STEM Vocabulary Resources: Putting technical terms on the map

This presentation session reported on a Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC)-funded project, aiming at developing online resources to assist students in learning technical vocabulary associated with STEM. In recent years, the necessity of producing such resources has been acknowledged, since acquiring subject knowledge and improving professional communication require a thorough grasp of specialized lexicons (Woodward-Kron, 2008; Knoch, 2014). Students, however, often have difficulty mastering subject-specific terms (e.g. Todd, 2017). The creation of more learning materials using corpora and technology has been urged (Liu & Lei, 2019).

A key goal of the project is to identify technical terms that appear in STEM textbooks and develop interactive resources that will be beneficial to both students and teachers. The presentation begins by examining the challenges involved in selecting technical vocabulary, concluding that multiple criteria and mixed methods should be used. The second part explores students' difficulties in properly expressing concepts in a multidisciplinary context, and offers strategies to help them succeed. The last part of the presentation contains a description of the resource development process, highlighting the principles applied and the lessons learned.