2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress aims to produce an open-access digital engineering notebook for pre-college engineering education applications. Grounded in the Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy, the digital notebook template acts as a tool to provide students with practical and industry-related experience in documenting problem-solving and design processes. As education increasingly shifts toward digital solutions to match what is occurring in various STEM industries, this project explores how digital engineering notebooks compare to physical notebooks and how they can enhance student learning while preparing students for professional environments that rely on digital documentation. The initial phases of this project include observing how technology, engineering, and design education students at a large land-grant university in the southeastern United States utilize digital notebook tools compared to physical notebook tools during design challenges. Data will be gathered through deidentified submissions of digital notebooks and anonymous student feedback to assess the usability, benefits, and challenges of these tools. From there, a template will be constructed for use in pre-college engineering education environments.
Key areas of investigation include how the digital notebooks align with core standards, practices, and contexts of the Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy, as well as how the digital notebooks support skills critical to both academic success and workforce preparedness. Expected outcomes include insights into best practices for integrating digital engineering notebooks into the classroom and potential recommendations for addressing challenges in their adoption, ultimately supporting educators in fostering technological and engineering literacy through innovative documentation methods.
This presentation will act as an opportunity to preview the open-access engineering notebook template accessible on Google software freely to middle and high schools and other pre-college engineering education environments throughout the United States of America. Discussion during this time will also be targeted toward gaining input on changes to the templates and avenues of distributing the template for pre-college engineering education applications.