Class runs students through the entire engineering process, has them work to solve a problem
By Kellen Olshefski
Editor
A new class at Elkhorn Area High School is giving students an opportunity to run through the entire engineering process and also potentially earn transcripted credit at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.
Barry Butters – Director of Education and Training at Precision Plus and instructor for the new Engineering, Design and Development class – said the class is the major capstone course for the Project Lead the Way curriculum, something he said school administration is heavily driven by.
Not being offered to students when they registered for classes last spring, Butters said after attending training this summer, he’s pulling the course together for a total of about 12 students, who were interested in taking the class this year. Butters said the students are split up into four groups; two of which meet during the school day, the other two meet after school.
“It’s a unique relationship between industry and schools,” he said. “It’s the only one I’m aware of that the teachers actually outside of the building through Project Lead the Way.”
Butters said though he won’t always be on site, he will be physically visiting the school to meet with students and communicating with them via video feed as well.
According to Butters, the course runs the gamut when it comes to the engineering process, taking students through the entire process; identifying an existing problem, researching the problem, doing a patent research for the problem to see what solutions are already out there, designing possible solutions, determine a best solution and manufacture a prototype.
Butters said as a part of this process, students will be assigned a mentor in a field related to their issue and will additionally have to contact experts in that field.
“That’s my job, to make sure these students have those contacts,” he said.
Butters said students will run their prototypes through a series of tests next spring, many times leading them to modifications or completely scrapping their idea for a different solution.
At the end of the year when students believe they have found a viable solution to their problem, they will meet with a team of engineers and present their findings to the engineers, essentially like a dissertation. Butters said he hopes to have this part complete in April so students can wrap up and focus on AP exams, occurring in May.
As for grading, Butters said it will be based on students turning in all of the different elements of the process, as well as their engineer’s notebook, which becomes a legal document.
Over the course of the year, Butters said he will additionally have a lawyer coming to talk to students about patenting ideas and such, as sometimes projects can yield incredible results.
“Sometimes ideas coming out of this class, this EDD class, are patentable,” he said.
Butters said students will be required to be diligent with their engineer notebooks, dating each page and signing it and having somebody signoff on it, not only as learning experience, but if they do have a patentable idea it is well documented.
Over the course, Butters said students will be submitting their work through Google Docs, allowing Butters to review each of the 13 elements of the final project twice before a final version is submitted for grading.
“It’s like a huge term paper project really, with pictures and math,” he said.
Butters said in the past, students in other districts projects have been purchased by companies such as John Deere. Butters noted one student who developed a light for a gun scope that reflects blood for easier nighttime tracking for hunters.
“You should see some of the ideas that come out of this, it’s absolutely amazing,” he said.
Last year, Butters served as a judge for an EDD competition sponsored by Rockwell Automation. The winning project came from an Oconomowoc student who Butters said actually developed technology to protect manned spacecraft from radiation in outer space. As part of his work, Butters said the student was in continuous contact with a NASA physicist who said the student’s work gave him a new way to look at the problem.
“The math behind it was unbelievable,” he said.
With this in mind, Butters said it really gives students to take this class as far they want to.
As part of training to instruct the course this summer, Butters said trainees were required to run through the entirety of the course in just two weeks. As an example of the course, Butters said his group took a look at the problem of babies and choking hazards when it came to food.
“There’s a fair amount about the size of an object a child can choke on, but not so much about how tough a food should be to give to toddler at a specific age of development, whether it’s too hard for them to gum and actually break into smaller pieces,” he said.
Together, the group designed, modeled and created a prototype of a knife that could be adjusted for different age ranges and collapse if the food was to tough for that age of development.
Butters said he’s excited for the students to have fairly free reign as to what they want to do in the class while keeping them focused on facing a solution to better mankind in one way or another whether it’s used for safety or a commercial use, stimulating the economy.
Butters said he believes this course will be instrumental for students who think they might want to continue on in an engineering career.
“It’s vital for them to go through the entire process of engineering so that they realize much of their time is spent researching and documenting,” he said. “It’s not all about designing and sketching in a book. A lot of it’s very tedious work.”
Additionally, Butters said the class will help students to realize that no problem is too big or small of a challenge for them.
“Some of these kids, they’re insightful and it’s just amazing to me that given the opportunity they can really tackle some of the more difficult problems and come up with very creative and novel solutions,” he said.
Beginning next year, Butters said the course will be in the course handbook and students will be able to register for the course as they would any other. He’s hoping to have the class at the end of the day, allowing students to leave the high school campus to go meet with local experts if need be.
“So, if they’re in heating and cooling, and they have an idea for a damper flow or something like that, I may hook them up with someone at Komfort Heating and Cooling, and they may have to leave school and go talk to them, share some ideas and show them their prototype and ask for input,” he said, noting he wouldn’t want them to be late for other classes.
Additionally, Butters said this would allow students to leave school and go to Precision Plus to work on their projects.
For more information on Project Lead the Way, visit www.pltw.org.
