daVinci@SUTD Experience

The first pilot run of MOE-funded SUTD’s STEAM x D (STEAM = Science, Technology, Environment, Engineering, Arts, and Math, and D = Design) workshop was carried out on 13-19 January 2022 with participating students from 5 different JC (Victoria JC, St. Andrew’s JC, Temasek JC, Tampines Meridian JC, and Dunman High School). The workshop is a human-centric, design, and technology interdisciplinary immersion programme as part of the daVinci@SUTD workshop series at Science, Mathematics and Technology (SMT) cluster, which looks to inspire youth in human-centre design and innovation that are grounded in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, fused with the understanding of Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (HASS) to serve greater societal needs.

During the 5-day period, we had the participation of 47 students, grouped in teams of 4-5 students, accompanied by 10 SUTD faculty members and 11 student helpers, and guest speakers from Dyson representing the James Dyson Foundation, Government Technology Agency of Singapore and LASALLE College of the Arts. We also had SUTD Provost, Prof. Phoon and Associate Provost of Digital Learning, Prof. Pey present their corresponding welcome address and to introduce our external speakers on day 1. Thoughout the workshop, we had MOE officers and Master Teachers joined the workshops as observers.

The 5-day programme was designed with a weekend (2 days) as an intermission for the purpose of providing reflection time for the students. Each day was separated into 2 segments (AM and PM) for the purpose of providing skills-transferring training sessions. The workshop was titled “Covid-19 Vaccine Cargo Airdropped to an Isolated Village Using Drones” while the project scenario or narrative was of a group of SUTD entrepreneurs undergoing a series of training sessions to rapidly acquire skills needed to deploy a comprehensive cargo delivery service.