Engineering Contests: Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity (in Constraints), Construction

Warning! This section has almost nothing to do with Modern Physics!

I use contests in a variety of ways in almost all of my courses. It is a great way to motivate students. It provides opportunitites for them to apply and construct content knowledge. They develop team work skills and learn to problem solve and communicate more effectively. Students are introduced to the group learning environment on the first day using these slides for Engineering 11 and Engineering 12.

These are the contest units that form the core of a Two-Year Engineering Design Course: The course can be provided as an interdisciplinary credit in Ontario (IDC 3O and/or IDC 4U) and only requires the principal's permission to run. The descriptions for Interdiscplinary Studies can be found here. The specific description of the two courses that I have been teaching are IDC 3O and IDC 4U. Each contest takes around ten classes but can be trimmed to just a couple if used in another course.I would be very interested in helping any teacher who wants to introduce this course in their school. I would be especially interested to hear what you do diffeently.

Engineering contests require that you form groups and evaluate group work. It is a great opportunity to develop team work skills. You can find some ideas about how to do this effectively and fairly on this page.

The following are contests that can form part of a standard science lesson: