Design Squad: Using Popular Media to Improve the Future of the Engineering Profession by Daniel D
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Design Squad: Using Popular Media to Improve the Future of the Engineering Profession By Daniel D. Frey, David R. Wallace and Marisa Wolsky (This article was developed from Frey, Wallace and Wolsky’s presentation at ASQ’s World Conference on Quality and Improvement in 2007.) A television show called Design Squad was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and WGBH, Boston’s public television station, to interest and engage middle school children in engineering design. The first season of Design Squad was filmed in the summer of 2006 and premiered nationally on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in February 2007. The program features teams of high school students engaged in solving engineering challenges posed by real-world clients. The show highlights the excitement and enjoyment that come from creative technical work. The participants use modern components including microcontrollers, sensor and actuators, which provides the viewing audience needed exposure to the inner workings of modern technology. Animations illustrate physical principles underlying the function of the children’s designs. The program has an estimated audience of more than 1 million viewers per week. Results from development testing with focus groups and early media reviews indicate that dramatizing engineering design though friendly competition can engage an audience while reinforcing key lessons about engineering. In the beginning To create the multi-media project as envisioned, it was essential to assemble a network of organizations and a team of people with the needed skills, experience and resources in educational programming, engineering and other specialties. For the new children’s engineering program, the team at WGBH is led by Kate Taylor as senior executive producer and Marisa Wolsky as executive producer. Director and producer Dorothy Dickie was centrally involved in the filming and editing of the first season. Outreach coordinator Thea Sahr developed printed materials, such as the educator’s guide and event guide, and organized a series of training sessions for engineers who will form after-school clubs in which kids will build their own designs. One of the WGBH team’s first steps was to secure a planning grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The goals under the planning grant were to: • Establish a board of advisors. • Identify content directors. • Develop ways that viewers can become involved with program-related activities through outreach and the web. • Write the series curriculum. • Design the game. • Test the engineering challenges with kids. • Develop evaluation plans. • Create a business model. The WGBH team selected David Wallace and Daniel Frey from MIT as content directors due to their experience with hands-on engineering design education. In this role, they provide technical advice on the challenges to be posed, coordinate development of each episode's design challenges, provide guidance on-set and help to craft presentation of engineering content during post-production. Under their supervision, MIT students join the team at various times as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program or as graduate research assistants. The MIT students play an essential role in developing prototype design challenges for the program. Wallace has been the lead advisor in the first season guiding technical content on-set and in postproduction. Several strategic partners have joined the team to augment the effort. These include the American Society of Civil Engineers, National Engineers Week and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. These partners receive ongoing support, local trainings and introductions among local engineering chapters, public televisions stations, Boys & Girls Club directors, Girl Scout troop leaders and classroom teachers. They, in turn, bring their first-hand knowledge of the audiences they reach. It is through the combined efforts of WGBH and its strategic partners that after-school engineering activities will be coordinated. Learning from peers Design Squad is intended to be transformative, so the audience must be reached before misperceptions of engineering become the norm. By eighth grade, many patterns are already established, such as the relatively low percentage (less than 10%) of students aspiring to math and science careers and the significantly lower interest among girls as compared to boys (less than one girl for every two boys).1 Therefore, the show was designed for kids 9 to 12 years old, who are typically in middle school. To reach the target audience, WGBH cast participants slightly older than the viewing audience, relying on the remarkable way kids emulate and imitate other kids, especially slightly older ones. It is also helpful that this age group will have the capacity to acquire the skills and content knowledge needed to tackle the engineering challenges posed on the program. In addition, the show provides role models for girls and minorities by casting children from a range of racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds. When viewers watch, they will see kids like themselves actively involved in engineering. To provide “under the hood” exposure to engineering, the television show must have substantive and sufficiently advanced content. The team worked to make the show as hands-on as television can be. Viewers will see other children taking raw materials, and with very little adult intervention, transforming them into workable solutions. The projects have a scale and complexity that excites the viewing audience. Unlike other children’s series where most of the activities use low-tech materials, such as scissors and tape, this show uses modern technology—including computers, sensors and actuators—to solve bigger challenges. To have a good chance at success, it was important to make the show distinctive from other programs. A reality format children’s television show about engineering has been tried at least once. Design Squad differed from this previous show along various dimensions: • There is much greater emphasis on the educational mission of the program including the engineering process as well as the science and technology content. • This show features more modern technologies in the solutions. • The challenges on the new TV show are, while fun, also inspired by real-world needs. For this project to fully attain its goals, the television show cannot stand alone, but must integrate with other efforts. The best learning outcomes are generally attained by active engagement through pedagogies of cooperative and problem-based learning.2 These pedagogies cannot be implemented fully if children watch passively; therefore, the television show is part of an ambitious multimedia project. For example, the website associated with the show provides kids simplified versions of the show’s challenges that they can do at home, keeping them involved in the popular culture of the series and expanding their hands-on exposure to engineering. An educator’s guide provides after-school informal educators with a 12-week curriculum containing three engineering challenges adapted from the television series. Volunteer engineers and public television stations host public engineering events around the country. It comes in threes The process for developing Design Squad was iterative. Prototype episodes were filmed and edited and then subject to formative assessment from focus groups of potential viewers and from a committee of expert advisors. The feedback was then used in developing another prototype and the cycle repeated. Three cycles of development and evaluation were complete before filming the first season of 13 episodes in summer of 2006. The prototype episode featured a pair of hosts with an Odd Couple -inspired contrast—one host was technically savvy and disciplined in his style, and the other host was wise-cracking, disheveled, and unindustrious. The challenge for the kids in the episode was to make a machine that would, at the push of a button, take in raw eggs and make scrambled eggs. The focus group testing indicated the show strongly appealed to kids of both genders across all the ages sampled. Overall, the research participants, kids 9-12 years old, were extremely engaged by the program However, viewers commented that they preferred more fun and whimsical challenges and more emphasis on the competitive aspects of the showmachine. The second proof of concept added a story line and adult characters to structure the show, along with a challenge that had tested well with focus groups—a water-balloon filling machine. In this episode, a female character is chief engineer and all-around boss at a new company that designs whimsical machines to solve its client’s problems. Two of her employees each mentored one of the teams. Kids in a second round of focus groups found the concept of the show compelling and appropriate to their age group and interests. They enjoyed the focus on problem solving, teamwork, and competition. The more whimsical challenge garnered positive reactions. The water balloon theme also led to very popular moments of physical humor, such as players being accidentally sprayed with water. The viewers also frequently retained ideas about physical phenomena and formed opinions about preferred techniques for sealing joints. Despite generally positive reactions, some new weaknesses were revealed. The fictional premise of the prototype episode did not test well. The viewers also wanted more detail in some technical areas, especially what components were being used and where they came from. These suggestions were strongly incorporated in the plans going forward. Based on the two rounds of formative assessment, a third prototype episode was filmed in the summer of 2005 with the title “Design Squad.” The challenge posed to the teams was to make a machine to assemble peanut butter and jelly sandwiches automatically. The most significant change to be tested in this prototype was giving the teams a budget for shopping trips. It was felt this new element of the show would be a natural way to include descriptions of the materials and components while avoiding a kit inventory process that might lose the interest of viewers.