Much effort is underway to encourage students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. There is a growing base of infusing these necessary skills and attitudes to stimulate the pursuit of these avenues as careers. There is also much effort aimed at addressing the diminishing skills in math and many of the sciences. As technology is becoming pervasive in many US classrooms, the skills and knowledge necessary to utilize this technology is being provided to students. However, there is little effort to build a broad base of understanding and appreciation of engineering principles that lies behind much of our technology today. This paper presents a class which was developed to provide an exciting, hands-on method to explore engineering concepts using LEGO MINDSTORMS. The class was targeted toward those students who would not normally choose an engineering or technology profession. These participants learned about engineering in a practical and useful manner using LEGO Robots. This paper will present the class, the modules developed for the class and the results of the workshop held in August 2006. The desired outcome of the class is that technologically non-proficient citizens will be better prepared to function in a global, technology-intense world.
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