This project seeks to scale and translate the emerging findings from OER 28/19 LYT Designing for greater authenticity in Geographical Investigations (GI) through local microclimate studies with the Internet of Things (IoT) and open-source environmental sensors to the Natural Sciences and to A-Level curricula. This project was conceptualised because of requests from teachers from schools who have learned about the trajectory of teacher-designed enactments from OER 28/19 LYT and have – of their own accord – envisaged opportunities for such translation in to their respective curricula. Specifically, in 2019, a team from the NIE collaborated with officers from the Ministry of Education (MOE) (one from the Curriculum Planning and Development Division, and another from the Educational Technology Division) to enact a small-scale study through the Ministry’s Senior Specialist Track Research Fund in four secondary schools.

This SSTRF study was the basis of OER 28/19 LYT, which – in turn – forms the foundation of the present application. Through OER 28/19 LYT, meshes of sensor networks using the Internet of Things have been up and running in a number of local school campuses; these meshes generate data about each school’s local microclimate, which is being used by teachers in geography lessons. As the datasets have grown over time, the research team has leveraged Data Science to help teachers and students analyse and interpret them. These developments in leveraging Data Science and AI have been carried out in parallel with a Data Science and IoT general elective which the research team has been conducting during each semester at NTU since 2018, to very positive feedback from students.

Through this trajectory of growth and scale, OER 28/19 LYT meant that the team was able to host the Professional Development Leave work attachment of a Senior Teacher at a local independent school, who is now among the members of the present applicants. In terms of the GERA problems of policy and practice, our project specifically addresses Area 1: Disciplinary and Integrative STEM Learning Approaches and Area 2: Learning at the Intersection of different Mathematics and Science disciplines. To ensure tight coherence with the preceding: we count as a member of our team a Curriculum Resource Development Officer from the Sciences Branch of the MOE. Through the use of an always-on ‘big data’ infrastructure comprising low-cost, handheld environmental sensors, teachers participating in OER 28/19 LYT have expressed enthusiasm when they see for themselves how their more ‘hands-on’ oriented students respond to engaging in decision-making activities around what have been termed as Problems with Real-World Contexts.

Teachers have reported that their students find inquiry-based lessons more authentic when they are able not only to interrogate real-time data from within their everyday local environments (such as the school campus), but also to actually be responsible for the coding of the sensors. In this way, learner agency and ownership of learning has been greatly increased. As they engage in computational thinking, account for anomalies in the data, and take responsibility for trouble-shooting the coding, learning has greater context for this cohort of students, and the initiative is also aligned with Singapore’s strategic thrust of becoming a Smart Nation. The curricular approach has been recognised by UNESCO and was invited to be featured in the organisation’s 2016 publication ‘ICT in education’, and – more recently – in UNESCO’s first online interactive learning webinar, for the benefit of its global network of education stakeholders: ESD-Net 2030, which took place in March 2023.