Creating Lego Prototypes For K 5 Using Functional Modeling

With design challenges, often K-5 students imagine concepts to create, but find themselves unable to translate their ideas into prototypes. Teachers, especially K-5 teachers, often need assistance with prototyping for design challenges. This research addresses this student and teacher dilemma by providing a web-based tool that combines functional modeling with LEGOs construction. The tool is based on the extensive research in the engineering design methodology community to develop functional modeling to assist engineers in concept generation. The Functional Common Basis (FCB) is a common language that allows functional models created by different individuals to be directly compared and analyzed. In this study, the principles of the FCB are adapted to assist students and teachers in building prototypes with LEGOs. A limited set of functions for designing with LEGO Technics, called the LEGO Functional Common Basis, was developed. The “Design with LEGO” web tool is based on the LEGO Functional Common Basis. The tool has been evaluated during teacher professional development institutes (PDI) that provide hands-on introduction to engineering design. Survey analysis of the tool indicates that teachers exposed to the tool plan on using it in the future. This paper provides an overview of the research on functional modeling with LEGOs, how functional modeling for LEGOs was used as the basis for the web-based tool, and a discussion of the findings that indicate positive results when the tool is used to assist with building LEGO devices as a part of K-5 design challenges.