How to be successful and thriving - STEM Club workshop GX002
This workshop is for STEM Club leaders who have been running a club for a while and want to help their club to flourish into the foreseeable future. It looks at different ways of running a STEM club, what a thriving and successful Club is like, how to maintain interest in the young people who attend, how to enhance the STEM experience and maximise the impact on the students attending the club whilst keeping running a club manageable in your workload.
Summary
Club leaders will gain inspiration, ideas and practical tips for developing their club, as well as an understanding of the importance of STEM Clubs and an appreciation of the vital role the STEM Club leader has in supporting and enthusing students. The workshop is aimed at secondary schools, Sixth Form and FE colleges across England with KS3, KS4 and KS5 provision. Designed as an online course it will take place across multiple sessions: Session 1: 1 hour interactive session, Session 2: Self-learning tasks and Session 3: 1 hour interactive session. The workshop includes practical activities, opportunities to network and the sharing of best practice. The workshop explores the following topics:
- consider the definition of a ‘Thriving and Successful’ club and the STEM Clubs criteria
- how to maintain interest with senior leadership, parents, local industry, community, students and how club leader skills can translate into the classroom
- promoting best practice through support networks and collaboration
- how to enhance student engagement by creating opportunities for responsibility and looking at ways to enhance essential skills and raise careers awareness understanding the benefits of impact, student evaluation and recognition schemes and how to gather evidence
- identifying challenges, competitions, projects and activities that engage student interest and how to plan activities, adapt projects and avoid potential pitfalls
- adding extra benefit through trips and visitors
- identifying funding sources and grants available nationally, regionally and locally; and exploring how to apply for grants and understand what information organisations are seeking
- generating opportunities, ideas or projects that could produce funding
- seeking materials and resources and how to approach local companies
Outcomes
By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
- identify the key factors that make a club successful and thriving and apply them to their own club, helping to maintain the interest of students and senior management
- enrich student engagement by identifying ways to increase student responsibility within the club and add value by developing opportunities to improve employability skills and careers knowledge
- identify ways to gather impact evaluation data and utilise recognition schemes to provide evidence that supports the benefits a STEM Club has on students, the school and the club leader
- enhanced understanding of potential funding streams and improved ability to write a grant application