Reservoir Rescue: A Community-connected Elementary Water Filtration Engineering Unit (Resource Exchange)

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

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Conference: 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access
Location: Virtual On line
Publication Date: June 22, 2020
Start Date: June 22, 2020
End Date: June 26, 2021
Conference Session: Pre-college Engineering Education Division Technical Session 13
Tagged Division: Pre-College Engineering Education
Page Count: 3
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--35152
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/35152
Download Count: 442

Paper Authors

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Chelsea J. 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. 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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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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Tejaswini S. Dalvi University of Massachusetts, Boston

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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 also exploring scientific explanations of the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge.

One of these units is “Reservoir Rescue,” a fifth grade Environmental Engineering unit comprised of 12 lessons, approximately 1 hour each, including 2 lessons to launch the unit, 4 inquiry lessons, 4 engineering design lessons that build to the final design challenge, and 2 lessons to prepare for and host a design exposition.

In the unit launch lesson, students are introduced to an engineering problem in their own community: the river that leads to a backup drinking reservoir is badly polluted and could lead to health issues if the petroleum pollution in particular made it to the reservoir. Students also discuss the purpose of modeling in designing solutions to engineering problems.

In the inquiry lessons, students spend two days engaging in and reflecting on team inquiry activities and teacher demonstrations related to water cycle, one day exploring the stochastic nature of water particles in the water cycle, and one day analyzing human impacts on the water cycle.

Students then spend a number of days on the design challenge, where students in teams design, build, test, and iterate on a scale model solution to the river-reservoir pollution problem within a long clear plastic bin. Students build filtration systems in the middle of the bin using an assortment of plastic mesh, cotton, cheesecloth, clay, straws, sand, and ???. To test their designs, polluted water (water with oil, glitter, and various sized beads) is poured into the slightly elevated “river” end of the bin, flows through the filter, and collects at the “reservoir” end of the bin, where it is evaluated to see how much pollution remains. Almost all the initial designs fail the test and student teams iterate and continue testing until their designs succeed or they run out of time.

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 5th grade engineering and earth and space sciences standards, it also functions as a stand-alone integrated science and engineering unit for grades 3-6. Also, while the launch lesson as written connects to a current engineering problem in [blinded], examples of similar types of problems common to many communities are also provided.

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

Citation
Format

Andrews, C. J., & Batrouny, N. A., & Wendell, K. B., & Dalvi, T. S. (2020, June), Reservoir Rescue: A Community-connected Elementary Water Filtration Engineering Unit (Resource Exchange) Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--35152

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 also exploring scientific explanations of the phenomena and mechanisms related to the challenge.

One of these units is “Reservoir Rescue,” a fifth grade Environmental Engineering unit comprised of 12 lessons, approximately 1 hour each, including 2 lessons to launch the unit, 4 inquiry lessons, 4 engineering design lessons that build to the final design challenge, and 2 lessons to prepare for and host a design exposition. 

In the unit launch lesson, students are introduced to an engineering problem in their own community: the river that leads to a backup drinking reservoir is badly polluted and could lead to health issues if the petroleum pollution in particular made it to the reservoir. Students also discuss the purpose of modeling in designing solutions to engineering problems.

In the inquiry lessons, students spend two days engaging in and reflecting on team inquiry activities and teacher demonstrations related to water cycle, one day exploring the stochastic nature of water particles in the water cycle, and one day analyzing human impacts on the water cycle. 

Students then spend a number of days on the design challenge, where students in teams design, build, test, and iterate on a scale model solution to the river-reservoir pollution problem within a long clear plastic bin. Students build filtration systems in the middle of the bin using an assortment of plastic mesh, cotton, cheesecloth, clay, straws, sand, and ???. To test their designs, polluted water (water with oil, glitter, and various sized beads) is poured into the slightly elevated “river” end of the bin, flows through the filter, and collects at the “reservoir” end of the bin, where it is evaluated to see how much pollution remains. Almost all the initial designs fail the test and student teams iterate and continue testing until their designs succeed or they run out of time.

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 5th grade engineering and earth and space sciences standards, it also functions as a stand-alone integrated science and engineering unit for grades 3-6. Also, while the launch lesson as written connects to a current engineering problem in [blinded], examples of similar types of problems common to many communities are also provided.

At the exchange, we will provide full documentation of the final design challenge, including examples of student solutions, and links to the accompanying unit lessons.
AU  - Chelsea J. Andrews
AU  - Nicole Alexandra Batrouny
AU  - Kristen B. Wendell
AU  - Tejaswini S. Dalvi
CY  - Virtual On line 
DA  - 2020/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Reservoir Rescue: A Community-connected Elementary Water Filtration Engineering Unit (Resource Exchange)
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/35152
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--35152
ER  -