Approximately 15 million students will be enrolled in high-school in the Fall of 2020, of which 45 percent will attend online, with an additional 48 percent not yet determined. Students across the nation need full access to experience both virtual and hands-on components of the PLTW Introduction to Engineering Design curriculum whether in a brick-and-mortar setting or via remote instruction. How can we provide a practical solution that aligns with the CDC Considerations for Schools, for an individual kit, that would facilitate PLTW curriculum and not require families to shoulder an additional financial burden for the procurement of hands-on materials?

For this element, our team worked on creating a prototype that would be testable. As we were in a virtual format, this has presented some challenges, but we believe we have at least a starting point for the idea of creating an at-home box for the delivery of instruction for the instant design challenges and potentially the automata project for Introduction to Engineering Design in PLTW. We started this element by creating both a computer-aided design (CAD) model of the at-home kit in Autodesk Inventor as well as a physical prototype of the kit. Both kits are full-scale models. As we started creating the kits (both physical and CAD), we realized many constraints, such as : 1) how to safely, efficiently, and effectively store the materials; 2) the importance of establishing what really was needed in a basic kit versus having a kit for the entire curriculum; 3) discussing what was feasible for schools and families in regards to purchasing and storage; 4) potential ways to create items from the shoebox that the original items are stored within; 5) the need for a bigger, more durable box for storage of durable versus the consumable materials.

Our team spent most of this phase discussing the feasibility of our solutions with regards to implementing testing methods/results. Most of the design specifications require feedback from outside sources in order to determine usefulness to teachers, students, and administration. We decided to make some components optional and included others which will add to the value of the kit both in terms of relevance and usefulness. Our prototype was tested in a real-world situation: two elementary school-level students were asked to use the materials to construct a compass and draw a circle.

We still have some questions that we feel should be addressed. How many teachers will already have most of these materials since they would have already ordered them for their classes? How can we distribute kits to students if schools are unable to offer pick-up days? How easily could these kits be created/stored for use every year? Could/should we have them already prepped in case schools go from in-person to full remote on short notice? We will make adjustments as we receive clarity on these and other questions as they arise.

At this stage, we feel we have a product that meets the minimal design criteria and will faithfully serve the needs of our clientele. However, we will continue to improve our design and make improvements as we are able to gather more data and feedback from our stakeholders.