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Open ended engineering challenges are the best way to introduce design process thinking to students. Below you will find some ideas for challenges that provide a client to consider while designing and allow for students to create a number of diverse solutions. It is always a good idea to require labeled drawings showing their design and, depending on the activity, it can be important to emphasize that they should make a prototype that is as representative of their idea as possible even if it doesn't actually work. These types of activities are great for one time challenges to introduce your class to thoughtful design at the beginning of a UOI or as a challenge in after school.
There are MANY different versions of the engineering design process, but I find the most straight forward includes these 5 steps. The first few steps of framing the problem, brainstorming solutions, and designing one in detail are a great way to get started on any activity, even if it isn't a traditional engineering design challenge (they even work for writing a paper if you think about it). It is important to emphasize that the process is more like guidelines than a rigid set of rules and that real engineers jump back and forth between the steps as they work.
The Student Teacher Outreach Mentorship Program at Tufts sends undergraduate engineering students into local classrooms once a week to run hands on engineering activities with students. Here is a link to activities often used by the fellows in their classroom (lots of LEGO Robotics challenges), and here is a link to a bunch of useful websites for teaching engineering.
Some of my favorite shorter activities to introduce the engineering design process are:
- Chair for Mr. Bear - Design and build a chair that is the perfect chair for a stuffed animal or teddy bear, thinking about the client and why your chair would best fit their needs.
- Parachute Design Challenge - Make as parachute that allows your clients to fall safely to the exact spot they want on the ground, measuring the time to fall and the distance from a target for each test.
- Paper Towers - Using a limited amount of materials (purposeful constraint), design the tallest freestanding tower you can. Try doing it three times, giving fresh pieces of paper and tape at the beginning of each iteration.
- Sturdy Boat Challenge - Design a boat using only tin foil that can hold as much weight as possible. Test it by placing coins one at a time in the center as it is floating in a tub of water.
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