Curriculum Overview
At the hub of Project RISE are two PILLARS: Civics Education and Design Thinking. Students will utilize the knowledge and skills from each PILLAR to create a deeper understanding to civically investigate real world problems and affect change.
We imagine this curriculum will invigorate the civic purpose, civic knowledge, civic skill, and empath of students. Through engineering design principles, Project RISE will help youth see how civic education and engagement can positively impact their communities.
Project RISE helps students combine civic engagement and problem-solving skills based on engineering design principles to construct the citizen-engineer to improve communities.
PILLARS
The PILLARS are comprised of: (1) a civics education unit to interrogate citizenship from a critical lens, and (2) an engineering design thinking unit to teach students problem identification, brainstorming, research, prototyping, testing, and evaluation of solutions. The Civics Education pillar consists of four modules: 1a) What is an effective citizen, 1b) Principles of democracy, 1c) Democratic practices and institutions, and 1d) Authentic civic actions. The Design Thinking pillar consists of two modules: 2a) Problem Identification, and 2b) Prototyping that delineates iterative modes to encourage students to empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.
PATHWAYS
After students are instructed in the PILLARS, teachers will then help their students to expand their knowledge and skills via PATHWAYS. The PATHWAYS are justice oriented and spotlight challenges or trends within communities. These include health justice, traffic and transportation, economic justice, gentrification, and environmental justice. Within each of these units, there are subunits with case studies, lessons for skill acquisition and conceptual understanding, research activities, a spotlight on the impact of racism for the context, and a culminating project. As students work through these units and subunits, they will develop participatory archives via video logs (vlogs) and the use of the mobile App.
This project is a U.S. Department of Education funded project spearheaded by researchers at Purdue University & North Carolina State University.
