The Engineering Design Process was designed with elementary engineers in mind, but did you know it's useful outside the STEM classroom? When used as a problem-solving tool, the EDP process: Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, and Improve can be used for just about any question your learners come across!

Ever wondered what kind of career your learners could pursue with an engineering education? Has your student demonstrated skills with problem solving and creative thinking? It might be time to visit our newest exhibit at the Museum of Science!

One of the core elements we consider when designing STEM activities for our learners is the Engineering Design Process, or EDP. The process is a set of steps that guide us - or any professional engineer, scientist or mathematician - through solving a problem. But what do each of the steps really mean?

This year, the students at Tabernacle Elementary School in Tabernacle, New Jersey are experiencing something brand new—they’re solving problems and exploring new challenges in a hands-on, collaborative STEAM environment called the Collaboratory. Since the Collaboratory has opened, students have thrived with project-based learning and the Tabernacle community has come together to support the common goal of helping kids develop 21st century skills. Collaboratory teacher Brittany Murro says, “When we started this, we thought, it’s the first year, we’ll just take things a day at a time and see where they go. But it has gone above and beyond what I think any of us expected for the first year of a new program like this.”

The engineering design process is central to engineering. Engineers use the engineering design process to create technologies. For our elementary engineering curriculum, we developed an age-appropriate five-step engineering design process: Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, and Improve. Did you know you can apply this problem-solving tool to problems outside of engineering? Throughout the school day, your students encounter numerous problems that they’ll need to solve. Our engineering design process can give your students a process to solve their everyday problems more effectively and a chance to practice important 21st century skills like collaboration, communication and critical thinking. Over the years, educators have shared with us the innovative ways they adapted EiE’s five-step Engineering Design Process (EDP) to the help their students solve a problem. Below we share our favorite examples!

How much do you know about engineering? Think you can spot common misconceptions about the field of engineering?