Community Based Engineering
Community Tech Press
Community Tech Press is an NSF DRK-12 funded curriculum development project with Somerville Public Schools, the climate tech start-up Transaera, and the science media experts Science Communication Network. This project takes a civic-oriented approach to middle-school engineering learning. Students engage in engineering to critically evaluate climate technologies affecting their local community. Then, they construct and convey multilingual messages about climate tech for an audience of family members, community groups, or civic leaders. The research team is exploring how this critical technology journalism approach influences engineering learning among 6th-grade youth, including students from multilingual families. Co-PIs are Chelsea Andrews, Kristen Wendell, and Greses Péreze.
The ConnecTions in the Making Project is an NSF ITEST funded curriculum development project. We focus on community connected, integrated science and engineering in 3-5th grade classrooms in Marlborough and Boston. Visit the project page to learn more.
The Community Based Engineering (CBE) approach introduces early-career elementary teachers to engineering as a way of tackling problems that matter to them in their students' lives. Our goal is to help educators help all children and teachers feel empowered as scientists and engineers by investigating and solving problems in their own communities. Check out the CBE website to learn more about this project.
Community Engineering in Lahore
In January 2019, one of our graduate students, Fatima Rahman, traveled to her hometown of Lahore and conducted a week-long community connected engineering workshop with fourth graders in a small slum community. The workshop’s goal was to enable students to see school learning as a way through which they could accomplish their own goals (and those that would benefit their community): in this case, toy-making. Check out Fatima's master's thesis to learn more about the project and the impact on the students.