Socially Engaged Engineering: Consider the Impacts on Different Individuals, Groups, or Systems

Students consider who or what is most affected by the problem and how. They use this knowledge to make design decisions. As students progress through their engineering journeys, they…

  • identify needs or preferences of various users.
  • prioritize design criteria that help reduce harm for the most impacted groups.
  • make tradeoffs affecting how well they can meet these criteria and justify their decisions using what they understand about the various impacts of the problem.

“But If They’re Really Scared of the Dark…”

A first grader describes how her nightlight design meets the needs of multiple users, and that users’ needs may change over time. Watch & Reflect:

Reflection Questions

By starting to think about the needs of other people, we are setting up our youngest learners to be compassionate users and producers of engineering and STEM in the future. This helps students to become both better scientists and engineers and better citizens. 

Have students think about ways to make a nightlight that uses a renewable energy source and the tradeoffs in using those sources. For example, solar energy is free, but may not be a great source for a nightlight. Bioluminescence provided by fireflies could do the same work, but keeping them in captivity might be harmful to the insects.  

Related Engineering Practices: Consider Problems in Context, Envision Multiple Solutions
Featured Unit: Engineering Nightlights

“Insulation Versus Volume”

A teacher asks a group of middle school students to explain their plan for a medicine cooler. Students are given several competing criteria that they must balance by considering how much materials cost with how much medicine the cooler can hold and how cold it can get. Watch & Reflect:

Reflection Questions

The students considered which criteria were brought up most frequently by potential users to see which would be the most impactful.

Ask students to think about…

  • which users ask for the most storage. Whose needs are not being met with this approach?
  • how their design would need to be different for a user other than the one they currently are prioritizing.
  • what constraints they would need to adjust to meet everyone’s needs. Is that possible in this situation? 

Related Engineering Practices: Envision Multiple Solutions, Make Evidence-Based Decisions, Balance Criteria and Constraints
Featured Unit: Engineering Medicine Coolers