Educational STEM Laboratory: An Experimental Paradigm, Theory Design and User Experience Case Study

In this paper, we describe the educational and technological design of a highly modularized STEM learning toolkit for students to learn the technologies behind IoT and Fintech through setting up an unmanned smart shop on their own. The modularized design allows students to work individually or collaborate as a team, which facilitates both the teaching needs required from the experimental class and also the self-study needs of researchers. This physical unmanned smart space laboratory is a project from a vocational institute in Hong Kong. We conducted a user study to evaluate the performance of the smart shop learning toolkit and had received positive feedback, in which 87% of the students prefer to learn the smart shop technologies and STEM through our toolkit. Our results demonstrate that our smart technology learning toolkit is an effective and fun way to teach students about STEM and the cutting-edge technologies.