Children are natural engineers. Engineering design activities for preschoolers introduce practices and encourage scientific habits of mind. The "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS Lead States 2013) highlight that crosscutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas can not be mastered without engaging in scientific investigations and…

Engineers are faced with solving important problems every day and must follow a step-by-step design process to arrive at solutions. Students who are taught an effective design process to apply to engineering projects begin to see problems as an engineer would, consider all ideas, and arrive at the best solution. Using an effective design process…

This article describes a reverse-engineering project where female students take a part a hair dryer--giving them an opportunity to see the many different kinds of engineering disciplines involved in making a hairdryer and that they work together. Mechanical Engineer, Lyn Gome, describes her experience leading a group of middle school girls through…

The High School Summer Research Program (HSSRP) is a rigorous eight-week research experience that challenges high school students to a novel scientific question in an engineering laboratory at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science (HSSEAS) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The program collates highly…

This article reflects upon an investigative study of the powerful impact that mentoring partnerships have on pre-college students and young engineering professionals in Hartford, CT. It was found that these partnerships can provide very strong foundations for a diverse pre-college student engineering pipeline that includes significant numbers of…

We have conducted an education project to communicate the wave energy concept to high school students. A virtual reality system that combines both hardware and software is developed in this project to simulate the buoy-wave interaction. This first-of-its-kind wave energy unit is portable and physics-based, allowing students to conduct a number of…

Hands-on practical work in physics and engineering has a long and well-established tradition in Australian universities. Recently, however, the question of whether hands-on physics and engineering practicals are useful for engineering students and whether they could be deleted or whether these could be replaced with computer simulations has been…

This paper discusses an experiment-based approach to teaching an advanced control engineering syllabus involving controlled plant analysis and modeling, control structures and algorithms, real-time laboratory experiments, and their assessment. These experiments are structured around the representative case of the longitudinal slip control of an…

Creativity continues to be an important goal for 21st century learning. However, teachers often have difficulties fostering creativity in their classrooms. Current creativity research suggests that the act of making can enhance the teaching of creativity. Hands-on engineering design lessons are ideal contexts for studying this effect. Through…

This paper describes the redesign and implementation of the course, "Introduction to Programming for Engineers" using microcontroller (MCU) hardware as the programming target. The objective of this effort is to improve the programming competency for engineering students by more closely relating the initial programming experience to the student's…

The question is, "What can vision do?" (Fritz, 1989) rather than "What is vision?" Keter's Chairman, Mr. Sami Sagol's vision is to establish an internship program that will strengthen the competitive edge of the Israeli industry, within the international arena. The program will set new standards of excellence for product…

In the United States and elsewhere, there is a dramatic shortage of engineers and technologists. And, unfortunately, these professions often suffer from a lack of awareness among K-12 students. Clearly, educators need to show students the very exciting and lucrative aspects of these fields. Engineering and technology are consistently listed by…

A summer academy is held for grade 9-12 high school students at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, every year. The academy, dubbed the Da Vinci Engineering Enrichment Program (DEEP), is a diverse program that aims to attract domestic and international high school students to engineering and sciences (and possibly recruit them). DEEP…

Technology and engineering education students responded to a survey regarding hands-on and hands-off activities. First, the students listed hands-on and hands-off activities and what characterized the two types of activities. Activities such as building or assembling something as well as working manually with tools were viewed as hands-on. Passive…

Incorporating business skills such as problem-solving, public presentations, collaboration, and self-direction into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects is an excellent way to build students' enthusiasm for these disciplines. When educators add workplace internships to the learning experience, they are well on their way…