2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Project DECIDE seeks to develop and implement innovative digital civics instruction modules that integrate engineering thinking. Typically siloed in K12 education, civics and engineering can change student engagement and empower them to act within their local communities. The notion that society has systems and decisions are made based on resources and constraining factors make for common ground in disparate disciplines. We seek to deploy engineering design approaches to help students understand and address systemic inequities in their communities and demonstrate how civic purpose and civic knowledge and skill can influence public policy to solve such “wicked” problems.

This project develops curricular units aligned with American History, Civics, and Government courses and provides teacher professional development opportunities to improve the quality of teaching and to enhance the civic readiness (i.e. civic purpose, civic knowledge and skills, and empathy) of students. The teacher professional development trains middle and high school teachers who typically only teach social science topics to engage their students using engineering thinking. Teachers are trained in the PILLARS (Civics Education and Engineering Design) so that they may teach students and lead them through PATHWAYS. PATHWAYS modules are justice oriented and spotlight challenges or trends within communities. These include health justice, traffic and transportation, economic justice, gentrification, and environmental justice.

This is a five-year project funded by the Department of Education. This paper presents the work from Year 1 and describes the integration strategies from a pedagogical perspective, piloting the modules, teacher feedback, development of a mobile app that supports student data collection and online community, and professional development plans.