Teaching the Engineering Design Process to High School Students by Implementing a Non-Traditional Engineering Capstone Course

This plan B project is to showcase the implementation of an engineering design capstone course at a remote, rural public high school, in a non-traditional (after-school) format with a small group of students. The project documents successful strategies along with challenges that were learned from such an implementation of this course. Three high school students were supported in learning to solve an extended design challenge, in this case creating an augmented reality (AR) sandbox. The project shows how a capstone course can be utilized in teaching students to solve complex, ill-structured problems. In this project, a manuscript was prepared for publication (e.g., in the Technology and Engineering Teacher). The article from the teacher’s perspective provides an overview of how Utah’s high school “Engineering Capstone” course was developed and delivered in a non-traditional (afterschool) setting. The article details lessons learned by the teacher as students completed an engineering design challenge that required them to develop, build, and present a prototype of an augmented reality sandbox