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Read about how Design and Discovery supports research in science and engineering for middle-school age students.
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Meaningful Learning
The Design and Discovery program is a print curriculum with supporting resources available for download at the Intel® Education Web site at no cost. The curriculum invites 11- to 15-year-olds to explore engineering by engaging in hands-on, design activities. It provides an environment where science and engineering concepts and skills are applied in ways that make them meaningful to students. The curriculum takes students through a series of activities, building their understanding in a sequential way, as they identify and design solutions to problems significant in their own lives. The design activities require students to develop concepts and principles from real encounters with their own world.
Problem-Solving
The Design and Discovery curriculum builds young people's knowledge of engineering, design, and science to support the development of inquiry skills, and to involve them in sustained problem solving. By participating in the design process, students begin to experience and understand how much of the world around them is created. Engaging in real design and engineering gives students an opportunity to look more critically at the designed world and tap into their own capacity to create change. Students formulate problems from everyday situations and develop strategies to solve the problems, while verifying and interpreting their results. Design and Discovery helps students understand the role of engineering and design in producing effective solutions to real-world problems.
Building Communication Skills
Students are encouraged to share and present their design solutions to others in an Intel ISEF-affiliated fair or a community showcase. The final presentations of design projects help build effective communication skills as students clearly articulate and describe their ideas and understanding of scientific and engineering concepts. Students prepare oral and visual presentations, field questions, and respond to feedback related to their projects. Through the use of a design notebook throughout the program, students keep written documentation of ideas, discoveries, sketches, and notes that can also be shared with their peers, parents, and community members.
Encouraging Systems Thinking
The Design and Discovery curriculum helps students build meaningful connections among skills and knowledge that are often the domain of discrete academic disciplines. The inherent interdisciplinary nature of design encourages students to begin looking at the idea of whole systems. Engineers and designers looking at a transportation system would need to study such interrelated products as cars, roads, maps, and bridges in order to find solutions to problems. Design problems often lie within these complex systems and require a variety of skills in order to develop solutions. As students start identifying design problems and researching solutions, they begin to think in whole systems, find connections, and recognize patterns.
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