Development of a Fundamentals of Electrical and Computing Systems Course for In-service K-12 Teachers

The Science, Technology and Mathematics portion of STEM have been well covered in K-12 education for a number of years. With the adoption of Engineering into the Science Standards in the state of Minnesota, the number of schools that actively offer engineering either as an institute or embedded throughout their K-12 science, math and arts curriculum is increasing. To better equip in-service and pre-service teachers to handle the needs of the engineering curriculum, the University of St. Thomas offers a Graduate Certificate in Engineering Education through its Center for Engineering Education. As a part of the certificate, in-service teachers go through a series of courses that expose them to the fundamentals of the engineering discipline, the engineering design process as well as a thorough review of the curriculum and ways of effectively integrating engineering into their existing courses. Teachers are also required to take one technical elective. These technical electives are typically offered as a part of the "Summer Academy". In 2013, two electives were offered one in the area of energy and the other in the fundamentals of the electrical and computer engineering disciplines. This paper presents an overview of the "Fundamentals of Electrical and Computing Systems" course, the topics covered, feedback received and some reflections based on the first offering of the course. A total of seven in-service middle and high school teachers took the course during the first offering of the course in summer 2013.