Accelerated project-based introduction to EECS for high school students

Abstract

Introducing students to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) can be difficult to implement within the limited time constraints often encountered in high school summer programs because of the large amount instruction and theory needed to enable suitably complex projects. Projects of meaningful complexity require carefully balancing how much theory and design is left to the students or provided by the instructor. Here we present a short one-week project-based course developed in the summer of 2011 that introduced rising high school seniors to core concepts in EECS. Three days of instruction and teaching labs were followed by two days where students designed and constructed devices used in creating a solar-powered mobile health clinic. A carefully balanced environment enabled students to progress steadily through the entire process of designing, constructing, and testing their projects. Students then presented their work in a conference-style talk. Details of the course outline, methodology, projects, and results, are presented.