Engineering Concepts in the High School Classroom: The Dartmouth/Thayer Problem-Solving Methods

This paper describes a program sponsored by Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering for high school science and mathematics teachers that includes an intensive summer workshop, post-workshop consultation and communication with the Thayer School staff and other past participants, and materials development. The program offers teachers a framework wherein their students develop problem-solving skills that require critical thinking, communication, and teamwork. Within this framework, students are given the opportunity to defend their own problems and develop solutions to those problems. Students make testable predictions and analyze test results, encounter the real world in their search for answers, take into account ideas from a variety of disciplines, and communicate their findings both in a traditional written format and orally to a review board of professionals in the field. While developing new skills and learning to trust their own judgment, students also accomplish highly technical tasks and develop solid expertise in their field of inquiry. Also discussed is the project's dissemination beyond Dartmouth through workshops composed and run by past participants in this program. (DDR)