StudentsGetExcitedAboutSmartMobilityThroughtheMiddleSchoolDesignChallenge

Small teams of middle school students were given advisors, access to transport information and three months to design a solution to a local transportation issue. The students gained teamwork and critical thinking skills while working toward an empathy and community-based design goal. The winning team, from the Columbus Gifted Academy, engaged in their community by developing a bike-focused plan to reduce traffic and automobile accidents.

Working with educators and students as a part of smart city development is important to Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, who asked Smart Columbus to create a mobility engagement program for middle school students. Engaging the youth with STEM education to create real-world solutions is an investment in the future of the community, says McKinzie Harper, education and programs lead for Smart Columbus, and project lead for the middle school design project.

“This challenge was an opportunity for some of our youngest residents, who are grappling with very real issues, to co-create the future with us,” Harper says. “They are the ones who will be most impacted by our decisions today. It’s a reminder that young minds are listening, and they see what’s happening in our communities. And even better, they can see solutions in ways that adults can’t or won’t.”

Curriculum Design

Planning for the first Smart Columbus Middle School Design Challenge began in early 2018 with input from educators.

“In creating the challenge, we had to consider the depth of knowledge that the students had around Smart Columbus and which technologies they had some exposure to,” said Meka Pace, superintendent and executive director of Metro Middle School and original planner for the project. After the challenge concept was finalized, more partners were brought on to design it.

In May 2018, a team consisting of administrators and teachers from Columbus City Schools, Metro Schools, and Smart Columbus met to work on creating the challenge curriculum, resource materials for teachers and a website to house all the work, says Jesse Ireland, Columbus City Schools K - 12 Teaching and Learning Coordinator. The Future Ready Framework used by Metro Schools served as the foundation that the curriculum could be built upon.

“We put our own spin on it by including aspects from Smart Columbus and making sure we tied into the pillars of mobility that Smart Columbus had established,” Ireland says.

“The curriculum team did a great job laying out the entire challenge, collecting resources and scaffolding the student work,” Pace says. Resources were posted to a website so any teacher could participate in the challenge or create their own. “The challenge was designed in a way that any teacher, whether they had previous experience with integrated projects or not, could sign up and have everything that was needed to run this challenge in their classrooms.”

Honda Research and Development was a key partner in creating the challenge in addition to Metro, Columbus City Schools and Smart Columbus. “Honda was a great partner to collaborate with,” Ireland said. “They provided the prize packages for the teams and were great thought partners as we were planning the curriculum.”

By the end of the summer, the curriculum included teacher resource documents on the Smart Columbus Design Challenge website, screen-casted videos introducing the process, a guiding timeline for educators and two video conferences for brainstorming. All challenge resources are stored online and can be found here.

“We have really impressive educators in our community that can take complex STEM material and relate it to young people,” Harper says. “It’s never too early to start investing in your talent pipeline.”

Conducting the Challenge

The challenge, open to 6th-8th graders, truly began when students became involved. Metro schools had 310 students participate across 80 teams. Columbus City Schools had 60 students participate on 10 teams from across the district. Each team had one to two teachers or other faculty such as gifted specialists act as advisers. Participants had three months to conceive and design their project before the first round of judging. Only one team from each school advanced to the second round of judging.

Muji Lai, a 13-year-old student at the Columbus Gifted Academy and member of the winning team, said her science teacher started “gathering students who he thought had an engineering mindset” in September 2018.

An important part of the challenge was the students’ ability to pick the focus of their design. “One of the most essentials parts was the community impact aspect,” said Ireland. “We need to ensure that these challenges reside in solving problems that students are facing within their own communities.”

Pace agreed, adding that “students needed to have exposure to people experiencing the problems they are trying to solve.  Empathy drove a lot of their projects.” That value was clear when Muji and her team, named “BIKES!” chose to “take on the city problems of vehicular accidents and traffic.”

Advisors not only provided guidance for the technology portion, but also resources on community needs to be addressed. Tools created to accompany the curriculum provided students with information on how technology could be used to solve local neighborhood issues.

“The resources empowered students to investigate problems in their communities around mobility and how that impacts them, and then bring in the technology to see which aspect of it best meets the needs the problem presents,” said Ireland. “It allows students to see themselves uplifting their own community and not just doing some project they need to work on.”

Both students and advisors had access to resources to steer their projects. Students had information from documents such as “What makes a good presentation?” and writing choice boards to help guide them towards solutions.

The first round of in-person judging began in early December 2018. Student teams presented their projects separately to in-house judges at their schools and received feedback and more guidance. Teams had one month to redesign after round one to make changes before the final submission. Students and advisers who were not very familiar with the design process had access to rubrics and support to assist for the final round.

Winners were chosen in late January 2019 after redesigns were complete. “Once the results came in, we were very delighted that our hard work was worthwhile,” said Muji. “It felt surreal to stand in front of a couple of hundred adults and receive a standing ovation.”

After the Design Challenge

As the design challenge winners, Muji and her team spoke before the Columbus City Council Public Service and Transportation committee to present their ideas. Muji began her testimony describing the environmental issues of transportation as well as the human cost of collisions. “For the sake of our safety and that of the Earth, these problems need to be addressed with solutions like biking,” she said.

Muji described the three strategies of her team’s plan to Councilwoman Shayla Favor, the committee chair. Those strategies included: a bike-share program to improve accessibility, protected bike lanes to improve safety and education on the benefits of biking to improve behavior change.

When asked by Favor what the greatest barriers were for transitioning to biking, Muji and her team said a lack of infrastructure and negative perceptions of public transportation were the largest issues. Favor thanked the students for their input and praised their courage for sharing them.

Future Design Challenges

Feedback from students and teachers who participated in the challenge requested that the challenge be extended to 12 weeks and include more webinars and digital resources for teachers.

The success of the Smart Columbus design challenge led to the development of a statewide challenge. The Ohio STEM Learning Network (OSLN) statewide challenge launched on October 3rd.

The OSLN assists in the creation of new STEM schools and connects them to state and national resources, as well as promoting statewide best practices. The new design challenge will expand from just STEM academies and be open to all types of schools and grades K-12. Last year’s challenge included 90 students from 25 schools, and the new expanded version is expected to have even more participation. DriveOhio, a division of the Ohio Department of Transportation that promotes mobility developments through technology, has signed on as a partner of the challenge.

K-12 teachers were able to learn about Smart Mobility and the challenge at the #STEMdrivesOhio Kickoff event held on October 3, 2019 at COSI. 150 education professionals from across the state attended and participated in workshops to consider the social and economic factors of transportation.

Educators engaged in a hook activity developed by Smart Columbus asking them to consider different perspectives on transportation. Participants embodied different characters and had to overcome transportation challenges, with some characters dealing with greater challenges from disability or financial hurdles.

Following the group activity was a panel composed of various transportation experts. Groups attending included:

• Honda R&D America
• PAST Foundation
• DriveOhio
• Transportation Research Center
• MORPC
• Smart Columbus
• Metro Schools
• COTA
• EHOVE Career Center

The #STEMdrivesOhio challenge will provide students across the state the opportunity to consider how to improve transportation in their own communities through smart mobility.