2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Nationwide, K-12 schools have implemented courses with the potential for AP® credit for Computer Science Principles, providing a broad overview of computing and computational thinking, exploring coding, learning how computing can affect the world around them, and obtaining college credit. Far fewer schools have implemented engineering in K-12, and those that have tend to be schools in more affluent districts. Committee reports from the National Academies from the early 2000s show that making a systemic difference will be difficult without specific educational standards and preservice teacher training, a situation that has shown little if any improvement.
The NSF-funded e4usa program was designed and implemented as an effort to provide engineering curriculum “for us all” with the intention of demystifying and democratizing engineering. The course authentically introduces “engineering,” not with the intent to produce more engineering students, but to improve technological literacy and to allow students to discover their engineering identity, all while working through the engineering design processes to solve real problems. Students identify community-based problems and design engineering solutions while consulting with stakeholders, producing prototypes, and developing test plans. Course outcomes are clustered into color-coded tracks, including red (discover engineering), yellow (engineering in society), blue (engineering professional skills), and green (engineering design).
This paper focuses on the development of a course focused on programming in the e4usa sequence of courses. As the curriculum was more widely implemented, it became apparent that programming was a tool that added significant value when investigating solutions to problems using engineering design to address issues, and an issue of significant interest to K-12 schools. The course e4usa+Programming is in its pilot year.
This course uses MATLAB® as the programming language, since it is used prominently in engineering analysis and design. The course follows the path of AP® CS Principles, focusing on the five big ideas: Creative Development, Data, Algorithms and Programming, Computer Systems & Networks, and Impact of Computing. The course also covers enough ground to allow students to sit for the MATLAB® Associates Industry Recognized Credential (IRC). It also introduces a new set of technical learning outcomes to the e4usa course sequence: the purple thread. Finally, the course requires students to use MATLAB® in the solution of an authentic, community-focused engineering problem.
The paper will describe the course, the applicability of the MATLAB® Associates IRC and AP® CS Principles credit, tying the curriculum to specific state standards, and early results from a team of pilot teachers.