2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

When developing engineering activities to teach engineering concepts for differentiated learning, the original activity is often modified to ensure it meets students' learning needs and abilities. Similarly, when providing engineering education in the precollege space, the curriculum must be adapted to other grade levels and student abilities, including teacher professional learning offerings.

This paper outlines the process of scaling an engineering activity for different ages using engineering education examples from two case studies: nanobugs and a self-folding shape engineering challenge. Both challenges were adapted for audiences ranging from K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-10, and 11-12 grade. These challenges were used at week-long summer camps and short-duration outreach sessions with school groups. The nanobug challenge was also scaled for a teacher professional learning session. Audiences at a series of summer camps. In both cases, the activities focus on the engineering design cycle and share engineering subject area content, but the activities themselves vary for each age group based on an array of design considerations and needs of each audience.

This paper includes a description of the content of the activities, observations from facilitators involved with the activities, and a discussion of the process by which the activities were modified for each age level. We outline steps that others can take to adapt hands-on engineering activities for audiences of different ages, such as adjusting complexity, changing the constraints, modifying the criteria, adding cost/material constraints, and supplementing the activity with scaffolding activities to ensure students have the skills necessary to understand the concepts (e.g., practicing 3-D spatial visualization skills).