2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Introducing engineering practices in elementary education can influence the way of thinking and practicing of the students. By utilizing tools such as team management, multi-team communication, and self-pacing, the children will become more adapted to working in settings commonly found in the real world. Systems engineering practices are applicable to most if not all future classes, careers, and situations that the students will experience in their coming years; allowing them to become comfortable with these tools early only improves the chances they will succeed in the future.
To conduct this research, a complex project will be given to a 5th grade science class at a private elementary school. The task assigned to them will be the construction of a smart LEGO city using different LEGO robotics kits. The class of roughly 18 children will be split into teams of two; of which each team must contribute a part to the overall city. Kids will use motors and sensors to move items from a starting point to an end point, where the latter is the starting point for another group. This will encourage student’s collaboration and systems integration as well as improve their engineering and coding abilities.The instructors will provide outlines of the work sessions, plot time spent planning, building, and testing, as well as assign tasks that need to be done. As the project continues, the kids will become responsible for forming their own assignments. Each group will have different engineering problems they need to solve using their STEM skills, making the learning experience different from one group to another. Observations will be made and interviews will be conducted to give qualitative information on how the students approach the overall problem as well as how they felt about the systems engineering practices they used.
The expected result is that the implementation of the study will help provide the students with the structure and tools they need to complete the goal of the assignment with ease and confidence. We will look to see if the team interactions and classroom dynamics fare better without a central authority figure. We also expect to find observation based results on what tools and templates worked the best to facilitate inter-team communication with the students.