Educational Trust - Promoting Structural Engineering in Schools
Click here to download the executive summary of 'Promoting structural engineering in schools'
Return to top
Primary School Initiative
-
Designing Bristol's first sustainable sports park and athletics stadium for the imaginary 2010 International Schools Athletics was the challenge for Bristol school pupils during a week-long summer school at the end of July. The 'Beyond Brunel' summer school was run by the University of Bristol's Department of Civil Engineering and Graduate School of Education in collaboration with Explore-At-Bristol Science Centre and the Science Learning Centre South West. The summer school aimed to demonstrate that inspirational and creative engineering is happening today and responding to society's needs.
Click here for more information.
Return to top
Return to top
-
Structural Engineering work experience for students in Secondary Education.
A number of companies receive enquiries concerning work experience from students at various stages of their secondary education. They may be looking for a day, a week or two weeks in an office, to gain some understanding of what the work involves and perhaps also to experience an office environment.
While there are guides, posters and web-based information explaining 'what structural engineering is' and 'what a structural engineer does' it is difficult for a student to grasp what sorts of activities might make up a typical day (to the extent there is such a thing!) in a design office or on a construction site.
Equally, for an employer, it is hard to make the experience meaningful and to keep work experience students occupied without causing undue disruption to the staff nominated to oversee their work. This may make some organisations reluctant to take on such students for fear that they may end up creating a negative impression - certainly a few days of photo-copying or sitting at a desk reading reports without much human intervention will be unlikely to inspire the next generation of engineers. In addition, requirements for matters such as formal health and safety assessments may seem unduly onerous.
The Institution of Structural Engineers' Educational Trust is keen to encourage employers to offer work experience in structural engineering, and to assist them in making it a positive experience for both the host and the student. To this end, it has been given access to the formal documentation used by one of the UK's major engineering consultants for their work experience scheme. The documents on the website have been adapted from this, and are now available for downloading and adaptation as required by individual organisations. They include pro-forma letters, guidance notes and an evaluation form. The last of these is an important part of the scheme - it helps to identify both the positive and negative aspects of the experience, so that the employer can consider changes that might be made for the future. It also ensures that the student has to think about what they have done/learned in order to commit this to paper.
If you have any enquiries about this, please contact Elinor Bone, PA to IStructE Educational Trust, Upper Belgrave Street, London SW1X 8BH, or by email at elinor.bone@istructe.org.
To complement the study by Barlett Kendall on the best way to provide teaching materials for schools, a final year undergraduate at the University of Cambridge, Elizabeth Silcock, has produced three modules for use by teachers on the subject of "Stadium Roof Design". The material is aimed at students in the final year of their GCSE courses, just before they have to take the decision about which subjects they will pursue to A level or beyond. One of the modules shows how the choice of roof design is made, and relates to the Mathematics and Design Technology (Resistant Materials) courses. The second looks at the Structural Analysis of the roof of the Emirates Stadium, and supports the Physics (Forces and Motion) syllabus.
The final component, a roof design exercise, is the most cross-curricular, and allows the students to design their own roof and then refine it, while making sure it stands up. Each of the modules is supported by a Teacher's Powerpoint presentation, Teachers Guidance Notes and Student Worksheets. They are deisgned for the use by the teacher without further input, but could be taken further if a member of the Institution was willing to go into the school while the modules were running.
All of the material is freely downloadable and can be photocopied for use in schools by clicking here.
Engineering For Everyone is a scheme run in Devon that takes university engineering students into local primary schools to teach the children about structural engineering. The lesson format is in three sections; firstly a 20 minute presentation is given asking the children for their ideas about what engineers do and why the engineer's role in society is important. The presentation concludes introducing the second part of the lesson, the design-and-build a bridge task. The children are split into groups of around 6 and given an engineering student to guide them with the design and construction of their bridge to span 50cm between tables.
The children have only two sheets of A1 card, sellotape, string and their own creativity for resources and around an hour and a half to complete the structure. The lesson concludes with a competition that marks the bridges for aesthetics, general design and load-carrying capacity. All children are awarded with prizes and certificates. For more information about the scheme please contact Will.Emeny@arup.com.
Click here for more information
Return to top
|
