Incorporating Arts into Electronics Engineering: A STEAM Approach to an Embedded Systems Programming Course

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a paper that discusses the implementation of a STEAM approach to an embedded systems programming course. It is an interesting paper, and here are some of my comments that might help improve the paper:

1) Abstract: There is no clear problem statement presented in the abstract. The abstract starts with the aim of study. Technically the authors should present the main problem and describe briefly about current research, and move into the problem statement, in 2-3 sentences, just before the aim of study.

2) Lines 40-41: The sentence "These aspects are normally overlooked, as the course focuses on low-level programming, optimization techniques, hardware-software co-design by integrating microcontrollers into electronic circuits" might require some citations to further substantiate this claim.

3) Lines 46-49: The sentence "Developing such gadgets are done by teams of engineers, programmers, and graphical designers, but engineers are not always on the same note as artists, which can lead to development issues, delays in time-to-market, and compromises not always welcomed by the final users" may unintentionally downplay the breadth of engineers’ competencies and could be interpreted as suggesting that engineers are the primary cause of development delays or compromises. I would recommend that the authors rephrase this sentence to present a more balanced view, avoiding language that may come across as overly judgmental. Additionally, it would strengthen the statement if supporting references or citations were provided to substantiate the claim.

4) Lines 49-50: The sentence "Familiarizing engineering students with artistic concepts can bridge the gap between team members and..." appears to be incomplete.

5) Line 50: The authors could further strengthen their problem statement by highlighting the various methods that have been employed to enhance engineering students' conceptual understanding, while also pointing out the relative lack of emphasis on the integration of arts within engineering education under the STEAM framework. For example, the authors may consider referencing the paper “An Empirical Study on E-Learning versus Traditional Learning Among Electronics Engineering Students” (https://thescipub.com/abstract/10.3844/ajassp.2016.836.844) to illustrate existing approaches, and then identify the gap that the STEAM approach, particularly the inclusion of the arts, aims to address.

6) Line 250-252: The authors may wish to reconsider the phrasing of the sentence "As one would expect, we do have a normal distribution..." to ensure it aligns with the tone and conventions of academic writing. In scholarly contexts, it is generally advisable to avoid attributing outcomes to presumed expectations of the reader, as this can introduce subjectivity. A more objective and academically appropriate phrasing would focus on the empirical result itself rather than anticipated perceptions.

7) The survey was not made available in the paper. It is also important to provide citations to justify where the survey construct or survey items were adopted from. Or were they perhaps self-developed by the research team and not directly adopted from anywhere? Even so, there should be references to demonstrate where the survey was adapted or modified from.

8) The findings presented in the Results and Discussion section are currently not linked or compared with existing literature or prior studies. This comparison, whether direct or indirect, is an essential component of a research paper, as it provides context, supports critical analysis, and strengthens the validity of the findings. I believe the authors can substantially enrich their discussion by incorporating relevant literature comparisons to highlight similarities, differences, or novel contributions.

9) The conclusion is too brief. There should be some points covered on how the findings of this study fulfilled the main purpose of this study, some points on the limitations of this study, and some points on the directions for future work. I hope the authors can include these points in the conclusion.

Overall, this is an interesting and relevant study that is likely to attract the attention of readers of Education Sciences, and it presents a suitable contribution for publication in this journal.

Author Response

Comment 1: Abstract: There is no clear problem statement presented in the abstract. The abstract starts with the aim of study. Technically the authors should present the main problem and describe briefly about current research, and move into the problem statement, in 2-3 sentences, just before the aim of study.
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Response: ok, I have extended the abstract to have a problem statement in the beginning

Comment 2: Lines 40-41: The sentence "These aspects are normally overlooked, as the course focuses on low-level programming, optimization techniques, hardware-software co-design by integrating microcontrollers into electronic circuits" might require some citations to further substantiate this claim.

Response: I have added a citation to the reference books for this course

 

Comment 3: Lines 46-49: The sentence "Developing such gadgets are done by teams of engineers, programmers, and graphical designers, but engineers are not always on the same note as artists, which can lead to development issues, delays in time-to-market, and compromises not always welcomed by the final users" may unintentionally downplay the breadth of engineers’ competencies and could be interpreted as suggesting that engineers are the primary cause of development delays or compromises. I would recommend that the authors rephrase this sentence to present a more balanced view, avoiding language that may come across as overly judgmental. Additionally, it would strengthen the statement if supporting references or citations were provided to substantiate the claim.

Response: I have rephrased this paragraph
Regarding references this is mostly my own observations while working for several embedded developer teams, besides some odd blogposts I didn't really found academic studies in this regard, maybe in the future it would be an interesting topic to study it further

 

Comment 4: Lines 49-50: The sentence "Familiarizing engineering students with artistic concepts can bridge the gap between team members and..." appears to be incomplete.

Response: Sorry for missing this, I have now fixed this as well

 

Comment 5: Line 50: The authors could further strengthen their problem statement by highlighting the various methods that have been employed to enhance engineering students' conceptual understanding, while also pointing out the relative lack of emphasis on the integration of arts within engineering education under the STEAM framework. For example, the authors may consider referencing the paper “An Empirical Study on E-Learning versus Traditional Learning Among Electronics Engineering Students” (https://thescipub.com/abstract/10.3844/ajassp.2016.836.844) to illustrate existing approaches, and then identify the gap that the STEAM approach, particularly the inclusion of the arts, aims to address.

Response: I have added a mention about this reference and that current literature actually lacks anython more STEAM oriented in the field of electronics engineering

 

Comment 6: Line 250-252: The authors may wish to reconsider the phrasing of the sentence "As one would expect, we do have a normal distribution..." to ensure it aligns with the tone and conventions of academic writing. In scholarly contexts, it is generally advisable to avoid attributing outcomes to presumed expectations of the reader, as this can introduce subjectivity. A more objective and academically appropriate phrasing would focus on the empirical result itself rather than anticipated perceptions.

Response: I have rephrased slightly this paragraph, to emphasize more the inspection of the plots and concluding the slight difference in student perception over programming and design

 

Comment 7: The survey was not made available in the paper. It is also important to provide citations to justify where the survey construct or survey items were adopted from. Or were they perhaps self-developed by the research team and not directly adopted from anywhere? Even so, there should be references to demonstrate where the survey was adapted or modified from.

Response: I have added a subsection to the Materials and Methods detailing the survey

 

Comment 8: The findings presented in the Results and Discussion section are currently not linked or compared with existing literature or prior studies. This comparison, whether direct or indirect, is an essential component of a research paper, as it provides context, supports critical analysis, and strengthens the validity of the findings. I believe the authors can substantially enrich their discussion by incorporating relevant literature comparisons to highlight similarities, differences, or novel contributions.

Response: As an electronics engineer I'm not really used to link Discussions with other papers, that is usually done in the introduction/literature review.  But I did try to search for some studies with similar context, to make such comparison, but unfortunately there aren't that many to be able to  do some relevant linking.

 

Comment 9: The conclusion is too brief. There should be some points covered on how the findings of this study fulfilled the main purpose of this study, some points on the limitations of this study, and some points on the directions for future work. I hope the authors can include these points in the conclusion.

Response: I have extended the conclusions a little bit by suggesting some further studies needed

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General comments:

The article (reference number 3789593) addresses a relevant subject in education research, the STEAM education. More specifically how students perceive the adittion of artistic tasks to an engineering course. Major revisions are required as further detailed for each article section.

The introduction section should include a clear definition of the objective of the study and research questions.

The methodology section should be strongly improved. There is the need to detail the nature of the study, that is, the quantitative ou mixed (quantitative and qualitative) research framework. Therefore it should be described how this study situates itself in education research.

It is not clear how the data of the pedagogical intervention were obtainded. For example what type of data was colected (student feedback, teachers observation etc) and how student´s data were collected. The number of participants and methodological characteristics of the questionaires should be also detailed (for example how many participants perform it, at what moment were the questionaires performed, etc). Other important details are missing from the methodology. For example only in line 312 the reader learns that the GUI model is presented to students in a course of the 4th year.

The results and discussion section should be strongly improved. The quantitative data from the questionaires should be triangulated with the descriptive comments of the students (qualitative data). The results are described, but it is completely absent the discussion and comparison with published studies that aimed to answer similar objectives, performed similar analysis, or obtainded similar or contraditory results.   

The conclusion section should present more details and include, for example limitations of the study, its implications and recomendations for further studies.

 

Specific comments:

Lines 46-49: it could be interesting to address more specific studies that suport this phrase regarding the multidisciplinary preparation of an multidisciplinary team, so it can work in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner. The phrase on lines 49-50 is incomplete, maybe the asked references were at the end of this phrase.

Lines 51-54: it should be clear the study objective, specifically regarding the methodology that will be used to “survey” or monitor the students. It should be also stressed (as futher detailed in methodology after 196 line) why this approach was used to monitor what is intended in students. For example which are there specific advantages of this GUI model activity proposed to students to monitor what is intended.

Line 154, it would be preferable “experiment” instead of “to play”.

Line 155, students are supposed to use their previously aquired “artistic abilities” or further develop them in this activity or both? 

Line 250 “we do have a normal distribution” this claim should be supported by statistical analysis.

Author Response

Comment 1: The introduction section should include a clear definition of the objective of the study and research questions.

Response: I have extended the description about the paper sections to include an overview about the student survey as well.

 

Comment 2: The methodology section should be strongly improved. There is the need to detail the nature of the study, that is, the quantitative ou mixed (quantitative and qualitative) research framework. Therefore it should be described how this study situates itself in education research.

Response: I have compiled this paper from an engineer's perspective, in that the Materials and Methods describe the tools and workflows employed in the STEAM approach, while the Discussion section contains the student feedback, so the description about the survey, the education research part went into this section.
I have however extended this section to describe better the survey itself

 

Comment 3: It is not clear how the data of the pedagogical intervention were obtainded. For example what type of data was colected (student feedback, teachers observation etc) and how student´s data were collected. The number of participants and methodological characteristics of the questionaires should be also detailed (for example how many participants perform it, at what moment were the questionaires performed, etc). Other important details are missing from the methodology. For example only in line 312 the reader learns that the GUI model is presented to students in a course of the 4th year.

Response: I have added a subsection to the methods section detailing the feedback questionnaire
I have also inserted an explicit note at the beginning of this section about the course being a final year course at our university
(the university name is blanked out for peer review)

 

Comment 4: The results and discussion section should be strongly improved. The quantitative data from the questionaires should be triangulated with the descriptive comments of the students (qualitative data). The results are described, but it is completely absent the discussion and comparison with published studies that aimed to answer similar objectives, performed similar analysis, or obtainded similar or contraditory results.   

Response: I made a few more remarks in the discussions to link student comments and ratings, regarding comparison with published studies, however, since the general lack of studies in similar domains I wasn't really able to add such references

 

Comment 5: The conclusion section should present more details and include, for example limitations of the study, its implications and recomendations for further studies.

Response: I have extended a little bit the conclusion section, to also highlight limitations and the need for further studies
 

 

Comment 6: Lines 46-49: it could be interesting to address more specific studies that suport this phrase regarding the multidisciplinary preparation of an multidisciplinary team, so it can work in an integrated and interdisciplinary manner. The phrase on lines 49-50 is incomplete, maybe the asked references were at the end of this phrase.

Response: this paragraph is based on my own observations while working in several embedded development teams, there aren't many studies out there focusing on this issue, I found only some blog posts which doesn't really worth referencing
But in the future it would be interesting to conduct such a study

 

Comment 7: Lines 51-54: it should be clear the study objective, specifically regarding the methodology that will be used to “survey” or monitor the students. It should be also stressed (as futher detailed in methodology after 196 line) why this approach was used to monitor what is intended in students. For example which are there specific advantages of this GUI model activity proposed to students to monitor what is intended.

Response: I have extended this paragraph to provide more insight into the sections of the paper, including the student survey

 

Comment 8: Line 154, it would be preferable “experiment” instead of “to play”.

Response: ok, changed

 

Comment 9: Line 155, students are supposed to use their previously aquired “artistic abilities” or further develop them in this activity or both? 

Response: both, I have reworded the phrase to reflect it 

 

Comment 10: Line 250 “we do have a normal distribution” this claim should be supported by statistical analysis.

Response: the normality of the distribution is just asserted from visual inspection of the histograms, the low sample size would lead to a low accuracy of statistical analysis anyway and the important observation from these plots is how the artistic elements have a greated perceived difficulty among engineering students