problem solving

event overview

The problem solving competition is for students who enjoy going through a design or problem-solving process working as a member on a small- to medium-sized team. The competition allows for teams to demonstrate their design, problem solving, and creativity skills. The competing teams will receive contest details, tools, and materials necessary to develop a solution to a specific problem. Problems are typically announced onsite, and there is a limited amount of time to go through the problem solving process. Each team is responsible for providing general tools and materials if required. Three dimensional modeling software access and skills will be a key component for success in this challenge. The challenge can be effectively completed with a variety of softwares including Google Sketchup; Autodesk Inventor, AutoCAD, Revit, or Inventor; Solidworks; Solidedge; Chief Architect; and similar softwares.

team composition

Team members must be members of an affiliated TEECA college or university. Teams may have two to seven members. The team may not be composed of over 40% graduate students. One team member should be designated as the team leader and one team member should be designated as the presenter at the testing site.

notes

This competition requires skill development before the conference; please see the below Guide for details. The Challenge with the specific problem will be released at the conference.

NOTE FROM THE COORDINATOR:

"To allow for sufficient time for assessment of the design portfolios, each team should submit their design portfolio electronically the first day of the ITEEA conference (March 27) before Midnight. To do this, a Google Drive folder will be provided each team participating in the competition. To gain access to this folder, have your team leader email emruesch@wsd.net with your school name and any other student emails that want access to this folder previous to the conference."

Please keep this deadline in mind. This is the first year that we have had teams submit their portfolio electronically, so I just wanted to address some possible questions.

1. Not everything has to be made electronically. If your brainstorming was done on paper, you can submit a picture or a scan of this.

2. It may look better to submit all of the documentation as one pdf that has clearly labeled sections. You can do this by exporting a powerpoint into a pdf, adobe acrobat, or several other methods. If your documentation is not submitted as one pdf, just make sure everything is clearly labeled and identifiable.

3. Check the rubric provided in the challenge. this should help you to know what we are expecting as far as documentation. It is not enough to have the drawings of the final design and code.

Feel free to email me with any other questions that you may have regarding this competition. We do encourage creativity and innovation. You can be as creative with your design as you would like as long as it follows the constraints of the problem.

Remember, there will be an additional constraint or problem added on the site. Because of this, it would be helpful to bring additional tools or materials to the competition. It would also be helpful to have a programmer on site.

Good luck!

Emily Ruesch

emruesch@wsd.net

sponsor

Sponsorship Available. Contact Trevor Robinson, National TEECA Advisor, for more information