Teaching High School Students Design Process and 3-D Printing: Lessons Learned

We conducted a summer teaching class about advanced manufacturing and 3D printing (project financed by National Nuclear Security Administration (NISA) & Department of Energy DOE). 3D printing is considered to be one of the most innovative technologies of the current century, with diverse applications in education, engineering, art, and design. With our summer program, our objective is to serve advanced manufacturing, as evolving technology and to improve STEM education and prepare the new generation of high-school students (future engineers) by the use of the existing tools. Through the use of programs, such as Autodesk Inventor and CREO, as well as 3D printing concepts, we include both technology and basic traditional STEM topics, such as math and science. These tools allow the students to reach their objectives without going through complex mathematics and engineering concepts and methods. This way, these projects will mostly focus on critical thinking and the development of creative solutions to problems. Without deep mathematics knowledge, students were able to conceptualize, customize and prototype their design. The visual nature of these tools (Inventor and CREO) and the 3D printing technology enabled high-school students to grasp the technology and concepts very quickly. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the design and implementation of an experiment, from basic parts. In particular, we will discuss the lesson learned, such as: Instead of going through the program chapter by chapter, we are encouraging collaboration and integrated work, through a set of projects that students need to select only five of them that fit their need and curiosity. Going through the design process, step-by-step: define the problem, background research, specify the requirements, brainstorm solutions, development work, prepare the prototype and finally assessment and analysis. Students have the ability to create their own designs using tools to reach creative design and concrete outcomes. Most importantly, the project methodology will be discussed. We discuss the project design program from students’ point of view, and the experience earned in design, integration, and also in written and oral communication skills. The methodology used to evaluate the effectiveness of this design program in term of learning outcomes is also described. In this paper, we focus only on the third year of the summer camp.