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A Course Sequence in Engineering Design and Problem Solving

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Conference

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

San Antonio, Texas

Publication Date

June 10, 2012

Start Date

June 10, 2012

End Date

June 13, 2012

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Curriculum Development

Tagged Division

K-12 & Pre-College Engineering

Page Count

10

Page Numbers

25.35.1 - 25.35.10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--20795

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/20795

Download Count

378

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Paper Authors

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David T. Allen University of Texas, Austin

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David Allen is the Gertz Regents Professor of chemical engineering, and the Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Resources, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of six books and more than 200 papers in areas ranging from coal liquefaction and heavy oil chemistry to the chemistry of urban atmospheres. For the past decade, his work has focused primarily on urban air quality and the development of materials for environmental and engineering education. Allen was a Lead Investigator for the first and second Texas Air Quality studies, which involved hundreds of researchers drawn from around the world, and which have had a substantial impact on the direction of air quality policies in Texas. He has developed environmental educational materials for engineering curricula and for the University’s core curriculum, as well as engineering education materials for high school students. The quality of his work has been recognized by the National Science Foundation (through the Presidential Young Investigator Award), the AT&T Foundation (through an Industrial Ecology Fellowship), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (through the Cecil Award for contributions to environmental engineering and through the Research Excellence Award of the Sustainable Engineering Forum), the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (through their Distinguished Lecturer Award), and the state of Texas (through the Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award). He has won teaching awards at the University of Texas and UCLA. Allen received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering, with distinction, from Cornell University in 1979. His M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering were awarded by the California Institute of Technology in 1981 and 1983. He has held visiting faculty appointments at the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Department of Energy.

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Richard H. Crawford University of Texas, Austin

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Richard H. Crawford is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, and is the Temple Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellow No. 3. He received his B.S.M.E. from Louisiana State University in 1982 and his M.S.M.E. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1989, both from Purdue University. He joined the faculty of UT in Jan. 1990 and teaches mechanical engineering design and geometry modeling for design. Crawford's research interests span topics in computer-aided mechanical design and design theory and methodology, including research in computer representations to support conceptual design, design for manufacture and assembly, and design retrieval; developing computational representations and tools to support exploration of very complex engineering design spaces; research in solid freeform fabrication, including geometric processing, control, design tools, manufacturing applications; and design and development of energy harvesting systems. Crawford is co-founder of the DTEACh program, a Design Technology program for K-12, and is active on the faculty of the UTeachEngineering program that seeks to educate teachers of high school engineering.

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Leema Kuhn Berland University of Texas, Austin

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Leema Berland is an Assistant Professor of science education at the University of Texas, Austin. She earned a Ph.D. in the learning sciences from Northwestern University in 2008 and was a Doctoral Fellow with the NSF-funded Center for Curriculum Materials in Science (2003-2008). Berland is broadly interested in facilitating and studying students as they engage in complex communication practices. She is currently focused on exploring the dynamics of how and why students are able (or unable) to productively communicate in engineering classrooms, in the context of UTeachEngineering high school classrooms.

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Karen A. High Oklahoma State University

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Anthony J. Petrosino Jr University of Texas, Austin

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Anthony Petrosino is a Learning Scientist and an Associate Professor of science and mathematics education and the Elizabeth G. Gibb Endowed Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin. He received his Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, where he was a member of the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt (CTGV) for five years. While doing his doctoral work, Petrosino was a NASA Space Grant Fellow funded through the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He was a seven-year member of the NSF-funded VaNTH ERC and a Principle Investigator of a Department of Education funded PT3 grant. His additional research interests include informal science learning, engineering education and the development of expertise. While at the University of Texas, Austin, he helped establish the UTeach Teacher Preparation Program. Petrosino taught secondary science for seven years and is a certified K-12 teacher of science. In addition, he was an Assistant Superintendent of Schools for two years and was also a secondary school administrator for three years. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Science Education and Technology, the Journal of the Learning Sciences, Mathematical Thinking and Learning, Educational Computing Research, and the American Educational Research Journal.

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Theresa A. Dobbs UTeachEngineering and University of Texas, Austin

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Theresa Dobbs joined UTeachEngineering in March 2009 as Senior Program Coordinator, working with the Summer Institute and the Master's of Arts and Science in Engineering Education programs for in-service teachers. Prior to joining UTeachEngineering, Dobbs worked at the UT’s Center for Lifelong Engineering Education (CLEE) within the Cockrell School of Engineering. In her role as Senior Program Manager, she was responsible for the implementation of 100+ short courses, conferences, and certificate programs, with program topics covering a variety of engineering disciplines. Before joining the University of Texas, Austin, Dobbs worked for the National Alliance for Insurance Education and Research as a Program Coordinator. In all, Dobbs has more than 15 years management and meeting planning experience. Her education includes a B.B.A. in marketing from Texas A&M University.

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Cheryl Farmer UTeachEngineering

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Cheryl Farmer is the founding Program Manager and Project Director of UTeachEngineering. Funded through a five-year, $12.5 million Math and Science Partnership grant from the National Science Foundation, UTeachEngineering offers a well-designed, well-rounded, design-based high school engineering course that can be implemented at low cost in virtually any setting, as well as a variety of professional development programs for pre-service and in-service teachers who want to add engineering to their teaching portfolio. Prior to co-founding UTeachEngineering, Farmer spent several years managing programs for both K-12 and higher education. Before entering higher education, Farmer worked as a Project Manager in the environmental field. Her education includes graduate work in mathematics and business administration and a B.A. in mathematics and liberal arts, with highest honors, from The University of Texas, Austin.

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Jill A. Marshall University of Texas

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Jill A. Marshall is Assistant Co-director of the UTeach secondary STEM teacher preparation program.

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Abstract

A Course Sequence in Engineering Design and Problem Solving for Pre- Service TeachersHundreds of thousands of students are now being introduced to engineering in K-12 educationthrough engineering academies, dedicated, year-long engineering courses and throughintegration of engineering concepts into science and mathematics courses. New K-12 scienceeducation standards, proposed by the National Research Council, urge even more widespreadinclusion and integration of engineering into K-12 science education. Teachers participating inthese initiatives will need to be familiar with engineering as a profession, engineering methodsand the application of science and mathematics in engineering design and problem solving. Pre-service teachers, preparing to become the next generation of K-12 STEM educators, will need tohave a background engineering.Educational pathways for pre-service K-12 engineering teachers should be developed byengineering faculty and Colleges of Engineering, in collaboration with Colleges of Education.These educational pathways should be distinct from pathways for engineering students because:the pre-service teachers will have only a limited exposure to engineering, in contrast toengineering students who will experience an entire curriculum; education students should beexposed to the full range of engineering disciplines; pre-service teachers are preparing for acareer in education rather than a career in engineering; and education students who will becomeK-12 engineering educators will have a wide range of mathematics and science backgrounds.A three course engineering sequence, offered by engineering faculty, has been developed forscience and mathematics students preparing to become K-12 educators. Students participating inthese classes are enrolled in a program at the University which combines an undergraduate majorin mathematics or science with pedagogical courses offered by the College of Education. This isone possible path for preparing the next generation of K-12 engineering educators. Thispresentation describes the rationale for the structure of the courses, the learning objectives, thecontent and activities, and the experiences from the first offerings the courses.

Allen, D. T., & Crawford, R. H., & Berland, L. K., & High, K. A., & Petrosino, A. J., & Dobbs, T. A., & Farmer, C., & Marshall, J. A. (2012, June), A Course Sequence in Engineering Design and Problem Solving Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--20795

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015