In a great blend of project-based learning and service learning, students at the University of Virginia won the “Change My World in One Minute” competition by designing and building a solar-powered wheelchair. They're donating the finished wheelchair to a cerebral palsy sufferer and donating the remaining prize money to United Cerebral Palsy.
In 2012, World Cerebral Palsy Day launched the “Change My World in One Minute” competition. They asked individuals who are affected by cerebral palsy to suggest ideas for a new product that would change the lives of people with disabilities. One of the chosen ideas was a solar-powered wheelchair. Graduate students at the University of Virginia accepted the challenge and designed this:
Here it is in action, with the team describing some of its functions:
If you want all the technical details, you can download and read the project report here. I won’t reiterate that information. Instead, I’d like to make this article a call for action on multiple fronts.
First, as an engineering educator with 24 years of experience and a background in instructional design, I’d like to challenge all science and engineering schools to engage in more project-based learning. While this is a relatively new idea in engineering, it’s been well established as a superior method of instruction when compared to the traditional lecture-lab model. But don’t wait until graduate school to implement it. Project-based learning can, and should, be applied at any educational level. Second, there’s a relatively new push towards service learning, where students work to solve a real-world problem that affects society. Service learning began in the human services area but lately it’s been gaining momentum in the engineering community as well. Projects like this solar-powered wheelchair give engineering students real-world design experience, teach engineering concepts in the context of a real-world problem, and contribute to society as a whole – the Triple Crown of engineering education!
The team from U.Va.’s School of Engineering and Applied Science:
From top left, Craig Ungaro, Duncan McGillivray, Dennis Waldron, Professor Mool Gupta (project adviser) Ankit Shah, Kyung Kim, Maria Michael. [Images and video: University of Virginia]
For its winning contribution, the team was awarded the grand prize of $20,000. What will they do with the money? They’re going to make a few improvements to the chair and ship the finished product to the individual in Turkey who posted the initial suggestion for a solar-powered wheelchair. Whatever money is left will be donated to United Cerebral Palsy. Let’s raise a glass to these students, not only for their technical prowess, but also their social conscience.
Dean Kamen – need any bright young engineers?
Here are some resources for project-based learning:
- A database of first-year engineering projects includes a list of projects that engineering faculty have created for their own courses and made available to the public. This is a good place to start small – just add one or two projects to an existing course and see how it goes!
- Project Based Learning in Engineering is a thorough guide to developing a project-based curriculum, complete with case studies, supporting research, etc. If you really want to go big with project-based learning, this site has a lot of resources.