Breaking The Mold Of The Traditional Classroom: STEM Unicorn ...

Studying can be all fun and games with STEM Unicorn’s virtual learning platform.

Entrepreneurs play an indelible role in our everyday lives. From the iPhone you might be using to read this article to the numerous apps on your phone—everything is a product of innovation and a stroke of entrepreneurial genius. 

As of 2022, there are 582 million entrepreneurs worldwide, but there is always room for more. So, understanding the importance of entrepreneurship, especially in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) space, the founder of Tiger Duo Group Limited, James Kwan, created the EdTech startup STEM Unicorn. 

STEM Unicorn is a gamified learning platform that provides STEM education to secondary school students. It also encourages students to think outside the box and create their own tech startups from the ground up. If all of this has made you curious about STEM Unicorn, here is an overview of the platform and the kind of education it entails. 

The easiest way to understand STEM Unicorn is to think of it as an entrepreneur simulator game. First, you log into the platform and choose a virtual character (an “avatar”) that represents you in the game. 

Then, you can take lectures on STEM subjects and entrepreneurship from real-life experts and meta-humans inside the game. The lectures cover a range of STEM topics, including, but not limited to, drones, food technology, artificial intelligence, wearable technology and entrepreneurship-related topics, such as market research, pitching and fundraising and crisis management. These lectures are further supplemented by the platform’s required reading catalog post which the student must take a quiz to see how much of the syllabi they retained. 

Besides the lectures and quizzes, the platform also encourages students to live the life of an entrepreneur. This includes making tough business decisions, interacting with investors and spending in-game money to expand your startup. Once the students complete the program, they receive a STEM certificate and those who show a great deal of promise are featured in STEM Unicorn’s blog.

STEM Unicorn is all about providing students with a hands-on learning experience. Students are required to apply the learnings of the program during the startup simulation. This way, they are better prepared to deal with the challenges of being an entrepreneur in the real world. The platform’s gamified experience is particularly beneficial for the STEM disciplines typically dropped by students because they find them “too hard”. 

The biggest benefit of gamification is that it makes the student forget that they are studying

According to a study conducted by Taylor and Francis, 67% of students feel more motivated to learn with gamified courses as opposed to traditional teaching methods. It is also known to be helpful with retaining concepts. Research by the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education found that gamification increases students’ ability to remember information by 12.23%.

As time progresses, a lot of old jobs are dying out and being replaced with technology and automation. STEM Unicorn wants students to be prepared for this transition. It believes that inculcating entrepreneurial skills in students can not only help them better adapt to change but also lead the tech industry as change makers. 

A lot of STEM Unicorn students have come up with exciting projects, such as— AI teaching assistants, quantum computing solutions and motion-tracking technology, to name a few. The startup has also worked with students from some of the top schools in Hong Kong, including the English School Foundation (ESF), St. Paul’s Co-education College, Hong Kong International School and more. The STEM Unicorn program costs between US$3,199 and US$6,399 per 150 students, depending on the number of modules being taught. However, the company is a champion of education and offers its program free of charge to schools that are unable to fund the program for their students.  

If you are a school administrator or an investor looking for the opportunity to finance the development of the next generation of entrepreneurs, you can check out STEM Unicorn’s website for more information. 

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Header image courtesy of STEM Unicorn’s website.