As an educator, it is important to prepare students for the future, equipping them with the soft and hard skills they need to succeed in whatever they do. Today, with an engineering skills shortage affecting many sectors, it is particularly important for teachers to nurture skills that could lead interested students to a successful career in engineering. In this article, we are looking at how educators can identify and hone skills essential to engineering, like teamwork and problem solving, through hands-on lessons and good engineering advice.
Identifying Skills That Engineers Need
Even from an early age, students can begin to display certain affinities or skills that could put them on a specific career path. For example, a young student who takes to learning their first instrument very quickly could possess a natural talent that—with proper education and practice—could lead them to become a professional musician. The same is true for budding engineers. Educators should be able to recognize when a student demonstrates interests or skills that could make them a good fit for engineering disciplines.
Among those skills are:
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Curiosity
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Creativity
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Comfortable working in teams
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Resourcefulness
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Problem-solving mindset
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Interest in math and science
As you might have noticed, these are skills that any type of student can display. What is important is that educators encourage all students to develop these skills and teach them about engineering career options. As Jeff Wiencrot, Senior Director of Firmware & Hardware Engineering at Sphero, notes, achieving diversity in engineering and adjacent fields is highly dependent on education. “While the industry remains male-dominated, there appears to be a rise in diversity both in the industry, in colleges, and in participation at younger educational levels (predicting a continued rise),” he says.
Supporting the Growth of Engineering Skills in the Classroom
There are many ways to create a fertile classroom environment for developing engineering skills. Project-based lessons are a great place to start, particularly if they require teamwork and creative problem solving. Educators can encourage student engagement by introducing dynamic activities emphasizing hands-on learning, such as robotics and engineering kits. Here are some ideas for engineering activities for elementary, middle, and high school students.
Elementary School: Navigating with indi
This activity, suitable for K-2, leverages Sphero indi, a robotic car driven by color that helps teach young students the fundamentals of computational thinking. In this activity, students build a map and learn to give directions to indi using colored tiles so that they can navigate the course seamlessly. By completing this interactive project, students will learn to give clear step-by-step directions (using terms like “then” and “next”) and, in turn, learn how an algorithm is created.
Middle School: Simple & Complex Machines with Blueprint
Simple machines are the building blocks of engineering, and teaching kids about them can help them better understand how everyday tools and systems work. Middle school is a great time to introduce simple machines. Sphero’s Blueprint Engineering Kit can give students hands-on experience and teach them about vital engineering concepts like mechanical advantage. For example, students can build simple levers to see firsthand how the position of a fulcrum influences effort force and resistance force. They can also make connections between their constructions and levers they encounter daily, like wheelbarrows or scissors. There are also various Blueprint lessons for the other simple machines, like pulleys, wedges, inclined planes, wheels and axles, etc. Students then combine these simple machines to design complex machines by combining multiple simple machines to make bigger and better builds.
High School: Understanding Control Systems
As students master their knowledge of simple and complex machines, teachers can introduce electronics and control systems to further home engineering skills. Working in groups with Blueprint pieces and Bits, high school students can design and build functional control systems that integrate mechanical and electrical concepts as well as inputs, outputs, and sensors. For example, in one lesson, students can build a vehicle that automatically stops when it gets too close to an obstacle using motors and a distance sensor.
These activities and others can instill engineering and STEM skills in kids from a young age and, more importantly, get them excited about their future in the field. After all, careers in engineering are projected to grow at a faster average rate than other occupations over the next decade, so there will be many job opportunities for those interested in pursuing a career in engineering.
When asked for engineering career advice, educator Aspen Meineke said, “I’m passionate about showing my students that a STEM education is for everyone. It’s not just for the kids that get all As in class and breeze through standardized testing. STEM is also for kids curious about the world and how it works. It’s not just about math and science but learning how to think like an engineer. By that, I mean learning how to solve a problem and thinking critically on how to fix or improve it.”
Honing Engineering Skills Beyond the Classroom
From an educator’s perspective, supporting the development of skills and knowledge in the classroom is the chief objective, but it is also important to encourage students to engage in learning outside of school. For instance, students can join local robotics teams, sign up for STEAM summer programs, and enroll in extracurricular CTE courses.
Schedule a meeting with a Sphero expert to learn more tips for guiding engineering students toward their career goals.
