STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) education has recently been encouraged and attracted much national attention. This qualitative study aimed to conduct a thematic analysis of college student STEAM open responses to provide an examination of college students’ perceptions of their STEAM experiences into the STEAM field. Based on transformative learning theory, a thematic analysis of 756 written responses to seven prompts by 108 college student participants revealed three primary themes: (1) exciting and challenging difficulties, and transdisciplinary learning in STEAM; (2) STEAM learning of gradual process, problem-oriented instruction, and creative problem solving; and (3) metacognition development in STEAM. The findings revealed that undergraduates’ STEAM perceptions provide strong support for STEAM implementation to enhance teaching effectiveness in higher education.

In this paper, we assess the results of experiment with different machine learning algorithms for the data classification on the basis of accuracy, precision, recall and F1-Score metrics. We collected metrics like Accuracy, F1-Score, Precision, and Recall: From the Neural Network model, it produced the highest Accuracy of 0.129526 also highest F1-Score of 0.118785, showing that it has the correct balance of precision and recall ratio that can pick up important patterns from the dataset. Random Forest was not much behind with an accuracy of 0.128119 and highest precision score of 0.118553 knit a great ability for handling relations in large dataset but with slightly lower recall in comparison with Neural Network. This ranked the Decision Tree model at number three with a 0.111792, Accuracy Score while its Recall score showed it can predict true positives better than Support Vector Machine (SVM), although it predicts more of the positives than it actually is a majority of the times. SVM ranked fourth, with accuracy of 0.095465 and F1-Score of 0.067861, the figure showing difficulty in classification of associated classes. Finally, the K-Neighbors model took the 6th place, with the predetermined accuracy of 0.065531 and the unsatisfactory results with the precision and recall indicating the problems of this algorithm in classification. We found out that Neural Networks and Random Forests are the best algorithms for this classification task, while K-Neighbors is far much inferior than the other classifiers.

The economy, unemployment, and job creation of South Africa heavily depend on the growth of the agricultural sector. With a growing population of 60 million, there are approximately 4 million small-scale farmers (SSF) number, and about 36,000 commercial farmers which serve South Africa. The agricultural sector in South Africa faces challenges such as climate change, lack of access to infrastructure and training, high labour costs, limited access to modern technology, and resource constraints. Precision agriculture (PA) using AI can address many of these issues for small-scale farmers by improving access to technology, reducing production costs, enhancing skills and training, improving data management, and providing better irrigation infrastructure and transport access. However, there is a dearth of research on the application of precision agriculture using artificial intelligence (AI) by small scale farmers (SSF) in South Africa and Africa at large. The preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) and Bibliometric analysis guidelines were used to investigate the adoption of precision agriculture and its socio-economic implications for small-scale farmers in South Africa or the systematic literature review (SLR) compared various challenges and the use of PA and AI for small-scale farmers. The incorporation of AI-driven PA offers a significant increase in productivity and efficiency. Through a detailed systematic review of existing literature from inception to date, this study examines 182 articles synthesized from two major databases (Scopus and Web of Science). The systematic review was conducted using the machine learning tool R Studio. The study analyzed the literature review articled identified, challenges, and potential societal impact of AI-driven precision agriculture.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the detection and diagnosis of plant diseases has gained significant interest in modern agriculture. The appeal of AI arises from its ability to rapidly and precisely analyze extensive and complex information, allowing farmers and agricultural experts to quickly identify plant diseases. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the detection and diagnosis of plant diseases has gained significant attention in the world of agriculture and agronomy. By harnessing the power of AI to identify and diagnose plant diseases, it is expected that farmers and agricultural experts will have improved capabilities to tackle the challenges posed by these diseases. This will lead to increased effectiveness and efficiency, ultimately resulting in higher agricultural productivity and reduced losses caused by plant diseases. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the detection and diagnosis of plant diseases has resulted in significant benefits in the field of agriculture. By using AI technology, farmers and agricultural professionals can quickly and accurately identify illnesses affecting their crops. This allows for the prompt adoption of appropriate preventative and corrective actions, therefore reducing losses caused by plant diseases.