Innovative curriculum for engineering in high school (ICE-HS)status update

Abstract

The ICE-HS was developed to address the need to define an engineering curriculum in a charter high school. The research team reviewed several vendor prescribed curricula such as project lead the way and infinity, and digital libraries funded by NSF and ASEE such as teachengineering.org, cadrek12.org and egfi.org. The inflexibility of vendor sold curricula and lack of structure with the digital libraries posed some challenges for teaching engineering in high school. The school needed some customization of available curricula for implementing a discrete engineering course The ICE-HS was thus developed to address this need. The ICE-HS presents a step-by-step methodology for developing a four-year high school engineering curriculum framework based on backward design and systems thinking approaches. The ICE-HS is structured around two major objectives: attracting the high school students to STEM and providing a flexible engineering foundation. It does not prescribe specific modules but offers integration with the other disciplines such as language/arts and traditional science courses. The ICE-HS uses digital libraries and vendor sold curricula providing a framework that allows the school to customize its delivery for appropriate grades and levels. The ICE-HS is currently being piloted in a charter high school, Da Vinci School for Science and the Arts. This paper presents the ICE-HS approach, syllabus of each of the courses developed using ICE-HS, and initial data indicating positive impact on student learning. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.