DEVELOPING A SYSTEM APPROACH FOR THE ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY CLASSROOM

Traditional Engineering Technology classes treat various topics in isolation without ever considering a complete system. Students may learn about electrical components such as switches, fuses, solenoids, and other components in a class that never discusses how they are used in real devices and systems. Not knowing how these components connect to real systems, students have a difficult time knowing how these components fail and how that failure is manifested in the system. The system approach begins by looking at the complete system and understanding its objective. Using a solenoid as an example, students can see what the function of the solenoid is to the function of the system. They also will see what happens to the system if the solenoid doesn't function and how the entire process is affected. At this point, the operation, functionality, properties and characteristics of solenoids are investigated. Students learn how a solenoid works, how to make measurements that would assist in troubleshooting a solenoid, and which individual parts of the solenoid could be responsible for a failure. The system approach is ideally modeled as a circle which starts and ends by looking at the system and features the details in between. Some might argue that there isn't time in a class plan for this extra work but after doing this once or twice, the process goes rather quickly as students become familiar with it. This work will provide details of implementing this in the classroom and will provide more examples.