Engineering Design/Develop Honors Class

Throughout my high school career I have encountered many academic highs as well as lows. I am very proud to say that one of my proudest highlights would be my Engineering Design/Develop Honors class. below is a copy of the class description.

Course Description:

The knowledge and skills students acquire throughout PLTW Engineering come together in Engineering Design and Development as they identify an issue and then research, design, and test a solution, ultimately presenting their solution to a panel of engineers. Students apply the professional skills they have developed to document a design process to standards, completing Engineering Design and Development ready to take on any post-secondary program or career.

You’ve never had a class like this. Although there will be a few “traditional” teacher-delivered content lessons/assignments, the vast majority of classes will be groups of students working on a long-rang full-year project that solves a particular problem of their choosing. In essence, almost everything done in this course is student-driven, providing an opportunity to create a real-world solution by

Although there will undoubtedly be a temptation to focus on the final product, at its core Engineering Design & Development is a research class meant to fully encapsulate the design process. The final product (project) that is produced is simply a by-product. Throughout the design process, students will produce very detailed portfolio documentation through an online site called Innovation Portal. At any given time, some groups may be at completely different points in their process than other groups. Towards the end of the year, parents, faculty, and others will be invited to view “high-stakes” student presentations of their products to a panel of professional engineers. Depending upon their solutions to real-world problems, students may even have the potential to patent