K-12 teachers provide meaningful technical projects for teams of first-year engineering students

Summary form only provided, as follows. Students enter engineering school with some desire to solve real problems, yet they spend much of their academic career working textbook exercises. Sometimes they get to solve a real problem in their senior design project, sometimes they must wait until they have graduated and obtained a job. They need opportunities to confront real engineering problems, problems that have far more unknowns than equations. In this project K-12 teachers provided problems, usually gadgets they would like to have in their classrooms. These problems had to be solved to the clients' (the teachers') satisfaction by first semester engineering students. Teams were formed by maximizing each team's diversity according to the members' Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Each team got one problem, along with a set of milestones and a $25 budget. The nine projects from six schools in five school districts across southern Maine included: a working model of a MagLev vehicle, a model of the skeleto-muscular structure of the arm, a revised manual for assembling a 12 U long model of a bridge, a wooden timeline with world-wide events 3000 BC-2000 AD. Midway through the 10-week project, we held a design review; all the students critiqued each team's design. This review improved the final products significantly. Throughout the semester teams shared their experiences, so all students saw multiple perspectives on teamwork and on working with clients and real-world problems. At the end of the semester we held an exposition where all the products were displayed and demonstrated. Later teams delivered their products to the clients' classrooms. This project accomplished the following goals: give first-semester engineering students a meaningful design experience and exposure to other team experiences. Introduce teamwork on a technical project early in each engineering students' academic career. Connect the Engineering Department with local K-12 teachers in a useful way.