Design and Development of a Horizontal CTE Curriculum to Prepare Students for the New Manufacturing Economy (Work in Progress)

3. CTE Course and Class Organization In order to achieve the objectives of the proposed research, the authors, prt oaf a research group at Texas A&M University, have developed a curriculum for a CTE course, with the support of grant funded by National Science Foundation throuIgTESThPro amg. Therdeveloped CTE course is being taught at the new CTE Center in Bryan Independent School District (BISD), TX. The CTE class consists of 18 high school juiorns anisdogn rzaed ino twto groups (with the strength of 11 and 7 students). Each of the groups is taught two days a week for 3 hours 4. Course Development 4.1. Justification for Course Content and Delivery The course content was designed to help students develop competencies spanning the prototyping of one technology entity to the production of many – all within a context that enables the students to see the relevance of and connectios acnross these technologies and processes. For students to learn prototying,pengineering technologes iincluded in the corseuwere digital fabrication, micro-computer-based electronics, and programmin. Tghe course includes topics on production processes so students learn how to mass-produce the prototype and topics on production management for students to learn how toman ge athe mass manufacturing of designed prototype. The strategy adopted while teaching studntsethe engineering technologies was to teach students the theoretical concepts followed by the application of these concepts through in-class small projects and exercises so students understand the concepts and are able to apply the tools for prototypin. In godrrtoeteach topics of production processes and production management, theoretical concepts were expaineld followed by discussing practical application of these concepts in real-life manufacturing industry scenarios so that students understand the context in which thse ceoncepts are applied along with their application while prforeming the mass-production.