Service-Based Engineering Design Projects

This project works well as a semester-long project in a high school engineering class or elective course. Arrange for a real-world client, or create a hypothetical service-based opportunity (perhaps using one of the associated activities). Then, have students follow the steps of the engineering design process while they attempt to solve the open-ended problem, with the main objective to build working prototypes.

For further suggestions and support materials, refer to the Tips for Leading Service-Based Engineering Design Projects (PDF) and other attachments.

The real world is teeming with opportunities for people, including engineers, to apply their expertise to helping others and improving our general and specific quality of life. This is the very nature of engineering. The work of engineers directly impacts the lives of people in their communities (shelters, playgrounds, water treatment plants, heating and cooling devices, bridges, medical devices, etc.). The associated activity examples engage students in designing prototype devices to help the authors' local community members, but the same approach applies more broadly to teams following the steps of the engineering design process as they come up with solutions to service-based engineering challenges that benefit specific people in their communities and/or society at large.

See a suggested schedule in Figure 1, based on about twenty 50-minute periods.

Figure 1. Overview of project milestones during about twenty 50-minute time periods.CopyrightCopyright 2010 Mindy Zarske, ITL Program, College of Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder