Students and Teachers Learning from Nature: Studying Biologically Inspired Design in High School Engineering Education

Biologically-inspired design (BID) is a way of using principles from Nature to solve engineering design challenges. It is engaging, novel, and leverages sustainable technology produced by over 3 billion years of adaptation. In this poster, we will describe how we are developing BID curricula for high school engineering classes that will: motivate students with new ideas while stressing problem understanding, engineering design methodology, and systems thinking; allow students to make analogies from natural mechanisms to human challenges; explore how natural mechanisms yield engineering design solutions through conceptual design, prototyping and testing.

Co-PI(s): Meltem Alemdar, Roxanne Moore, and Mike Helms, Georgia Institute of Technology