Engineering a high school course

Abstract

The development of pre-engineering programs at the secondary school level will likely receive increased attention, in part due to the desire to better prepare prospective engineering students for the college experience. In this paper, the authors report their experiences with one such program. In 1996, a large, local high school asked the College of Engineering at the University of South Florida, USA, to develop a one semester introductory college level course for seniors as part of a three year pre-engineering curriculum at the school. It was decided to tie this course to an existing offering at the University (Computer Tools), building on the student's facility with personal computers. The course was divided into three segments, each beginning with software instruction (spreadsheets, structured programming and modelling packages), followed by an entry level introduction to several engineering principles or applications and supplemented by elementary engineering mathematics and numerical methods, as appropriate. In addition to presenting the course content and philosophy, this paper documents both the successes and the difficulties encountered during this course offering. Since student enthusiasm was high and most curricular goals were met, the course will be improved and repeated next year. New directions and plans to reduce logistical barriers in the future are discussed.