Engineering For Educators

To increase the preparedness for and interest in Engineering, as well as general math-science skills in our youth, a new course has been developed in cooperation with the Education College at Boise State University called “Engineering for Educators”. The goal is to reach more K-12 students for longer periods of time and at earlier ages than most outreach activities allow. The education students are mixed with the engineering students in the existing “Introduction to Engineering” course. The education students get an extra hour a week with an education professor to discuss how the engineering projects could be used in the K-12 classroom to meet state teaching standards for math and science as well as reading, writing and other non-technical subjects. Combining the educators in with the engineers has three main benefits. First, the educators get to see what the engineering students actually learn without the material being watered down. Second, the teaching load is distributed by including more bodies in existing sections requiring the education professor to only prepare the discussion lecture and not the engineering projects. Third, by interacting with the engineering students, the educators can break down some of their stereotypical views of engineers and they may be more likely to recommend this field to their future K-12 students when they see a student with the appropriate interests. Although this reports on the first semester that the course was offered, those involved have seen several improvements in student attitude, both engineering and education students. However, the most telling improvement is the confidence level of the education students. They have found that they can play a valuable part in any team project. Although they may not feel they have the necessary math skills they are able to organize, analyze and synthesize the ideas. Also, once the math is explained to them they realize that they do understand the concepts. The education students are also seeing numerous ways that the course projects could be used in the schools. Plans are to continue to offer this course in the following semesters with expectations for higher enrollment including some practicing teachers. Discussion is beginning on making this course an acceptable substitute for the math & science methods course offered by the Education College. P ge 10549.1 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education Introduction The desire to increase the preparedness for and interest in engineering, as well as general mathscience skills in our youth has been prevalent for many years. Many methods have been used towards this goal. In the past 10 years a greater focus has been placed on the National Science Standards and the National Mathematics Standards. The basic goals of these standards have been adopted by most states over the course of these 10 years. Among those goals is a new approach to teaching both mathematics and science. Traditional methods of instruction focused on the memorization of facts with little connection to the real world. The standards set goals to focus more on the process skills necessary to learn the subjects. This originally meant a “hand’son” approach to teaching. However, it is not enough to do hand’s-on activities. There has to be a process of meaning making that is developed from those concrete experiences. It is from this that students are now asked to not only do hand’s-on but also mind’s-on activities. This goal is often met by engineering projects. The most common approach taken to reach younger students and expose them to engineering is for engineering faculty to go into the public schools or to invite the students to the university for contests or intensive camps. While these activities are usually very beneficial to the receiving students, this has the drawback that it only reaches a small percentage of the K-12 students, and is very time consuming for the engineering faculty. These activities also usually have a relatively short duration compared to the other educational activities, and are often viewed by the receiving students as a break from the “reality” of school rather than an integral part of it. The other weakness is that all too often these outreach activities reach the students in high school when the students have generally decided that they have an interest in math/science/engineering, or as all too commonly occurs, that they do not have such an interest. The goal of those involved in this melding of Engineering and Education is to reach more K-12 students for longer periods of time and at earlier ages than most outreach activities allow. Massachusetts decided that part of the solution was to require that engineering be taught in the K-12 classroom along side reading, math and science. “The Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework is one of seven curriculum frameworks that advance Massachusetts’s educational reform in learning, teaching, and assessment... Its purpose is to guide teachers and curriculum coordinators about what content should be taught from PreK through high school” [1]. In Idaho similar legislation has not been proposed, but a desire to increase engineering education in the K-12 level exists. An issue that always arises when legislating that some additional material be taught in the classroom is that the teachers need to be prepared to properly and confidently deliver this material. A new course has been developed called “Engineering for Educators” that will enroll education majors in the existing “Introduction to Engineering” course supplemented by a seminar lead by an education faculty member to discuss how the engineering projects could be used in the K-12 classroom to meet state teaching standards for math and science as well as reading, writing and other non-technical subjects. Combining the educators in with the engineers has three main benefits. First, the educators get to see what the engineering students actually learn without the material being watered down. Second, the teaching load is distributed by including more bodies in existing sections requiring P ge 10549.2 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education the education professor to only prepare the discussion lecture and not the engineering projects. Third, by interacting with the engineering students, the educators can break down some of their stereotypical views of engineers and they may be more likely to recommend this field to their future K-12 students when they see a student with the appropriate interests. The remainder of this paper describes how this program developed and logistics involved in actually running the course. Examples of some of the units used in this course and how they apply to the K-12 classroom will be introduced. The paper will conclude with observations gleaned from the preliminary run of this course and an outline of plans for continuing this into the future. History and Logistics Collaboration between the Colleges of Engineering and Education at Boise State was started in 2001 after the respective college Deans attended an IEEE sponsored workshop. An ad-hoc committee was formed which introduced the faculty of the respective colleges to each other providing a chance to develop a sense of trust. This led to a collaboration that produced the “Engineering for Educators” course. Several options were considered for how more engineering could get infused into the curricula in Idaho schools. These options included summer workshops and development of lesson plans packets for in-service teachers. After discussing how we would reach these teachers and convince them to devote time to our agenda it was realized that 100 pre-service education majors graduated from Boise State University each year and that reaching them might be easier since several of their faculty were on this committee and were in a position to change their curricula. Next the engineering faculty had to be convinced that the presence of education majors in the engineering classroom would not adversely affect the engineering students’ education. Engineering majors are expected to be concurrently enrolled in Calculus I when taking “Introduction to Engineering” whereas most education majors do not take calculus. It was decided that education students would be required to have the “Geometry and Probability” mathematics course as a prerequisite for entering the Engineering for Educators course. This would assure the education majors were in their third or fourth year of the program so their maturity could compensate partially for a less rigorous math background. Although Geometry and Probability may not cover the same concepts as the Calculus course, it does focus on some of the same content that students in a Calculus course might have but at a more basic level. For the Engineering for Educator’s course to count towards the education curriculum, it needed to be an upper division course and we wanted to make sure that the engineering students wouldn’t take this course and try to count it as an upper division engineering elective. The math prerequisite, in addition to assuring the education majors were in the proper point in their program, helped to solve this problem. The education students get an extra hour a week with an education professor to discuss how the engineering projects could be used in the K-12 classroom to meet state teaching standards for math and science as well as reading, writing and other non-technical subjects. This also helped justify the upper division status of the course. P ge 10549.3 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education We anticipated that