Workshop - bringing engineering into middle schools: Learning science and math through guided inquiry and engineering design

For five years, faculty and students at the University of Virginia have been designing, implementing, testing, and distributing Engineering Teaching Kits (ETKs). We identify topics from science, math, and technology that have interesting engineering applications, and then help students learn science and math in the context of engineering design. Each ETK includes real-world constraints (budget, cost, time, risk, reliability, safety, and customer needs and demands), and each involves a design challenge that requires creativity and teamwork. These kits are used to introduce engineering concepts and methods into existing middle school science and math classes. ETKs promote awareness of the nature of engineering, and stimulate excitement about its practice. They also help develop an appreciation for the tradeoffs involved in the practice of engineering, and how engineering decisions impact society and the environment. In this workshop, we will introduce our approach to designing and testing Engineering Teaching Kits, show how our ETKs relate to educational standards (both state and national), demonstrate several ETKs, and have the participants work through others as though they were students.