An Interactive Digital Workbook to Scaffold Engineering Design Projects

Digital technology is widely available for science and engineering classrooms. The use of laptops, tablets, hand-held devices, and interactive white-boards are all on the rise in classrooms. Yet national surveys tell us that the dominant use of digital technology is not for higher level learning through inquiry and engineering design projects. Two dominant barriers to higher-level use of digital technology are teacher technology skills and the planning time. A prototype digital curriculum tool is needed to begin testing solutions to these issues. The focus of this thesis is to demonstrate the design and testing of digital curriculum tools targeted at helping students scaffold the process and technology for tackling diverse engineering design challenges. The tool and conclusions from design tests will inform future efforts to use digital based curriculum to reduce barriers for higher-level technology use in science and engineering classrooms.