Teams representing China, India, the Philippines, and the United States have been working on an engineering design for the past year and are prepared to compete virtually over two days in April. These students will present their solutions to challenge judges consisting of renowned engineering and scientists on April 25/26. Despite travel restrictions due to the coronavirus, the Design Challenge is pressing on, in what will turn out to be a historic STEM Championship. This is made possible by using Adobe connect, a tool used by competition sponsor Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.
The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual competition that provides high school students, internationally, with the opportunity to apply the lessons of the classroom to the technical problems currently faced in the engineering field. Each year students are challenged to optimize the design of an unmanned aerial vehicle system to solve a specific problem. Students are provided professional engineering software to develop their solutions and will also generate presentations that convincingly demonstrate the value of their solutions. The goal of the RWDC is to motivate and prepare students for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The RWDC is going into its twelfth year of operation.
This year’s virtual judging will be accomplished using Embry Riddle University’s Eagle Vision through Adobe Connect telecommunication system. In 2007, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University launched Eagle Vision, a virtual classroom that combines Web video conferencing, audio, written, and a learning management system to amplify the benefits of synchronous learning. Eagle Vision may be used from the comfort of your home, office, or anywhere you have a computer and the Internet.
