Bringing Engineering to Elementary Schoolintegratingengineering.org/stem/research/item1_bring_engr_elem... · Journal of STEM Education Vol. 5 • Issue 3 and 4 July-December 2004

Journal of STEM Education Vol. 5 • Issue 3 and 4 July-December 2004 17

IntroductionAs our society becomes more dependent on

technology, it becomes increasingly important thatwe make sure that students are comfortable withtechnology when they graduate from high school.[21] Making engineering a part of the K-12 experi-ence helps give students experience with buildingand designing. It also serves to motivate their learn-ing of the math and science concepts that maketechnology possible. At the Center For Engineer-ing Educational Outreach (CEEO) at Tufts Univer-sity, we have been working for over 15 years tointegrate engineering into the K-12 experience; partof the work has helped establish the new engineer-ing standard in K-12 education for the state of Mas-sachusetts. Our goals are to excite students aboutengineering, math, and science, teach them thesedisciplines in a hands-on and practical way, andimprove the engineering confidence of the nextgeneration.

Engineering has the distinct advantage in theelementary school of being something students en-joy as it incorporates hands-on and creative work.Our efforts to bring engineering to the classroomare grounded in constructionist philosophy whichputs forth that people learn better when they areworking with materials that allow them to designand build artifacts that are meaningful to them. [2,3]Engineering supports this philosophy by effectivelymotivating students to learn math, science, read-ing, writing, communication, and design skills bygiving students ownership of a project or process.Furthermore, because engineering problems re-quire all of these skills, it is truly interdisciplinary innature. In general, students learn to1. identify and formulate a problem,2. design a solution,3. create and test a solution,4. optimize and re-design, and5. communicate and disseminate the solution.

Typically, steps 1, 4, and 5 are overlooked in a class-room environment when doing projects in other dis-ciplines, yet these steps are often the differencebetween success and failure in the real world. Mak-ing the engineering design process part of K-12education gives students an effective tool for ap-proaching problems and creating solutions. Engi-neering has the secondary advantage that it ap-peals to both genders, a variety of learning styles,and multiple intelligences. Although engineering

does appeal to many students, one must be care-ful in how to present the engineering challenge andhow to teach the students to work productively to-gether.

To effectively teach engineering, one must firstdevelop a toolset for the students to use that al-lows them to build and design freely, easily, andwith the greatest functionality. We have developeda number of toolsets, both cheap and expensive,with the goal of giving the teachers and students ofall ages the hardware and software to build justabout anything, while requiring them to learn mathand science along the way. To do this and to reallymake a difference, we decided 5 years ago to teamup with LEGO and National Instruments. LEGObrought extensive dissemination and support aswell as the highly adaptable hardware componentto the table. National Instruments brought an equallyflexible software platform through LabVIEW thatallowed us to push the ceiling of the toolset wellbeyond high school yet keep the entry level simpleenough for the kindergarteners. The result of thiscollaboration was ROBOLAB, a highly successfulset of hardware and software that allows studentsfrom 5 – 50 to learn engineering in a hands-on,creative, and exciting fashion. [7-9,22,23] We usethese tools to motivate students to learn math, sci-ence, and engineering.

The LEGO hardware consists of the LEGOMindstorms RCX and tower. The RCX (Figure 1) isa microprocessor in a LEGO brick capable of con-trolling motors and lights, reading sensors (rang-ing from light to heart-rate to compass heading),and reading time with 4 on-board timers. [2,3] Themicroprocessor can make decisions, run multipletasks simultaneously, and even control other mi-croprocessors – either in the same room or some-where else over the Internet.

LEGO sensors, actuators, and building blockscoupled with the RCX allow a user to quickly andeasily build an engineering invention. For instance,5 years ago it would have taken months to put to-gether an animal that walks around a room avoid-ing walls. The electronics training and computerprogramming training required for such an under-taking limited the possible audience to high schooland university students. With LEGOs and the RCXa 2nd grade student can make her own wall-avoid-ing turtle in just a few hours.

The ROBOLB software is powered by NationalInstrument’s LabVIEW —a programming environ-

Bringing Engineering to Elementary School

Dr. Chris Rogers Merredith PortsmoreTufts University

AbstractIncorporating engineering in theelementary school curriculumprovides students with ways ofconnecting, applying, andreinforcing knowledge in math,science, and design. To bring whatis essentially a new discipline toK-12 education means developingand supporting new tools for theclassroom, additional curriculum,teacher training, and supportresources. Using LEGO materialsand the ROBOLAB software as thetoolset, Tufts University’s CenterFor Engineering EducationalOutreach has had significantsuccess with our efforts to bringengineering into a number ofschools and classrooms.Examining the classroom resultsthese efforts have yieldedhighlights the problems andobstacles, a significant potentialfor expansion, as well as a numberof effective practices andstrategies.

Figure 1: The RCX


ment that was originally developed for universityand industry research laboratories with the idea thatsoftware development time can be minimized byproviding a graphical programming environment.The software has multiple levels of capabilities toallow for users as young as 3 years old to start pro-gramming. [23] The Pilot Level (Figure 2) allowsusers to program quickly and easily by changing atemplate. The Inventor Level (Figure 3) providesall the capabilities of the RCX and Labview by al-lowing users to create programs by stringing com-mands together. ROBOLAB has an additional sec-tion for collecting data with the RCX and analyzingthat data (Figure 4). The software also provides us-ers with the tools to create music, perform imageand audio processing, and control RCXs and otherLEGO hardware via the Internet. Because it is builton LabVIEW, users can take advantage of the com-plexities of the software and hence the upper levelof ROBOLAB capabilities is only limited by theLEGO hardware.

The LEGO/ROBOLAB toolset is universalenough that kindergarten students and college stu-dents can build something completely different withthe same materials. It is easy enough to use thatthe main classroom discussions can center on thephysics of the problem or the design philosophyand not the tool usage. It is important that studentsdo not get hung up with the tools and lose sight ofthe engineering or the science. There is a commonmisconception that technology equals computersand therefore students must learn how to use acomputer. The computer (or RCX or other LEGOparts for that matter) is just a tool to help the stu-dent learn how to solve a problem. This paper issplit into three main parts: the first part, Engineer-ing in the classroom, is for the practitioner, demon-strating how the tools can be used to teach math,science, and engineering. The second and thirdparts, ROBOLAB Successes and Lessons Learned,look more at what has been successful and whatwe have learned along the way. Initial concepts ofhow students learn, how teachers and school sys-tems change, and how to take something from anidea at a table to over 30,000 classrooms aroundthe world are presented as well.

Engineering in the classroom

The first step in testing the toolset and its abil-ity to allow students complete flexibility in what theycreate is in the classroom. In this section, we out-line a number of different design challenges we useto teach math, science, reading, writing, and engi-neering. The curricula we present here is a smallportion of the full curricula that can be found at theweb site for the Center For Engineering EducationalOutreach at Tufts (http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu) that

has been developed over the past 5 years. [25](Appendix A)

Age AppropriatenessIn general, we have found that elementary

school students are capable of beginning to learnabout important physics concepts (friction, forces,etc.), programming concepts (go to statements, waitstatements, etc.), and math concepts (readinggraphs, modeling, decimal numbers, etc.) muchearlier than expected when presented in the con-text of engineering design projects. We have hadkindergarten students arguing about frictional forcesin their axles and third graders interpolating a cali-bration graph.

In general, table 1 shows the progression weuse in the schools.

Every year we iterate the concepts of the previ-ous year. The sequence is not exacting, many con-cepts could be presented earlier or later depend-ing on student interest or ability. The key is to de-sign a spiral-like curriculum that continually relieson what was learned the previous year so that thestudents see how their knowledge is building. [5]However, each year the concepts are revisited in

Figure 2: A pilot level program that turns on Motor A for 4 seconds while playing Beethoven’sFur Elise

Figure 3: A basic Inventor program that turns on motor A, waits for 4 seconds, and turns offmotor A.


new ways and integrated with different subjects toprevent boredom and burnout as well as demon-strate how concepts can be utilized in different ar-eas. The overriding theme throughout the curricu-lum is to teach students how to be curious and in-ventive and provide them with the engineeringmethods and skills to answer their own curiosity.

Teaching EngineeringThe first step is to teach the students how to

build something that stays together and begin tounderstand the design process. We have found thebest way is to introduce them to a drop test (re-leasing a structure from ankle, knee or hip height).For instance, the wall in figure 5 was built by a 5year old. One can see that it has a weak sectionwhere the bricks do not overlap. No matter howmany times we tell or show the proper building tech-niques, students continue to build a wall in this fash-ion. After the first drop test, however, they see thattheir wall breaks right along the crack and they donot do it again. Kindergartners are also loath to ripapart something they have built to improve it —theredesign portion of the engineering design process.Since the wall breaks with the drop test, this is nolonger an issue. This particular test is also quiteuseful at the college-level. College students tendto have complicated robots instead of a simple wallbut the structural integrity still needs to be evalu-ated.

The idea of sturdy structures and the designprocess are reinforced through similar activities. Forinstance, one can require the students to build achair to support the weight of a stuffed animal or a

cup of water. One could also propose building abox to protect marshmallows or even a slice ofpizza. The ability to easily extend activities is apowerful feature of the LEGO toolset as it allowsfor all students to stay engaged and on task even ifthey are working at different rates. Extensions canbe related to student interest and curiosity.

Gearing is another concept that we start earlyon and continue through college. Students do notreadily see why they want to gear the motors orhow the gears work. We start them off with just

Table 1: Outline of Basic Sequence of Topics

Figure 4: Investigator allows you to program the RCX to collect data points by specifyingtime between samples and total sampling time.


assembling gear walls, letting them play with howto make the gears mesh and how they change di-rection. Then we teach them how to connect a motorto the gears and how to connect the motor to theRCX. Most students initially expect that if a motoris somewhere on their car, it will automatically workand are surprised when they turn the RCX on andnothing happens. First they experiment with justconnecting the motor to the RCX and then connect-ing the motor to the gears. Finally, we show themhow to attach the gears to the wheels, and nowthey have a geared car. Armed with this knowledge,we then challenge them to drive up an inclined sur-face. A surprisingly large number of students willdiscard all of their newly learned information on thegearing and simply connect the wheels directly tothe motors. Their car moves much faster on the flatland and they are sure they are going to be able toclimb the ramp. Inevitably they aren’t able to, lead-ing to great in-class discussions. We often add thedrop-test to the challenge, requiring them to droptheir car before it starts to drive (Note: This candamage the RCX and motors).

Teaching MathOne of the real strengths of engineering is its

reliance on other subjects (from reading to phys-ics). This makes it fairly easy to bring in almost anysubject. To introduce the concept of fractions anddecimal numbers in the 2nd grade we use an exer-cise called “Going the Distance”. The idea is to builda rover (Figure 6) that can drive to specific loca-tions on a carpet of the United States. Studentsare to program their cars to go from Massachusettsto California. Driving for 1 second might get themto Colorado, whereas driving for 2 seconds putsthem in Hawaii. Therefore, they need to choose anumber between 1 and 2. One of the more inter-esting stories that has come from this exercise wasa result of the programming software. Using a PilotLevel 1, they can type in the time to move, andstudents would type in 1.5; the display would show1.50 and the students would get frustrated. “Iwanted one point five, not one point fifty,” is a com-mon lament. Not only do they learn that 1.5 and1.50 are the same, but they also see that 1.6 isgreater than 1.4 since their car goes further whenprogrammed for the former.

This exercise is easily extended for older chil-dren. In the fourth and fifth grades, we have thestudents build a calibration plot of time versus dis-tance. They check for repeatability of their cars aswell as effective methods of making their cars gostraight (for instance, using only one motor and bigwheels in the front). In the final competition, stu-dents are told to program their cars to go a specificdistance, but are not allowed to test them. Theylearn how to interpolate (or extrapolate) from their

data and the person whose car comes closest tothe given distance wins. One can add a new di-mension to the problem by putting a LEGO personat the appropriate distance and the winner is thecar which comes closest to the LEGO person with-out knocking it over (“kissing”). We have used thesame problem at the college level, where even theeffects of startup and stopping are accounted for inthe calibration. Finally, one can do the same exer-cise over the Internet, using the remote control fea-ture of the hardware and software, at the SENSORSsite (http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/sensors/). [27]

Teaching Reading and WritingWe have also used the LEGO bricks to teach

reading and writing skills in the elementary school.We have used “visual reading” in most pre-collegegrades, tasking the students to build what they read.We have found that this results in a number of dis-cussions about the book, from quoting the numberof windows in a castle to discussing what the au-thor meant in certain passages. Some teachershave extended the visual reading work into teach-ing math as well. For instance, one 2nd grade teacherhad the students build the amusement park inCharlotte’s Web (E.B. White). Once the amusementpark was built, students were given play money and“attended” the rides. The math lesson came in giv-ing correct change for the rides. Another teachertook a different approach and gave each studentgroup a budget for their ride and then assigned aprice to each LEGO brick. Popular bricks (people,trees, etc.) cost substantially more than commonbricks. This approach has the math advantage aswell as the demonstration of designing to a bud-

Figure 6: Going the Distance

Figure 5: A poorly constructed wall


get. Many of the elements of engineering such assturdy structures, gearing, pulleys, and redesign areprevalent in a secondary nature in these projectsas well.

Another approach to teaching reading and writ-ing as well as engineering is through the making ofa movie. After reading a book in class, the studentsreduce the book to a 10-minute script. Readingcomprehension is tested in the many ensuing dis-cussions of what is important and not important tothe book, as they write the script. They then breakinto groups and construct the scenery and propsfor the movie from LEGO bricks and other materi-als. We have done this with everything from “TheLorax” in 1st grade to 6th graders filming “The Windin the Willows”. A tool for making stop action mov-ies with ROBOLAB is currently in development atTufts.

Science InvestigationsWe also use ROBOLAB in the classroom to

teach investigation skills, along with the math andscience necessary to understand and interpret theresults. We start in the 3rd grade with an exercisecalled “The Burglar” where each group of studentsprograms their RCX to take light sensor measure-ments over a 5-minute period. After discussing withthe students the possible pitfalls of a poorly cho-sen sampling rate, the class decides on a samplingrate for their RCXs and then puts them throughoutthe classroom. All students then leave the class-room and the overhead lights are turned off. Theteacher then walks through the classroom with aflashlight. All students return and the data from theRCXs are combined on an overhead projector. Fig-

ure 7 shows a sample data set. Each color corre-sponds to the data from a different RCX. From thepeaks, the students can determine when theteacher passed their particular RCX and thereforesurmise the path of the teacher through the class-room.

One of the most engaging and entertaining ex-ercises we do in the investigative area is “Findingthe Letter”. We have done this in many differentguises (including on the web at http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/sensors/), always with greatenthusiasm from the students. The idea is to printout a letter so that it takes up an entire 8” x11” pieceof paper. Paste this letter on the floor and then coverthe letter with a sheet – so that no one can see it.Then allow the students to drive a vehicle underthe sheet with the light sensor pointing down. Us-ing their light sensor readings and doing multiplepasses, they then guess the letter. Usually they cando it in 4 – 5 passes. The best part of this exerciseis watching them reduce the number of possible

Figure 7: Sample data set from the Burglar activity. Peaks indicate when the flashlight passedby the RCX.

Figure 8: The LEGO Builder


letters with each pass. The engineering learningcomes from the construction and programming ofthe rover. The math lesson comes in the interpre-tation of the plots along with the determination ofthe sampling rates

Traditional science investigations can be doneas well. By hanging the RCX with a light sensorpointing downward and swinging it as a pendulumthe period of the pendulum can be measured bylooking at the light sensor readings logged. Moreaccurate readings can be measured by swingingthe RCX over a black and white piece of paper.Advanced students can use this measurement toestimate the gravitational acceleration. In anotherexperiment, fourth grade students have measuredthe cooling rates of a cup of water using the LEGOtemperature sensor. This led to an energetic dis-cussion of what a temperature change meant on amolecular level, with one perceptive student notingthat ice melts more slowly in air than in water asthe molecules in the water are closer together andtherefore impact the ice more often and removeenergy more quickly. Again the success of theseinvestigations is apparent in the discussions andenthusiasm of the students.

The College Level CeilingUsing the same tools (hardware and software)

we have taught a number of engineering conceptsin college. Much of this work has been reported inconference proceedings, journals, [11,17,24] andat the ROBOLAB@CEEO Website. [26] Probablythe most complicated construction we have doneto date is the LEGO builder (Figure 8). The userspecifies a wall they want constructed (color andsize) and then throws a number of pieces on thetable. The LEGO camera identifies the correct pieceand sends the robotic arm to pick it up. Using thecamera information, the arm rotates to the correctorientation, picks the piece up, and brings it backto add to the wall.

College students have built a large number ofother great projects, learning many engineeringconcepts along the way. Many of these projectsrequire team skills, communication skills, economicanalyses, and advanced programming and algo-rithmic development. All can be done without LEGObricks and ROBOLAB, but these tools allow stu-dents to prototype and test more rapidly (and forless cost) than with many traditional materials, andthey bring a lot of excitement with them. We alsohave used the ROBOLAB toolset to teach LabVIEWand experimentation techniques to the mechanicalengineering undergraduates [24] and to teach en-gineering to liberal arts students. [11] The main pointis that the high ceiling of the toolset allows com-plexities well beyond the abilities of most pre-col-lege students. With this range, all students in any

one class, regardless of their abilities, can partici-pate and be challenged. Some of the challengesmay be above water while others are below (Fig-ure 9).

ROBOLAB Successes

The ability of the ROBOLAB toolset to success-fully bring engineering into the classroom can bemeasured in numerous ways. At the micro-scale,we can look at the success of a single student. Wehave qualitatively assessed their engineering abili-ties in a number of ways. Students write engineer-ing logs, and teachers have looked at changes indesign complexity and sturdiness, the use of gear-ing, and the application of the math and scienceprinciples. For instance, in one 4th grade classroom,students learned about torque and used their mathskills to predict the increase in torque due to theirgearing and then tested their prediction. We havealso looked for students remembering what theylearned last year and applying it. Older students,for example, voluntarily dropping their constructionto demonstrate its sturdiness.

At the mezzo-scale, we can look at the suc-cess in a single school. Lincoln School in Massa-chusetts has been teaching engineering in class-rooms for 10 years. It started out with just a fewteachers experimenting with some LEGO engineer-ing challenges once or twice during the year. Herethe program’s success can be measured by the factthat the teachers decided to adopt the program asa school and now almost every teacher from kin-dergarten to 6th grade is using the ROBOLAB toolsetas a significant portion of their curriculum. The factthat this was a teacher-led change, not an admin-istrator-led change is indicative too of the program’ssuccess. They have done this in part because ofthe huge response they have received from the stu-dents. The excitement generated from the engineer-ing has led to kids spending recesses building, tokids working with their younger sibling’s class, andto parents becoming more involved in their child’seducation.

At the macro-scale, the ROBOLAB product hasbeen internationally successful, with an estimated1 million students, (from kindergarten through col-lege) a year using it around the world. It has beentranslated into 14 different languages and has ledto international collaborations – with students fromSingapore, New Zealand, and Boston all sharingideas and construction challenges. In the past twoyears, ROBOLAB has won a number of awards in-cluding—the BETT award for best educational soft-ware in Great Britain, The World Didact Gold Medal(Switzerland), MacEddy Award by MacUser for besteducational product (USA) and a DIGITA (Germany)prize, as well as a number of other, smaller, soft-

Figure 9: A LEGO RemotelyOperated Underwater Vehicle


ware awards.

Lessons Learned: Working in theClassroom

Although the success of ROBOLAB has beenvery rewarding, there are a number of lessons welearned, often the hard way. There are difficultiesassociated with product development, product dis-semination, and product support. Many of theseissues are small for a single classroom or singleschool, but become huge when it is tens of thou-sands of schools. We found the two most impor-tant parts of ROBOLAB are the forming of strategicalliances with industry, and working in the schoolsto get firsthand feedback. The LEGO and NI alli-ance has allowed the product to grow very fast. Ithas allowed us to really bring engineering into a fargreater number of schools than we had ever imag-ined. The second part is actually being part of theclassroom, seeing the issues the teachers and stu-dents face. One cannot study education from afar.

Making a systemic change in a curriculum re-quires a large effort on the part of the teachers,administrators, parents, and the kids and takes along time to happen. It requires continual financialsupport and, when it is something completely new,it requires intellectual support. Finally, it has to behands-on and open-ended so that all can createand thereby gain ownership of the concepts beingtaught. In this section we outline some of the ob-servations we have made in changing a school sys-tem; how to support the teachers in entering a newfield and how a child’s gender or learning style willhave a profound affect on their approach and re-sulting construction.

Working with teachersThe LEGO engineering curriculum brings with

it a number of issues in the classroom, making lifeharder for the teacher. Batteries can die, comput-ers can crash, and students can have their RCXmistakenly reprogrammed. The teaching style andmaterial is very different from the conventionalmethod. Hands on projects do not have one rightanswer and the teacher will often not know the an-swer to the students’ questions that arise. Most ofthe student learning comes from discussions andthe teacher asking penetrating questions. This isdifficult to do if the teacher is trying to change bat-teries, reboot a computer, and get the kids to sharethe LEGO bricks at the same time. Most elemen-tary school teachers do not have engineering train-ing, nor do they have training in physics or pro-gramming. For these reasons, they need to havesupport in the classroom. This can come from par-ents, older students, undergraduate engineeringstudents, or professional engineers in industry.

At Tufts we have started a number of support

programs for the teachers. Multiple professors, staffmembers, and students go into the classroomsevery week to assist the teachers, hold monthlyteacher support meetings, and train them on newaspects of the hardware or software and sharingideas, and issues. We also run workshops everyyear for parents. The idea is to get parents involvedand to get them helping out in classrooms. Finally,we have a new grant funded program at Tufts thatpays Tufts engineering students to go into class-rooms and help out. In all of these cases, it is im-portant that the parent or student do not take overthe classroom. It is a lot easier to come into a class-room, run a “wiz-bang” presentation for the kids andleave. This approach, however, will not change theclassroom. The teacher must be the driving forceand the parent, student or professor must be thereonly to help with hardware and software problemsand free up the teacher’s time so that the teachercan wander about asking questions about the math,science, and engineering. In general, we have foundwithout this kind of support, the classrooms will of-ten revert to “LEGO playtime” instead of a real learn-ing experience. On the other hand, when this sup-port relationship works, it is impressive what chil-dren can learn, from discovering molecular ther-modynamics in 4th grade to frictional forces in 1st.

Gender DifferencesIn bringing LEGO Engineering into the class-

room, we have noticed a decided gender difference.The first time a classroom embarks on a construc-tion problem, many of the girls will mention that theydo not build with LEGOs although their brotherdoes. This finding is in keeping with much of theresearch that shows that boys have more experi-ences with items and topics related to physical sci-ence outside the classroom. [6,13-16] In general,we have found that the girls tend to design beforebuilding, whereas the boys start building before theyhave really thought about designing. Girls will workbetter as a team – talking among themselves abouta design before building. The boys would muchrather be on their own, often leading to more argu-ments than discussions in groups. Because the girlstend to think before building and the boys tend tobuild before thinking, mixed-gender groups oftenhave some problems as once the girls have a de-sign idea; the boys are not willing to break apartwhat they have built already (and there aren’t a lotof pieces left for the girls to choose from). We havefound that one can partially solve this by requiringpaper drawings before attacking the LEGO bricks.Also, in classrooms that have done this for a while,the girls have learned to be more forceful in mak-ing sure their design gets consideration. The stu-dents in general have learned to be better at work-ing as a team.


facts to those who learn best through visual andhands-on interaction.26 High stakes standardizedtesting forces a lot of teaching to focus on topicsthat are easily pencil and paper testable. Studentswith excellent memories and the ability to sit stillfor long periods of time succeed at these tests andare identified as “intelligent”. 27 While the intelligenceof students who are able to quickly interpolate agraph or build and explain a complex gear systembut are slow to memorize their multiplication tablesis not necessarily recognized or appreciated. De-signing, building and programming invoke knowl-edge, intelligences and learning styles not oftenused or valued in a traditional classroom. We con-tinually see students that are at the bottom of thetraditional classroom become “experts” as theyexcel in these areas and suddenly find themselvesrespected by both the teachers and the students.Other similar projects have found that hands-ontechnology projects are effective in teaching stu-dents classified as learning disabled. [4] Numer-ous teachers we work with have found that studentswith attention-deficit disorder (ADD) have becomeinterested in schoolwork and will sit still during classso that they can get time to work on their construc-tion.

Summary

In conclusion, we have developed an effectiveplatform to teach engineering in schools. This plat-form is flexible enough to allow students to buildalmost anything, complex enough to challenge agraduate student in engineering, and simple enoughto be used by a kindergartner. We have beensuccessful in integrating this toolset into classroomsand through it changing the way math and scienceare taught. We have presented some of the waysthat people can integrate this material into their ownschool and used these examples to show how thestudents learned the material with their hands. Wehave worked with school systems to initiate a sys-temic change or just start a small after-school pro-gram or summer camp.

Before any of this enters the classroom, theteacher must sit down and really decide what it isshe wants to teach. We feel that the most impor-tant things to teach are

1. curiosity,2. enthusiasm for learning,3. self-confidence,4. how to find answers, and5. how to test validity of answers.

These goals are true at kindergarten and in col-lege, and armed with these capabilities, the stu-dents can successfully attack problems of any dis-cipline. Engineering teaches to all of these goals

Research on the aspects of science that girlsenjoy indicates that girls prefer topics that have rel-evance to the surrounding world. [1,18] Our quali-tative observations of girls reflect these findings aswell. We have found that the girls tend to preferdesign problems that have a purpose or meaning.For instance, the girls will much prefer building ahospital, or a ski resort, whereas the boys will fo-cus on one thing – the fastest ambulance or thebiggest ski lift. If a teacher gives the classroom theassignment of building a car – the boys are happy.If the teacher gives the assignment of trying to iden-tify the unknown letter and to do that you will haveto build a car – the girls are happy. Girls are oftenmore interested in the investigative portion of theROBOLAB toolkit. They like the deduction andmodeling aspects. Of course in all cases, one canfind girls that behave like the description of the boyand visa versa, but on average these traits seemto hold across ethnicity, cultures, and socio-eco-nomic background.

It is interesting to note that these characteris-tics are not restricted to the kids. Parents and teach-ers taking workshops behave in the same way. Themales tend to work individually and start buildingright away. The females tend to work in groups, dis-cussing first what they want to build. The males willzero in on one thing and just build that whereas thefemales will build to the “bigger picture” by addingdetails. For instance at one parent night we chal-lenged them to build a shopping mall. The malesspent the entire hour building the escalator. Thefemales built multiple stores with storefronts, doors,lights etc. The escalator was much too fast for anyhuman to survive the trip and was much too big tofit with the rest of the mall. Similar to the boys, how-ever, the men were very excited and thought it awe-some, without any thoughts of slowing it down ormaking it fit with the rest of the design.

Engineering for EveryoneOne of the more unique attributes of the LEGO

Engineering program is that all students are alwaysexcited about it and it holds their attention for aslong as the teacher is willing or able to give. Teach-ers are always surprised at how long even theyounger kids stay on task and complain when thetime is over. Students will stay in during recess orcome early to improve their projects. One class-room was studying trebuchets, and the teacherannounced that those interested could come induring lunchtime to build one. Twenty-four childrenshowed up at lunch – about half boys and half girls– which was especially impressive since the classonly had 21 students to begin with.

Children (and adults) have a wide variation inlearning styles and intelligences– from those whohave excellent memories and learn by memorizing


independent of the age of the student. Engineeringmight not be a discipline that people expect to findin elementary or even secondary school but it is apowerful way of teaching, learning, and extendingeducation methods. The interest and excitementthat engineering and the LEGO/ROBOLAB toolsetinspire provide the basis for rich learning opportu-nities that span math, science, reading, and more.Its low entry and high ceiling that allows studentsto grow and work with it for many years minimizingtime spent learning new tools and maximizing learn-ing time. Moreover, LEGO-based engineering de-sign projects, when presented in the proper con-text, can provide hands-on opportunities for girls ata very young age thus helping to build and developtheir confidence and interest in math, science, andengineering. Its appeal to multiple learning stylesmakes it a unique tool for reaching different typesof students and allowing them to succeed in waysnot possible with more traditional teaching meth-ods and materials. There are significant challengesin terms of supporting this new discipline and wayof learning in the classroom setting but involvingthe community of parents, students, and industryis one promising solution.

References1. T. Andre, M. Whigham, A. Hendrickson,, andS. Chambers, “Competency beliefs, positive af-fect, and gender stereotypes of elementary stu-dents and their parents about science versusother school subjects.” Journal of Research inScience Teaching, 36(6), 719-747. 1999.2. Dave Baum, Michael Gasperi, Ralph Hempel,and Luis Villa, Extreme Lego Mindstorms: AnAdvanced Guide to Lego Mindstorms. Apress,2000.3. Dave Baum, and Rodd Zurcher, Dave Baum’sDefinitive Guide to LEGO Mindstorms (Technol-ogy in Action). Apress, 2000.4. B.A. Bottge, Heinrichs, Z.D. Mehta, and YHung, “Weighing the Benefits of Anchored MathInstruction for Students with Disabilities in Gen-eral Education Classes.” The Journal of SpecialEducation, 35(4), 186-200. 2002.5. Jerome S. Bruner, The process of education.Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1963.6. S. Catsambis, Gender, race, ethnicity, andscience education in the middle grades.Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 32,243-257. 1995.7. Martha Cyr, Mindstorms for Schools,ROBOLAB Getting Started 1, Teacher’s Guidefor ROBOLAB Software, 1998.8. Martha Cyr, Mindstorms for Schools,ROBOLAB Getting Started 2, Teacher’s Guidefor ROBOLAB Software,1999.

9. Martha Cyr, Mindstorms for Schools,ROBOLAB Getting Started 3, Teacher’s Guidefor ROBOLAB Software, 2001.10. Russell Davis, “Learning How To Learn:Technology, the Seven Multiple Intelligences andLearning.” California: ERIC Clearinghouse(ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED338214).11. Benjamin Erwin, Martha Cyr, and ChrisRogers, “LEGO Engineer and ROBOLAB:Teaching Engineering with LabVIEW from Kin-dergarten to Graduate School.” Vol 16., No. 3International Journal of Engineering Education,2000.12. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: the Theoryof Multiple Intelligences. NY: Basic Books 1983.13. T. Greenfield, “Gender, ethnicity, scienceachievement, and attitudes.” Journal of Re-search in Science Teaching, 33(8), 259-275.1996.14. G.M. Jones, A. Howe, and M.J Rua, “Gen-der differences in students’ experiences, inter-ests, and attitudes towards science and scien-tists.“ Science Education, 84(2), 180192. 2000.15. J.B. Kahle, and M.K. Lakes, “The myth ofequality in science classrooms.” Journal of Re-search in Science Teaching, 20(2), 131-140.1983.16. J.B. Kahle, M.L. Matyas, and H. Cho, “Anassessment of the impact of science experi-ences on the career choices of male and femalebiology students.” Journal of Research in Sci-ence Teaching, 22(5), 385-394. 1985.17. Philip Lau, Scott McNamara, Chris Rogers,and Merredith Portsmore, “LEGO Robotics in En-gineering.” Proceedings of the American Soci-ety of Engineering Education Annual Expositionand Conference, New Mexico, June 2001.18. H. Marsh and A. Yeung, “The distinctivenessof affects in specific school subjects: An appli-cation of confirmatory factor analysis with thenational educational longitudinal study of 1988.”American Educational Research Journal, 33(3),665-689. 1996.19. Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: children, com-puters, and powerful ideas. New York: BasicBooks. 1980.20. Seymour Papert, “What’s the big idea? To-wards a pedagogy of idea power.” IBM SystemsJournal. 39 (3/4). Available WWW: http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/393/part2/papert.html 2000.21. G. Pearson and A. Young, Technically Speak-ing, Why All Americans need to know more abouttechnology. National Academy Press, Washing-ton, D.C.. 2002,22. Merredith Portsmore, Martha Cyr, and ChrisRogers, “Integrating the Internet, LabVIEW, and


Lego Bricks into Modular Data Acquisition andAnalysis Software for K-College.” Computers inEducation Journal. Vol. XI April-June 2001. pg21-29.23. Merredith Portsmore, “ROBOLAB: IntuitiveRobotic Programming Software to Support LifeLong Learning”, APPLE Learning TechnologyReview, Spring/Summer 1999.24. Chris Rogers and Merredith Portsmore,“Data acquisition in the dorm room: Teaching ex-perimentation techniques using LEGO Materi-als.” Proceedings of the American Society of En-gineering Education Annual Exposition and Con-ference, New Mexico, June 2001.25. Tufts’ Center For Engineering EducationalOutreach, “Center For Engineering EducationalOutreach,”,(2004) http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu26. Tufts’ Center For Engineering EducationalOutreach, “ROBOLAB@CEEO“ (2004) – Avail-able WWW: http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/robolabatceeo27. Tufts’ Center For Engineering EducationalOutreach, “SENSORS (Science EngineeringNASA Site of Remote Sensing)” (2003) – Avail-able WWW: http:// www.ceeo.tufts.edu/sensors

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the hundredsof teachers, students, and parents involved to datein this effort. The Lincoln School has been great inenthusiastically adapting the LEGO Engineeringand inventing and testing much of the curriculumat the site. We would also like to thank NASA, theNational Science Foundation, LEGO, the LLL Foun-dation and JSMF Foundations for funding the workand for putting the materials into the classroom.Special thanks to all the people who have contrib-uted their time and energy to supporting this workRobert Rasmussen, Cathy Fett, Mike Giuggio, Bar-bara Bratzel, Elissa Milto, and Ioannis Miaoulis.They would also like to thank Tufts for having thevision to allow engineering professors to spend timein kindergarten.

The authors would also like to note they re-ceived remuneration for the development ofROBOLAB.

This material is based in part upon work sup-ported by the National Science Foundation underGrant No. 0307656 & 9950741. Any opinions, find-ings and conclusions or recommendations ex-pressed in this material are those of the author(s)and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Na-tional Science Foundation (NSF).

Chris Rogers is a professor of mechanical engineer-ing at Tufts University and director of Tufts’ Center forEngineering Educational outreach. His first sabbaticalwas spent at Harvard and a local kindergarten lookingat methods of teaching engineering. He spent half a yearin New Zealand on a Fulbright Scholarship looking at3D reconstruction of flame fronts to estimate heat fluxes.Last year, Chris was at Princeton as the Kenan Profes-sor of Distinguished Teaching where he worked on de-veloping new ways to assess and value teaching. He has received the 2003NSF Director’s Distinguished Teaching Scholar Award for excellence in bothteaching and research and the 1998 Carnegie Professor of the Year in Massa-chusetts Award. Chris is involved in six different research areas: particle-laden flows (a continuation of his thesis), telerobotics and controls, slurryflows in chemical-mechanical planarization, the engineering of musical in-struments, measuring flame shapes of couch fires, and in elementary schoolengineering education. He has worked with LEGO to develop ROBOLAB andis considered by some to be the “Father of ROBOLAB.” He works in variousclassrooms once a week, although he has been banned from recess for mak-ing too much noise. Most importantly, he has three kids -all brilliant -who areresponsible for most of his research interests and efforts.

Merredith Portsmore is a Ph.D Candidate at TuftsUniversity in Engineering Education. She received un-dergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering andEnglish at Tufts as well as a Master’s in Education.Prior to returning to school, she worked at the Centerfor Engineering Educational Outreach for 4 years sup-porting the development of ROBOLAB and creatingweb based resources to support educators usingROBOLAB. She is currently working on deploying aweb-based museum (http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/kime) that will facilitate kidsfrom around the world to sharing science, math, and engineering projects.


Appendix A – Tufts’ Center for Engineering Educational Outreach Lego Engineering Resources

The main dissemination site for the Center for Engineering Educational Outreach’s Lego Engineering Resources is the ROBOLAB@CEEO web site(http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/robolabatceeo). The site features a database of 40 individual activities (Figure A1), multi-week curriculum units (FigureA2), classroom hints and help, a LEGO piece archive, and a physics concept reference(Figure A3). In addition the site hosts a gallery of projects,tutorials on high end ROBOLAB based image processing, patches for ROBOLAB, and related presentations and papers. The entire site is currentlyfree to the public.

Figure A2. The Table of Contents for an 18-24 week first grade engineering curriculum.

Figure A1. Individual Activities detail the materials needed, the standards addressed, the steps from implementation, and include links to worksheets and sample programs.


Figure A3. The Physics Concepts guide explains physics concepts and links them to related LEGO activities

Documents

Bringing Engineering to Elementary Schoolintegratingengineering.org/stem/research/item1_bring_engr_elem... · Journal of STEM Education Vol. 5 • Issue 3 and 4 July-December 2004