Developing And Assessing Integrated Mechanical Engineering Curriculum For Middle School Students

Our society is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. The use of cell phones and mp3 players permeates every age group and socio-economic stratum. The creation of new devices that improve human life quality is the essence of engineering. Yet, the vast majority of the population does not even know what engineering is. In a 1998 Poll 61% of adults claimed that they were “not well informed” about engineering. This statistic is the result of the fact that engineering is generally not introduced in either elementary or secondary education. Exposing elementary and middle school students to engineering concepts will increase awareness of the general population and potentially lead to more children pursuing careers in engineering fields. This project introduces students at Rogers-Herr Middle School in Durham, North Carolina, to mechanical engineering fundamentals throughout the course of a school year. Our goal is to create an integrated curriculum accompanied by hands-on projects and weekly quizzes. Teaching is structured with weekly lectures accompanied by several interactive demonstrations and experiments. Students are given weekly hands-on projects that are evaluated and assessed based on their incorporation of the concepts presented in lecture. In addition, students are given short, individual, weekly quizzes that contain problems that rely on a conceptual understanding of the material presented during the previous week. The topics covered are: heat transfer, fluid dynamics and velocity/acceleration. Projects include mousetrap cars, catapults and Rube-Goldberg machines. This paper presents a detailed description of the program curriculum, the assessment instruments and conclusions regarding program effectiveness.