"Starting Young," Feature Article, January 2008

ENGINEERING: THE NEXT GENERATIONS

starting young

A kids' reality show keeps on designing.

by Harry Hutchinson, Executive Editor

a U.S. TV show designed to raise the image of engineering among children was an experiment when it first aired a year ago. Its backers say it's working, and the series is going into its second season.

The show, Design Squad, pits two teams of teenagers against each other in competitions to design and build sometimes whimsical, sometimes serious structures and machines. Last season, each team had to build a span across a creek—one a suspension bridge, the other a truss bridge—using only tools and techniques of the Colonial era. In another episode, they had to convert a tricycle and a kid's wagon to be powered by handheld electric drills, and then race them on a track.

The show's key audience consists of children 9 to 12 years old. The producers call it "part reality competition, all engineering, and major fun."

In each episode, the teams are introduced to a client who poses a challenge. The team whose design best meets the challenge wins. The first episode of Season Two has IKEA, the home goods retailer, challenging the teams to build practical furniture out of cardboard. Another challenge is to design prosthetic devices for an underwater performance by a dancer who has lost both her legs.

Each show also has a segment on technology practitioners, including a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team and a designer of high-tech tents. The show is produced by WGBH, the public broadcasting station in Boston, and more than 200 PBS stations have broadcast the series.

Show your colors: A TV show that brings engineering to the young focuses on fun and collaborative problem-solving.

There's evidence that the show reaches kids. WGBH hired Goodman Research Group Inc. for a study of 139 fifth- and sixth-grade students in Massachusetts and California. More than half of them were girls.

After watching four episodes, students were significantly more likely to agree that engineers help make people's lives better and that they solve problems affecting real people. Fewer students felt that engineering is boring or that men are better at engineering than women.

After watching the episodes, almost two-thirds of the students said they would be interested in joining an after-school engineering program. Before they saw the episodes, about two in five expressed interest in an activity like that.

According to executive producer Marisa Wolsky, Design Squad offers educational materials specifically to make those kinds of programs possible. Guides have been designed for parents, teachers, and even leaders of youth groups who may have no training in science or engineering. Materials outline concepts and pose simple projects for kids, like building a rubber band-powered car using compact discs for wheels or making a dance pad with buzzers and flashing lights.

According to Wolsky, the show has formed special connections with 4-H, Girl Scouts, and Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Design Squad provides them with instructional materials for use in their meetings.

Dorothy Dickie, senior producer and director, said that the Season Two host, Nate Ball, is the only returning cast member. During the first season, Ball was co-host with Deanne Bell. Both are mechanical engineers.

According to Wolsky, the show focuses on team activities. Host segments are brief, so it was decided to have only one host. Wolsky said all competitors are replaced because their skills improve so much during a season that they would overmatch any newcomers.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has served as a talent pool for the series. David Wallace of the mechanical engineering faculty is content director. Graduate students Ben Powers and Helen Tsai, and a post-doc, Lawrence Neeley, are advisors. So is Dan Frey, who is also on the ME faculty. They help shape the challenges competitors face. Woodie Flowers, a founder of the FIRST robotics competition has also contributed to the show. Flowers, Wallace, and Frey are ASME members.

The series made its debut during National Engineers Week last year. This time around, the first episode of the series also will appear during Engineers Week, which is Feb. 17 through 23. It will be available at first on the series Web site, http://pbskids.org/designsquad/.

PBS stations will begin broadcasting episodes in April, after they finish their on-air pledge drives. All the episodes from Season One are also currently available for viewing at the site, as are the series' educational materials.

Much of Design Squad is paid for by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Intel Foundation. Funding also comes from Tyco Electronics, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, the Harold and Esther Edgerton Family Foundation, the Noyce Foundation, Intel Corp., the American Society of Civil Engineers, and IEEE.