STEM Education in the Middle School Classroom: The Effectiveness of the Engineering Design Process

• Dat Nguyen, Early Childhood Education/Early Childhood Special Education, University of Delaware

• Teresa Hickok, AA-ETE, University of Delaware

STEM education is an opportunity to engage students in lessons that prompt them to think, plan, experiment, and invent. Teachers are tasked with creating lessons that offer them opportunities to build these skills. One way in which teachers can help students explore these types of hands-on learning opportunities is through the engineering design process. The engineering design process is a systematic, iterative process in which designers generate, evaluate, and improve concepts for devices, systems, or processes in order to solve a real-world problem. This study focuses on students using the engineering design process to solve real-world problems in civil engineering. This study also aims to determine to what extent middle school student’s use of the engineering design process improves their understanding of civil engineering. I have investigated this topic by using the TeachEngineering digital library of lesson plans to teach the engineering design process. In doing so, I’ve facilitated students’ mastery of problem-solving through challenges that require them to determine solutions using a trial-and-error, collaborative approach. My findings, along with my research on teaching the engineering design process, will be used to create a set of recommendations for future First State Squash middle school teachers who plan to teach their students civil engineering.