Our goal is to help you to help all students learn to use engineering as a problem-solving approach for their everyday lives and communities. We want to help you incorporate community-based engineering in your own classrooms and learning spaces, but of course that begs the question…
What is Community-Based Engineering?
Community Based Engineering (CBE) is an approach to introduce elementary grade students to engineering and engage them in the engineering design process. It is an inquiry-based strategy where teachers and learners collaboratively find engineering problems in their local communities and solve those problems.
The authentic nature of these problems has the participating young students assume the role of responsible community member. Through CBE, teachers can address various science and math content standards along with engineering content and practices, and CBE enriches existing school science and math curriculum.
CBE problems and their solutions are specific to local communities, which can be defined as classrooms, schools, community organizations, or local neighborhoods. CBE encourages collaboration between the problem solvers and the members of community.