Developing Resources for use in High School Engineering Courses

About Developing Resources for use in High School Engineering Courses

Abstract

Reflecting on the path that led me to study engineering as well as my early experiences in Dordt University’s engineering program I felt like there was potential to do meaningful work developing curriculum supplements for high school engineering courses. As I began to explore this area, I sought to develop a fuller understanding of the need I would seek to fill. I found that high schools offering engineering- related courses already have plenty of content to cover and the instructors for these courses have busy schedules. Considering this, I tried to develop a resource that would integrate well with a preexisting course which could be adapted with relatively little extra work from an instructor. I created a set of seven lessons for use in high school engineer ing courses which I feel do a good job of giving an overview of some of the crucial ideas for understanding a Christian perspective on engineering. Initial “testing” by one of the schools I connected with gave me the impression that resources like this have the potential to successfully convey ideas about Christian perspectives in engineering to high school students. The resources I developed can be used by schools, but further work in this area is needed. Contributions from experts in these areas of study as well as input from those with classroom experience would go a long way in improving the quality and effectiveness of this type of resource. There are additional opportunities to look at how the Teaching for Transformation ( TFT) framework could be brought into the mix as well as what could be done to make the supplements more implementable for busy instructors. In the end, I believe this work has the ability to enrich high school students’ experience with engineering and share with them the valuable kingd om work that can be done in this field.