Exploring the Engineering Design Process of First Grade Students

This research project explores how first grade students are able to engage in the engineering design process. Investigators: Merredith Portsmore, Marina Bers, Chris Rogers Funding Source: This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0307656. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Goals: The 2 first grade students below are testing a car they built to see how steep a ramp it will drive up. They will make changes to their design to try and get it to climb up steeper and steeper inclines covered in different materials. This research project endeavors to find out: Do students employ problem solving stategies when working on engineering design projects? Are they able to systematically test and evaluate solutions? Can they transfer these skills to other problem solving situations? Outcomes: (pending) Experiment Description: Four first grade classrooms (in a local area school) will be solicited to participate in the study. All students will participate in a pre-test to evaluate their problem solving abilities. Two classrooms will work on engineering design projects for 1- 1.5 hours per week for 10 weeks. Observations, interviews, pictures of their creations, and student journals will be collected and analyzed. At the end of twelve weeks, all the students will participate in a post test to evalute their problem solving abilities. Timeline: Spring 2006 - Literature Review and Instrument Assessment Summer 2006 - Pilot Study Fall 2006 - Data Collection Spring 2007 - Data Analysis Summer 2007/Fall 2007 - Thesis Defense Results: (pending) Related Literature: (pending)