Engineering design projects for schools

The Engineering Council makes presentations to schools to increase the awareness of Engineering, in all its forms, to students largely in the age range 11 to 18. This paper addresses particularly the use of Engineering Design projects of a fully participatory nature and shows through several examples how such projects can ring out the innovative skills of students. Design projects are preferred in which there is more than one valid answer; there are indications that the correlation between students with a high rate of learning in a conventional sense and those with good innovative skills is not good. Bearing in mind the urgent need in engineering and industry for people with well developed innovative capabilities this preliminary work calls for the development of further engineering projects aiming at participatory classroom sessions to explore further ways of identifying those students with design and innovative talents, preferably at an early age.