2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This paper describes a mini-intensive curriculum for high school students to prepare them to participate in a first-year engineering project. Ninth grade students were participating in a college awareness and work experience at a college of engineering to introduce them to engineering disciplines. As a part of their employment, the ninth-grade student interns were tasked with submitting a project for the university first-year engineering course, the introductory course for all engineering majors. Since they were not students in the full academic year university course, the rigor and pace would be intensive because these interns had to meet all project goals and design constraints. The design challenge was to design a product with two distinct functions that can be used while on vacation. Final prototype must be 25% 3D printed materials, have a budget of less than $40, fit in a six-inch cube, be easily stored and transported, and safe.

In a partnership between faculty and facilities of education and engineering, faculty felt confident that we could teach students enough basic skills to accomplish this challenge, so STEM education faculty created a bootcamp of five all-day sessions to teach students modeling and prototyping. We selected appropriate software taking into consideration entry-to-use and conducted lab tours and mini-lectures about equipment and materials. We aligned training with the makerspace facilities of engineering so that students would have congruence between equipment options. The goals of the curriculum were to:
1. Introduce students to software modeling and 3D printing using appropriate software.
2. Teach lab safety that students can use in prototyping.
3. Support application of engineering design process to small batch manufacturing.

This resource exchange describes the activities and resources used to get students who have never 3D modeled to a prototype in approximately a month.