Accessible Playground Design: A Community-Connected Elementary Engineering Unit Focused on Designing Accessible Playground Equipment

Tejaswini S. Dalvi; Kristen B. Wendell; Chelsea Joy Andrews; Nicole Alexandra Batrouny

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Conference: 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual Conference
Publication Date: July 26, 2021
Start Date: July 26, 2021
End Date: July 19, 2022
Conference Session: Pre-College Engineering Education Division Resource Exchange
Tagged Division: Pre-College Engineering Education
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 3
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--36637
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/36637
Download Count: 445

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Paper Authors

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Tejaswini S. Dalvi University of Massachusetts, Boston

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Tej is an Assistant Professor of Science Education and is affiliated with Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Center Of Science and Math In Context. She has a PhD in theoretical physics and has active research in field of elementary science and engineering education.

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Kristen B. Wendell Tufts University

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Kristen Wendell is Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor of Education at Tufts University. Her research efforts at at the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach focus on supporting discourse and design practices during K-12, teacher education, and college-level engineering learning experiences, and increasing access to engineering in the elementary school experience, especially in under-resourced schools. In 2016 she was a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). https://engineering.tufts.edu/me/people/faculty/kristen-bethke-wendell

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Chelsea Joy Andrews Tufts University orcid.org/0000-0002-9017-595X

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Chelsea Andrews is a post-doctoral researcher at Tufts University and University of Massachusetts-Boston in STEM education. She received a B.S. from Texas A&M University in ocean engineering, an S.M. from MIT in civil and environmental engineering, and a PhD from Tufts University in Engineering Education. Her current research includes investigating children's engagement in engineering design through in-depth case study analysis.

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Nicole Alexandra Batrouny Tufts University

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Nicole Batrouny is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Tufts University. Her engineering education research interests include upper elementary engineering education, integrated science and engineering, collaboration in engineering, and decision making in engineering. For her Master's thesis, she uncovered talk moves used by 4th grade students that fostered collaborative, disciplinary decision-making during an engineering design outreach program. For her dissertation, she intends to explore the ways in which team mental models function in teams of novice engineers and how novice engineers can be trained to collaborate more effectively on diverse teams.

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Abstract

In the ConnecTions in the Making project, researchers and district partners work to develop and study community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units that support diverse elementary students’ science and engineering ideas, practices, and attitudes. In the community-connected units, students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades use human-centered design strategies to prototype and share functional solutions to a design challenge rooted in the students’ local community while scientifically exploring the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge.

One of the units is “Accessible Playground Design,” a grade three unit that engages students in designing a piece of accessible playground equipment. It comprises 10 lessons, approximately 1 hour each, including a launch lesson, followed by four inquiry and four engineering design lessons, and a final design exposition.

In the launch lesson, students learn about the engineering challenge: to design one piece of accessible playground equipment. They are introduced to the ideas of “accessibility” and “inclusion” leading into a discussion that establishes the need to have accessible playgrounds to ensure that ALL children in their community can play together. Students also see the need to know how to make things move, stop and slow down, to be able to engineer a design, establishing a reason to delve into inquiry lessons.

During inquiry lessons, students first explore the concepts of force and motion, followed by magnetism. Students engage in multiple hands-on activities that provide for observations leading into rich discussions around the central concepts. Each of the inquiry lessons is tied to the design challenge either through carefully crafted facilitation or the framing of the essential questions.

During design lessons, students are engaged in planning, building, testing, and iterating their designs prototypes of an accessible playground equipment, to meet the identified set of design requirements. To build, students can choose from a variety of materials like cardboard, strings, playdough, springs, magnets, etc. Along with the bulk of the time reserved for building and testing, explicit peer feedback sessions are scaffolded into the plans where students can discuss their ideas and challenges. The aim of these sessions is not only to critique each other’s design but also help solve problems. Students also document their ideas, tests, iterations, challenges and the final design.

At the final Design Expo, students share their designs and design process with other students and members of the school and greater community.

While the unit was designed to build on the grade 3 engineering and physical sciences standards, it also functions as a stand-alone integrated science and engineering unit for grades 2-5. While the framing and context for the launch lesson as written, connects to a current engineering problem in [blinded], it could be easily aligned with any community’s general requirements. Alternatively, examples of similar types of problems common to many communities are also provided.

At the exchange, we will provide full documentation of the design challenge, links to the accompanying lessons and examples of student solutions.

Citation
Format

Dalvi, T. S., & Wendell, K. B., & Andrews, C. J., & Batrouny, N. A. (2021, July), Accessible Playground Design: A Community-Connected Elementary Engineering Unit Focused on Designing Accessible Playground Equipment Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36637

TY - CPAPER
AB - In the ConnecTions in the Making project, researchers and district partners work to develop and study community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units that support diverse elementary students’ science and engineering ideas, practices, and attitudes. In the community-connected units, students in the third, fourth, and fifth grades use human-centered design strategies to prototype and share functional solutions to a design challenge rooted in the students’ local community while scientifically exploring the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge.

One of the units is “Accessible Playground Design,” a grade three unit that engages students in designing a piece of accessible playground equipment. It comprises 10 lessons, approximately 1 hour each, including a launch lesson, followed by four inquiry and four engineering design lessons, and a final design exposition.

In the launch lesson, students learn about the engineering challenge: to design one piece of accessible playground equipment. They are introduced to the ideas of “accessibility” and “inclusion” leading into a discussion that establishes the need to have accessible playgrounds to ensure that ALL children in their community can play together. Students also see the need to know how to make things move, stop and slow down, to be able to engineer a design, establishing a reason to delve into inquiry lessons.

During inquiry lessons, students first explore the concepts of force and motion, followed by magnetism. Students engage in multiple hands-on activities that provide for observations leading into rich discussions around the central concepts. Each of the inquiry lessons is tied to the design challenge either through carefully crafted facilitation or the framing of the essential questions.

During design lessons, students are engaged in planning, building, testing, and iterating their designs prototypes of an accessible playground equipment, to meet the identified set of design requirements. To build, students can choose from a variety of materials like cardboard, strings, playdough, springs, magnets, etc. Along with the bulk of the time reserved for building and testing, explicit peer feedback sessions are scaffolded into the plans where students can discuss their ideas and challenges. The aim of these sessions is not only to critique each other’s design but also help solve problems. Students also document their ideas, tests, iterations, challenges and the final design.

At the final Design Expo, students share their designs and design process with other students and members of the school and greater community.

While the unit was designed to build on the grade 3 engineering and physical sciences standards, it also functions as a stand-alone integrated science and engineering unit for grades 2-5. While the framing and context for the launch lesson as written, connects to a current engineering problem in [blinded], it could be easily aligned with any community’s general requirements. Alternatively, examples of similar types of problems common to many communities are also provided.

At the exchange, we will provide full documentation of the design challenge, links to the accompanying lessons and examples of student solutions.

AU - Tejaswini S. Dalvi
AU - Kristen B. Wendell
AU - Chelsea Joy Andrews
AU - Nicole Alexandra Batrouny
CY - Virtual Conference
DA - 2021/07/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Accessible Playground Design: A Community-Connected Elementary Engineering Unit Focused on Designing Accessible Playground Equipment
UR - https://peer.asee.org/36637
DO - 10.18260/1-2--36637
ER -