The centerpiece of the proposed program is the enhancement of students’ engineering thinking through mathematical modeling. The program aims to fulfill towards the need addressed by the European Council and by professional organizations (ABET, 2004; AAAS, 1998; NRC, 2001), emphasizing that enhancing students' engineering problem solving skills and thinking is an essential for all students and not only for students that will follow engineering related studies but also for other professionals.

The basic objectives and the suggested methodology of the project are:

(a) The identification of real problems that professional engineers face in their daily work and the development of a database of these problems. Based on these problems, a set of modified engineering problems, suitable for elementary and secondary school students will be developed.

(b) The development of a test and semi-structured interviews for measuring students' engineering thinking. The development of the test and the interviews will be based on prior research in the area of modeling and engineering education.

(c) The development of a set of Engineering Teaching Activities and Teacher Training Materials using a Models and Modeling approach. This set will include ten activities, focusing on topics from various engineering fields (e.g., electrical engineering, computer engineering, environmental engineering, civil engineering, etc).

(d) The implementation of the engineering activities in schools. Specifically, the activities have been implemented in 15 classes and around 400 students and 35 teachers have been involved in project.

Dr Nicholas Mousoulides
Project Coordinator
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