As STUST had gained supported from the USR Hub Seed Project in 109th academic year, Prof. Wen-Hsiong Wang and Prof. Da-Chi Liu, from the Department of Creative Product Design of STUST, and Instructor Rui-Feng Hsu worked closely with students from DIY Education Society. They jointly implemented the project of "Improving the Academic and Technological Literacy of Children in Disadvantaged Areas in Rural Areas." They were recently invited to three primary schools in rural areas—Tainan Daguang Elementary School, Changhua Sanchun Elementary School, and Tainan Houbi Elementary School—to conduct workshops. The DIY Education Society of the Department of Creative Product Design of STUST has cooperated for many years with Program the World Association (PTWA) of the Republic of China. Together they have been promoting DIY education camp plans and help solve the problem of disadvantaged learning in rural areas, where there are a lack of resources related to the syllabus technology information and media literacy courses in the 108th academic year.

[A group photo of the "DIY Education Society" of STUST.]

This project combines technology and local cultural characteristics to complete the development of teaching aids and teaching materials for "Mountain and Forest Concerto—Bluetooth Balanced Bird Nesting Light" and "Ocean Symphony—Bluetooth Thumb Piano Gramophone." During the summer vacation, two teacher training workshops—Technology Literacy and DIY Education Teacher Training—were held at STUST, and three were held at Nantou Zhushan Carp Elementary School, Taitung Children’s Book House, and Yunlin Linnei Chenggong Elementary School. A total of 72 elementary school teachers and students participated in the technological DIY education camp. In the course, teachers and students needed to personally complete works with craftsmanship, local culture and programming technology. It was a new challenge that combined hand-made and programming education. All teachers and students participating in the camp completed their own works. The learning achievements, achievements and fun brought by the integration of software and hardware were highly praised.

[Group photo of the awards ceremony of the STUST DIY Education Camp.]

In order to continue the successful experience of the “Technology Literacy and DIY Education Teacher Training” in the summer vacation, the DIY Education Society was invited to Tainan Daguang Elementary School and Changhua Sanchun Primary school and Tainan Houbi Elementary School for 3 consecutive weekends in December last year. This lesson plan incorporated feedback from summer students and teachers with much improvement. The biggest challenge lied in the need to adjust the activities and implementation process, condense the original two-day activity plan into one day, keep the characteristic elements of the original teaching plan, and develop a material package that is convenient to carry after the waste is removed.

[The DIY Education Society of STUST was having a teacher training workshop.]

Deng-Maw Lu, President of STUST, said that the Department of Creative Product Design has cooperated with PTWA for many years. Through professional practice, the teachers and students of STUST have helped at least 500 students from primary and secondary schools in rural areas. In addition, this year the planned research and development materials were supported and sponsored by MediaTek Co., Ltd. In the future, it will cooperate with the UMC Foundation, Taiwan Mobile, and other units to improve the disadvantaged education in rural areas, hoping to spread the research and development results to the disadvantaged areas of the country and make good use of the university’s professional resources and capabilities to improve the current situation of education in those areas and take the university’s social responsibilities.