Assistive Technology Design Fair (ATDF) Program

Program Overview
Project Goals & Outcomes
2008 Project Guidelines (pdf)
2007 Highlights (pdf)

Program Overview

UMass Lowell’s ATDF is a very unique design event (perhaps the only one of its kind in the country) that provides high school students with the opportunity to tackle real-world engineering design problems aimed at helping people with disabilities or special needs.  Working with a teacher-adviser, each team of 4 – 6 students must identify an actual “client” who has a need that can be solved by designing or adapting some assistive device.  ATDF provides a rich, authentic learning experience for students, one which allows them to really learn and experience the engineering design process, apply their academics skills in a real-world context, and allows to develop important workplace skills not usually taught in the classroom.  Each design team has to brainstorm and analyze alternative design solutions, and justify their chosen design; they must work within a budget, analyze the cost of various design alternatives, and in the end, make a presentation outlining their design work and final solution.  Student teams showcase their design problems and present working prototypes of their solutions at our Design Fair held each May; and many prototypes built by students are actually presented to clients.  We piloted this program in 2003 with 2 schools and 7 design teams.  Thanks to generous support from Tyco Electronics & 3M Touch Systems, we significantly expanded our program last year to include 9 schools, 34 design teams and 140 students.  In 2006, we expect to engage up to 14 schools, 50 design teams and over 200 students in this program.  ATDF engages students in real service learning, which not only benefits members of their local communities, but also helps students distinguish themselves among their peers when applying to college.

Project Goals & Outcomes

These are the major goals that we have for our Assistive Technology Design Fair:

1) To give students an intimate understanding of the design process and first-hand experience solving a real-world engineering problem.
 
2) To help students realize that engineering is a profession that helps people and benefits society.

3) To give students a much greater appreciation of people with disabilities.

4) To further nurture students’ interest in science and engineering with the hope of encouraging more students to pursue scientific and technical careers.

5) To encourage more teachers to implement engineering design projects as part of the courses they teach or as after school clubs.
Key Program Components

In order to accomplish these goals, our ATDF program now incorporates several important features, including a Kick-off event held in January, which allow us to provide students and teachers:

• Intensive training in the engineering design process.  At our ATDF Kick-off event we formally present the engineering design process to teachers and students, and use several prior projects as case-studies so they will thoroughly understand the steps involved in solving an AT problem.
• An AT education component, including a broad overview of assistive technology and issues affecting people with disabilities.  Each year we will join with a community partner to educate students about a particular disabled population.  Last year, we worked with Lowell Association for the Blind to provide students with an excellent presentation on blindness and visual disabilities at our Kick-off event (see photos attached).  Students participated in hands-on simulations that gave them a sense of what it is like to be blind.  Students also saw demonstrations of various AT devices used by people with visual disabilities.  This year we will focus on children with disabilities as our theme.  We also use an outstanding documentary film, Freedom Machines, to give students an overview of various disabilities, the ADA, the difficulties that disabled people face, and the promise of assistive technology.  We loan out these videos for teachers to use in their classrooms.
• Realistic engineering design review meetings conducted by practicing engineers who visit high schools.  Members of UMass Lowell’s AT staff meet with student teams in the middle of their project to conduct formal design reviews, which provides students with another valuable real-world experience.  Last year, we were fortunate to have the help of 6 Tyco engineers to assist us in reviewing 34 teams.  This year we plan to hope to recruit a host of volunteer engineers from industry to conduct all design reviews.  We will provide an orientation for all volunteers.
• Technical support provided by undergraduate engineers serving as ATDF mentors.  We believe that we can better assist teachers in achieving even more successful projects if we provide them with greater assistance throughout the design process, and maintain closer oversight of student work.  This year we propose to hire 4 engineering students who will visit design teams at their schools every other week.  These ATDF mentors will help students develop & refine their problem statements, brainstorm & evaluate solutions and guide them as they develop final prototypes.  Mentors will meet each week to discuss the progress and problems of the design teams.

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