Toy design class connects campus and community

In a classroom in Urbana, Illinois, around twenty budding scientists are intently working in teams to program a small electric car. They ask each other questions and give each other tips; when the first car successfully starts zooming around the room, everyone cheers.

This classroom isn’t on campus, although it’s not far away. These robots are being programmed at the Booker T. Washington (BTW) STEM Academy, an elementary school that gives its students the opportunity to practice hands-on science and engineering.

Over the summer of 2022, bioengineering professor Joe Bradley proposed introducing a toy design class to fourth graders at BTW.

“I was going to be doing a class on toy design through the Grainger Engineering First Year Experience program,” he said, “And it seemed like a great outreach opportunity to show elementary-aged kids that there are elements of engineering in the toys they play with, and there are engineers who work in the toy industry. I wanted to show that you can integrate playing with toys into STEM.”

Bradley’s class was a shared effort between first-year engineering students and fourth graders at BTW. When it debuted, the course focused on helping undergraduate students conduct market research on toys and develop successful, STEM-based toys of their own. Creating something that their audience would respond to meant observing kids interacting with different toys, asking them questions about their toy preferences, and more. 

“What made this experience truly remarkable was the extension of these principles beyond the classroom,” said Zainab Memon, an electrical and computing engineering student who took the course. “The integration of human-centered design into my engineering projects is now a guiding force, promising a more thoughtful and effective approach to problem-solving. All in all, this class has sparked a newfound passion that I am eager to carry forward into my future engineering endeavors.”

What was an engaging off-campus experience for the undergraduates was extra fun for the elementary schoolers. 

“They loved it,” Bradley said. “They got the chance to just play and give feedback and talk to us about toys and toy design. They had a lot of fun, and when that part of the course was over we wanted to stay engaged with that facet of the community.”  

With this momentum, Bradley and his students started participating in BTW’s Fabulous Fridays, a program that encourages community engagement in the classroom. They began teaching the elementary schoolers more hands-on aspects of STEM, including how they could program their own CuteBot microbit toy cars.

“We taught them a very simple coding program called Scratch,” said Bradley. “The engineering students here use Python and other coding programs all the time, so it was a natural fit to have them teach the kids about coding.” 

Once they got started programming their toy cars, the kids got a taste of the potential of engineering. The cars were highly customizable; not only could they drive around the room, but they could be programmed with sounds and lights. Students soon figured out how to program their cars with sirens, bits of songs, flashing lights, and more.

The program has been a fun, engaging way to introduce kids to engineering in places where they might not have realized it existed before, and it holds promise for the future; other schools have expressed interest in participating in the program, and Bradley and his undergraduate students are looking into marketing and producing some of the toys they made in connection with this course, including an RC car that can drive underwater and a physics-based conveyor belt toy. This entrepreneurial experience had a lasting impact on the undergraduate students in the course.

“The intersection of engineering and entrepreneurship opens up avenues for problem-solving, product innovation, and contributing to the broader market with solutions that address real-world needs,” said Memon. “It provides a dynamic and practical dimension to the theoretical knowledge gained in engineering, presenting opportunities to explore the entrepreneurial side of turning ideas into tangible products.” 

It’s a course that has proven it has the ability to inspire students from fourth grade up through college. Alongside this engaging new way to connect entrepreneurship, toys, and engineering, some of the most rewarding elements remain the community connections and introducing engineering to students who might not otherwise have found it.

“Just exposing students to engineering elements at a level that they can understand will encourage them to explore it more,” said Bradley. “Not necessarily to transform them into engineers or scientists, but so that they see things they might want to learn more about. So they can find school fun, and have that positive, exciting association with education.”