Engineering and Design: A Real Life Application

Sandwich High School’s Engineering and Design class offers students a hands-on approach to learning by challenging students to build and design their construction projects. They are constructed with Solidworks, a computer-aided design software that allows the user to draw parts on a computer and then print them out on a 3D printer. This class was a new course for the academic year of 2015 to replicate classes offered at vocational schools.

Engineering and Design aims to diversify the SHS course selection, and its teacher, Dr. Larry Anderson, is the designer of its curriculum.

“We are currently building glider prototypes out of balsa wood. Once they have finished their wooden planes, they will try to replicate their designs on Solidworks and print them out,” Dr. Anderson stated.

Dr. Anderson says that, “Technology is becoming a bigger piece of education because technology is becoming more prevalent in the workplace, and a change in the working world, should be reflected in the information that we select to teach our students.”

Dr. Anderson does not give grades based on flawlessness but gives them in an objective manner.

“The group who finishes in the first place gets the 100, the group who finishes second gets the 95, so on and so forth.”

The Engineering and Design students are constantly making the next piece of their project and are always trying to meet the deadlines and requirements of the project that Dr. Anderson assigned to them. Dr. Anderson said that the classmates should be competing for grades because colleagues in the real world compete for promotions and raises.

“Coming to this class should be very much like going to work. There are no notes, and I give them what they ask for, but I try not to interfere with the natural design process that is going on. It should be a competition between everyone in the class, just like in the workplace.”

He went on to add that “They need to learn how to innovate and improve their designs when they find themselves in third place and don’t seem to have any obvious solution. And that is the goal, to create the best glider, or cart, or whatever it may be.”