This article describes the NASA-Funded Space Grant Project BOREALIS: "Balloon Outreach, Research, Exploration, and Landscape Imaging System." BOREALIS conducts high-altitude balloon flights to the "edge of space" with flights typically reaching 100,000 feet and a current record flight in the summer of 2020 that reached 126,000…

How might engineering technology students make use of patent information in the engineering design process? Librarians analyzed team project reports and personal reflections created by students in an undergraduate mechanical engineering technology design course, revealing that the students used patents to consider the patentability of their ideas,…

Engineering design thinking is hard to teach and still harder to learn by novices primarily due to the undetermined nature of engineering problems that often results in multiple solutions. In this paper, we investigate the effect of teaching engineering design thinking to freshmen students by using a computer-aided Design (CAD) simulation…

To be technologically and engineering literate, people should be able to "make" or produce quality solutions to engineering design challenges while recognizing and understanding how to avoid hazards in a broad array of situations when properly using tools, machines, and materials (Haynie, 2009; Gunter, 2007; ITEA/ITEEA, 2000/2002/2007).…

As national STEM initiatives focus on engineering design as a STEM integrator, a more important concern for K-12 educators should be teaching design fundamentals and using these experiences to help students obtain STEM content knowledge. There appears however, to be little instruction and emphasis on building students' design-sketching skills in…

The first steps in the engineering design process are to identify and define the problem (Eide, Jenison, Mashaw, & Northup, 2001). The primary purpose of this article is to highlight the problem that has existed for the past three decades (a disconnect between industrial educators and proponents of technological literacy) and to make a…

With the release of the Next Generation Science Standards and the adoption of the standards by many states, teachers are encouraged to use the engineering design process (EDP) as an instructional approach to teaching science. However, teachers have limited time to teach science and will often neglect science in favor of mathematics and literacy…

The integrity of a structural system depends on the strength of materials, shape of the individual member and the elements used to hold the members together. In most undergraduate civil engineering curricula, a structural steel and/or reinforced concrete design course is required. Usually, the main focus of these courses is on member selection…

This article illustrates how mathematics teachers can develop design-focused projects, related to project-based learning, to motivate secondary mathematics students. With first-hand experience as a secondary mathematics teacher, I provide a series of steps related to the engineering design process, which are helpful to teachers in developing…

Final program projects (capstone course) in manufacturing design engineering technology at National University are intensive experiences in critical thinking and analysis, designed to broaden students' perspectives and provide an opportunity for integration of coursework in the area of manufacturing design engineering. This paper focuses on three…