (engaging students and teachers in partnership with industry professionals, with the professionals go back to schools activities).

SYSTEMIC is a joint initiative of both Ministries of Education (via EUN Partnership) and industry (through CSR Europe, the leading European business network for corporate social responsibility). SYSTEMIC will be coordinated by EUN Partnership, in Belgium. Since 2007, STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Maths) has been one of its major thematic areas. The SYSTEMIC proposal will develop complementary blocks of activity: it will address (1) the school education challenges (with two Ministries of Education involved - DGE and DCM) and (2) the role of industry in STEM education (with the active support of the STEM Alliance, mainly via European Schoolnet and CSR Europe and a local Technological centre in Obodos, Portugal).

  News from the SYSTEMIC project  

New Release: SYSTEMIC "Guide to the STEM Discovery Week & the Competition"
 

SYSTEMIC has just released a guide on the STEM Discovery Week.

The guide encourages organisations, schools and teachers to organize their own campaigns and provides them with ideas on tips on how to initiate and organize successful activities.

Download the Guide:

New Release: SYSTEMIC guides for the "Professional Go Back to school" scheme
 

SYSTEMIC has just released two guides to support the "STEM Professionals Go Back To school" scheme!

The "STEM Professionals Go Back To School" is a STEM Alliance scheme that encourages volunteers from STEM industry (technicians, scientists, engineers, researchers or employment and recruiting managers) and teachers to organise career talks and collaborative activities in schools. The programme is running all year long, and functions as a database of existing and new initiatives.

SYSTEMIC is supporting this scheme by providing two guides, one for schools and one for companies interested in organising and carrying out school visits. The guides provide information, advice and useful tips that both parties can take into account before, during and after their collaborative activities. By doing so, schools and companies will collaborate constructively into organising visits and activities that will promote collaboration between the respective school and industry plus raise students' awareness on STEM careers and future STEM jobs.

Download the Guide for Companies:

Download the Guide for Schools:

Back to School Webinar: "Game on: Play, Games & Learning"
 

Date & time: Jointly organised by STEM Alliance, Scientix and SYSTEMIC the webinar was held online on Friday, 27 September 2019 at 18:00 CEST (Central European Summer Time) in English language.

Description: This webinar gave teachers, career counsellors, educational authorities and researchers an understanding of STEM careers by inviting dedicated STEM professionals to share their experience, knowledge and advice for STEM careers and skills of the future.

The speaker, Stephen Bezzina (Education Officer for Diversity: Learning to Learn & Cooperative Learning, Department for Curriculum, Lifelong Learning and Employability at the Science Centre Pembroke in Malta), shared exclusive insights into his professional development and useful skills to thrive in the area of STEM. In particular, Stephen Bezzina dealt with the question whether games are a waste of time or not. He also talked about statistics on games and gamers, showing that in 2010, around 500 million users played digital games for at least one hour a day. The largest group of gamers were young people who learnt several skills while playing, such as eye-hand coordination, induction from observation, parallel processing and the integration of multiple interacting variables. Stephen then explained that good game designs can make great learning machines in which these skills are transferred. Some important aspects of games for learning are situated meaning, feedback, progress, adaptivity and failure. As concrete steps to implement game-based learning, he suggested to follow the structure of introduction, gameplay and debriefing in order to guide students' gaming in an educational context.

The recordings and slides shared during the webinar can be found here: http://www.stemalliance.eu/webinar-game-on

STEM Careers and Skills of the future webinar – Careers in Computer Engineering

Date & time: Jointly organised by SYSTEMIC, STEM Alliance and Scientix, the webinar on "STEM Careers and Skills of the Future: Careers in Computer Engineering" was held online on Wednesday, 17 April 2019 at 18:00h CEST (Central European Summer Time) in English language.

The purpose of this webinar was to give teachers, career counsellors, educational authorities and researchers an understanding of careers which can be developed in the STEM field, specifically in the IT and cybersecurity industry.

The speaker Gonçalo Abreu, Managing Partner in MakeWise (Obidos, Portugal) talked about his career and life path, sharing his insights on different stages of his personal development, from being a student and employee to becoming an entrepreneur. He explained what consultancy work he does at MakeWise and showcased the many applications of smart vision sensors in transport, logistics and retail. Many participants were amazed by the used technology in meal recognition for self-service at restaurants and canteens. Gonçalo also talked about how technology is changing the way we work and the skills that are vital to thrive in the future companies. He thinks that a start-up entrepreneur should never stop learning and fuse many business and self-development elements ranging from marketing and sales over engineering and business development to research and time management.

This webinar was an opportunity to learn more about STEM careers; the careers existing in tech companies, the study path to follow, key skills needed, possible places of employment, and teaching materials to support you in advancing your learnings from the webinar.

The recordings and slides shared during the webinar can be found here: http://www.stemalliance.eu/webinars/careers-in-computer-engineering

The Second high-level event of the SYSTEMIC project
 

Brought together in Malta, around 120 STEM education actors participated in the STEM High-Level Event "Fostering Industry Cooperation within STEM School Education Strategies" organised by the SYSTEMIC, STEM Alliance and Scientix projects as well as Transport Malta, the Maltese Ministry of Education and Employment and the Science Centre Pembroke Malta. This event gathered key stakeholders from industry, education as well as national and European policymakers to promote the European STEM education agenda on a political level. In the course of the event, Ministries of Education, industries and other STEM actors

• Exchanged best practices of STEM initiatives and networked to find synergies for new future collaborations in STEM education
• Discussed how they can support the development of STEM education actions at European level for higher sustainable growth and more innovation
• Shared innovative practices regarding STEM education developments and promote STEM careers to create a future work force.

Participants from 26 countries, among which there were 16 representatives of Ministries of Education [8] and 18 companies (Cisco, Transport Malta, Texas Instruments, Ineos, Repsol, DELL, LEGO Education, Samsung Electronics, Makeblock, Microsoft, Oracle, Jobiri, EPCA, GSMA, EPCA, IBM, Amgen, and Vodafone) as well as policymakers, researchers, teachers, headmasters took part in the event.

To read more about the event outcomes and next steps visit: http://www.stemalliance.eu/documents/99712/3262552/STEM-HLE-brochure-FINAL.pdf/21461fee-ecb8-46d6-af04-e87be89ad933

[8] Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Spain (Catalonia) and Turkey.

The first high-level event of the SYSTEMIC project
 

The 1st SYSTEMIC High Level event including high-level representatives from businesses and the education sector gathered in Brussels, Belgium, on 7 December 2017 to discuss how to advance and scale up business-education cooperation to improve Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies and careers in Europe.

The conference, jointly organised by the SYSTEMIC and the STEM Alliance project, funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ programme, demonstrated the business case for companies to invest in STEM Education and enhance the attractiveness of STEM jobs in Europe. The event was opened by Michael Teutsch from the European Commission's Directorate General for Education and Culture, and Sarah Atkinson, Vice-President of CA Technologies, a STEM Alliance partner. Co-chaired by Marc Durando, Executive Director of European Schoolnet, and Celia Moore, Member of the Board of Directors of CSR Europe, the event hosted a wide mix of companies, Ministries of Education and educational organisations that are strongly engaged in promoting STEM education and careers to young Europeans.

For more information on the speakers, presentation and videos shown during the High Level event please visit http://www.stemalliance.eu/high-level-event-2017.

The 2nd SYSTEMIC High Leven event will take place in 2019.

SYSTEMIC 2nd Consortium meeting in Lisbon
 

The 2nd SYSTEMIC Consortium meeting was hosted by the Ministry of Education (DGE) and took place in Lisbon on May 25th 2017.

During the meeting, the project partners have exchanged and reflected on the results from the first STEM MOOC "Opening minds to STEM careers". (). Content planning has also started for the preparation of the 2nd MOOC "Opening Schools to STEM careers" which will start at the end of September.

The final versions of the two guides that Systemic partners have prepared to support the "STEM Professionals Go Back to School" scheme have also been presented.

Next consortium meeting will take place in Brussels either before or after the 1st SYSTEMIC High Level event in December 2017.

SYSTEMIC Kick off meeting!

The SYSTEMIC kick-off meeting took place in Brussels on November 30th 2016. Partners will have the opportunity to meet every, approximately, 6 months in order to discuss the progress of the project's work but also use this opportunity to take decisions and advance their work. During this first meeting, the project partners, under the lead of the project coordinator (European Schoolnet), had the opportunity to go through the various project outputs and decide on their initial actions.

In the following months focus will be given on the development of training programmes for STEM teachers, heads of schools and career counsellors. The team will also work on the development of guides (one for schools and one for industries) to support the "Professionals Go Back to School" scheme.

Time was also spent of defining the collaboration and communication channels that partners will be using for the duration of the project and going through the financial particularities of the Erasmus+ projects.

Next consortium meeting will take place in Lisbon around May-June 2017.

  Online training courses  

  Guide on contextualising STEM education  

SYSTEMIC has published the "Teacher Placement Initiatives – Collection of Best Practices" booklet, containing a selection of 15 initiatives collected from 10 countries around the world, providing inspiring examples of STEM teacher placements in industry. One of the main aims of this "Teacher Placement Initiatives – Collection of Best Practices" is to help overcome the lack of awareness of career development opportunities for teachers, taking into consideration the urgent need to bridge employment gaps by sustaining cooperation between school and industries. The publication contains precious insights for industry on how to attract new generations of students into STEM careers while understanding the workforce available, allowing a tailored targeting of specific candidates. Teacher placements are one of the best means to ease the integration of company-sponsored programmes in school curricula, helping policy makers meet the challenge of a lack of resources in schools and expand their knowledge about STEM subjects.   Download this booklet here

  Videos showcasing good practices in STEM education