Engineering Design and Development (EDD) is the capstone course in Wilmington High School’s Project Lead the Way high school engineering program. It is an engineering research course in which students work in teams to design and develop an original solution to a valid open-ended technical problem by applying the engineering design process.
The course applies and concurrently develops secondary level knowledge and skills in mathematics, science, and technology. Utilizing the activity-project-problem-based (APPB) teaching and learning pedagogy, students will perform research to choose, validate, and justify a technical problem.
After carefully defining the problem, teams of students will design, build, and test their solution.
Finally, student teams will present and defend their original solution to an outside panel.
While progressing through the engineering design process, students will work closely with a community mentor and experts and will continually hone their organizational, communication and interpersonal skills, their creative and problem-solving abilities, and their understanding of the design process.
Brianna Brunke, a junior at WHS, is looking forward to starting her independent study project next year. She is excited to connect a STEM project that engineers advances in humanities.
Brianna shares that she is interested in connecting with biomedical engineering and the humanities as a potential career path.
Senior Cole Burnhardt is grateful for the opportunity to take four years of the Project Lead the Way program while at Wilmington High School. Although he is considering a future career in finances, he said the experiences in PLTW have developed his ability to problem solve and look at things from multiple perspectives. He has discovered that the first solution to a problem is not necessarily always the best solution.
Logan Norman, a senior at WHS, plans to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps after graduation. He will connect his service with some type of engineer training; he said he is appreciative of the foundations he learned in the PLTW at Wilmington.
