Teaching Engineering Design Iteration: Learning from What Doesn’t Work

No surprise - people don’t like being wrong. This includes your students! However, figuring out where you went wrong and trying new solutions is part of the engineering design process. This is part of the iteration process, where engineers continually improve their products. To show kids how this works, teachers or parents can give them a project that takes some tinkering.

Mini Basketball Game Activity

Let’s look at an example! For this project, we are trying to make a mini basketball game out of materials from around the house. Don’t worry if you don’t have these exact materials. The idea is to try different things and see what works. Have your kids look for something to use as a ball, something to use as a hoop, and something that can serve as a fulcrum.

We started with an embroidery hoop from a craft project kit. We used painter’s tape to attach it to the back of a chair.

For the fulcrum, we started with several wooden blocks taped to the seat of a chair near the front edge.

Here is how it started out.

We then taped a spoon to the blocks, however we noticed that it wasn’t working well as a fulcrum. The spoon did not go up and down much.

We changed the fulcrum to one block turned on its side.

This fulcrum worked much better as the spoon moved more freely. We then found a small rubber ball to use as the ball.

This is how our set up looked then. But when we tried it, the ball was not getting high enough to go through the hoop.

So, we moved the hoop down lower. However, we were still having trouble getting the ball to go high enough to go through the hoop.

So, we switched out the bouncy ball with an empty plastic egg. We were getting closer! But it didn’t really reach the hoop.

So, we moved the fulcrum closer to the hoop. And…. it worked! Victory was ours! We enjoyed playing our new mini basketball game and taking turns trying to score baskets.

Why is it Better to NOT Have Exact Directions?

Often in science experiments (which are often really science demonstrations), the directions are incredibly specific and precise. Kids might need to buy a kit or have certain materials or follow step-by-step directions to be successful. However, to truly understand the engineering process, we want kids to be open to trying lots of different configurations and materials to see what works best. It takes time for students to be comfortable with the “tinkering” side of projects like this. But we want to show them that they don’t need to purchase things or know exact measurements ahead of time. They can try things and iterate until they find what works.

Conclusion

The best part of this activity? Knowing we made it ourselves! It is so important to model:

• Being flexible

• Being okay when something doesn’t work

• Keeping an open mind

• Being willing to take something apart and start over (even if it took some time to build)

• Having fun with tinkering and inventing!

We hope your kids (and you!) have fun with this project!

Need a full lesson plan? Check out our fun mini basketball engineering challenge or grab the whole bundle of engineering design process lessons for kids.