Work in progress: Putting control engineering in middle school girls' futures

Abstract

The purpose of the project described in this paper is to increase the number of female students in middle school who have a basic understanding of control engineering principles and how these apply to modern engineering and technological devices. Project work is being implemented within a local girls' school in Hobart, the capital city of the state of Tasmania, Australia. Project activity has included running a series of hands-on workshops for two separate middle school classes. These workshops have introduced control engineering principles and the engineering design process. Project experiences so far are discussed and recommendations for future project work are outlined.