Project B.3A: Hands-On Pneumatics Workshops

Project B.3a: Hands-On Pneumatics Workshops

Project team:

Project Co-Leaders:Prof. Will Durfee, University of Minnesota, CCEFP

1. Project Goals

The goal of this project is to create curricular material and portable lab kits for use in hands-on workshops about pneumatics. The target audiences for workshops include high school students participating in FIRST Robotics, CCEFP RET teachers and their students, teachers and students engaged in the fluid power curriculum embedded in Project Lead The Way (PLTW) pre-engineering courses, and CCEFP pre-college outreach workshops. The curriculum for the workshop will include: (1) a basic hands-on tutorial, (2) an advanced workshop tailored to experienced FIRST Robotics teams, (3) web-based self-learning material, and (4) a module for PLTW teacher training workshops and for PLTW courses.

2. How Project Supports the EO Program Strategy

Pneumatics is easy to understand, easy to work with, and relatively inexpensive to demonstrate through hands-on activities. Workshops based on pneumatics serve to broaden an awareness of fluid power among pre-college students and their teachers. The strategy for the CCEFP EO program is to leverage existing networks. The kits are used to train FIRST Robotics teams in pneumatics and there are currently approximately 1,500 FIRST teams involving over 30,000 students. Workshop contents could be used in the PLTW program, another large network connected to CCEFP. The workshops are also used by CCEFP RET teachers, who in turn reach their students. Reaching only a fraction of this motivated audience serves to bring fluid power to the target audience.

3. Achievements

● Outreach workshops using the kits were conducted throughout the year

4. Plans

● Revise the kit, based on feedback from teachers, so that it is more suitable for the typical classroom. The main change is to eliminate from the kit components easily found by teachers but keeping the harder-to-find fluid power components

● Update the teacher instructions and presentation materials

● Develop a version of the workshop for professionals with a target market of employees in engineering, marketing and sales at fluid power companies who are new to fluid power. The workshop would be intended for company in-service training. .

5. Milestones and Deliverables

● Maintain the number of workshops

● Curriculum and instructors guide 2.0

● Revised kit based on teacher feedback

6. Member Company Benefits

Increased awareness of fluid power by a growing number of pre-college students.