Thinking Like an Engineer - A TOS Homeschool Crew Review

Today I get to tell you about an amazing on-line course my family has been trying out this month by Innovators Tribe.

This opportunity to look at Thinking Like an Engineer came at a perfect time for us as my high school senior is looking at engineering and trying to determine what he will major in next year in college. We received a 2-year subscription in exchange for our review.

 Thinking Like an Engineer is a video course. It is well set up. From the Course Dashboard you can access the course Overview.

Scrolling down the Overview page brings you to a link where you can download the course Syllabus. 

 I did, however, think they could (and should) improve the "Materials List".

For one thing, it would be helpful if the list was broken down by lesson. For example, here is the syllabus content for Unit 1:

Under the Challenge activity of Lesson 1 it should say: Materials: 5 sheets of copy paper; 12" masking tape; scissors. 

Also, the material list was incomplete, because the Challenge activity under Lesson 3 called for two empty 2-liter soda bottles, masking tape, fine sand, coarse sand, gravel, coffee filter, and I think cheese cloth, and alum. None of those are on the provided materials list, and I'm still in Unit 1.

So... that was the only negative thing. I didn't make a water filter because I didn't have the materials, and I felt guilty that I wasn't prepared to make a water filter... And if I'd been doing this with kids I'd not have been prepared and I would have had disgruntled students.

Okay, so taking on this product review I was planning to work on the material at least three days per week, and I figured that would be about an hour each day. Doing this (not really knowing), I thought I'd get through quite a bit of the program.

What I found in truth was that the speed a student goes through the program will vary greatly from student to student. If they are really interested in the material, to a certain extent, the slower they go through the material the more they will get out of the program.

For instance, the Challenge Project for Lesson 1 was to create the tallest paper tower you can with five sheets of paper and 12" of masking tape. I really obsessed over this assignment, and spent hours on top of hours with my sad attempt that resulted in a flimsy construction about 2' tall.

How sad is that tower? ::sigh::

Lesson 2 provided an Activity Sheet with an assignment to research various types of engineers. These Activity Sheets are assigned throughout the program and are an intrinsic part of the program. And I'm not sure what happened with the Challenge activity for Lesson 2 - I didn't do it because I overlooked it.. I've now watched the challenge video, and my mind is cranking with how to attack the challenge...

Lesson 3, Engineering Clean Drinking Water, left me wondering how sustainable it is to create a clean drinking water system for a remote Mexican village. Don't the filters eventually need to be changed? How sustainable is that? And what about the last stage of cleaning the water where chemicals are added. Can't we learn and do more more with doing that stage without chemicals, with an ultraviolet lamp? I hate that our water is full of chemicals...

Lesson 4, 14 Grand Engineering Challenges, really slowed me down (as if I wasn't already going slowly enough!).

Lesson 4 gives a link to a website where the student can further explore these 14 engineering challenges. I could have spent two weeks on this one website following all of its links!

As you go into Unit 2, you download a CAD (Computer Aided Design) program. I've done this, but I'm still at the beginning of the unit learning how to use the program. Here is what Unit 2 includes:

Unit 3 is about Engineering Roller Coasters and has a challenge to make a paper roller coaster. You saw my paper tower -- I hate to think about what my paper roller coaster might look like!

Lesson 4 is about bridges. It was split onto two pages, so that's why it looks weird below:

Unit 5 is about 3D Computer Design. This might be the topic that fits my son well!

Unit 6 is about Nano-Engineering. We looked at nano-engineering once in First Lego League, but it didn't hold my son's attention. It might have been that he wasn't ready for it - he was in 6th Grade.

There is a brief summary at the end of the program.

Signing up for this course brings you a bonus course, How to be an Innovator. I haven't done that course yet, but it's amazing to get a bonus course!

The outline for Thinking Like an Innovator immediately follows the outline for Thinking Like an Engineer.

The provided information indicates that the course includes about 30 hours of work and can be counted as 1/4 high school credit.
 
I went through what I got through of Thinking Like an Engineer at the rate of about one lesson per week, not a lesson a day as I had envisioned. Most of the time I spent "on the program" was actually not on the program website but on connected links or on challenge activities. I loved it! If your student goes as slowly as I did and studies thoroughly it might merit more credit than is recommended.

While I have been using this program my son has been very busy with his dual-enrollment college courses and his other high school coursework and activities (including scholarship applications!). I expect I will continue to work through the program and share morsels with him until he finds time to begin working on it himself. Since he doesn't need the partial credit, he will probably just blast his way through the video portions and read what interests him of the links. I think this is such a valuable program for him to help introduce him to branches of engineering and to help him determine if there is a particular direction he wants to go.

Other members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew reviewed this course or Thinking Like an Architect. To read additional reviews please click the link below.