Goals of the Challenge

This page aims to help you understand the goals of the Challenge - what they are and what they are not.

Learning Objectives

The Challenge is comprised of two parts: an online course (with some live, guided activities), and a practical project component. 

The most important learning objective of the challenge, before all others is this: Students will be able practice caring for people in their communities, to understand their values, lives, and goals, with special consideration for the challenges they face due to disabilities.

Everything else is secondary, including everything around engineering, product design, interviews, design reviews, etc. Everything that follows is in support of the primary learning objective.

The secondary learning objectives are as follows:

Introduction - Disability, Assistive Technology, and Co-Design

Design Processes

Maker Skills

Maker Skills is an extremely broad category of engineering and design skills that may be helpful for your students' projects. This section is provided more as a set of resources than as a formal educational curriculum.

Project

Non-Objectives

Here's what the Challenge is not particularly about. Some of these items that might happen along the way, but are not goals of the Challenge. If you are specifically aiming for any of these objectives as your primary targets, the Challenge may not be for you.

Project Expectations

Student projects during the spring semester of the CRE[AT]E Challenge can vary widely, from pure software to pure hardware, and wearables to adaptive furniture, we've seen quite a variety. In general, we expect the following:

Challenge Roles

Co-Designer

The co-designer is the heart of the project component of the Challenge. The co-designer is often a person with a disability who presents a specific problem to the team to work on together. Sometimes, co-designers are the parents, caretakers, or others working with people with disabilities who may be bringing up the problem. They are integral to the design and testing process. Co-designers must be actual people - not an abstract "class" of people (e.g. "Tony, who lives at 123 Elm Street, and is legally blind" is a co-designer. "People who are legally blind" are not co-designers). If a project could have reasonably been done without the co-designer, then it is not well-suited as a CRE[AT]E project.

Student

Students form the bulk of the CRE[AT]E teams, and drive the design and engineering process. They should be taking the course in parallel with developing the product. Students on a team should be able to physically co-locate with each other and with the co-designer whenever possible, though they do not all have to come from the same school.

Coach

Coaches are adults who are local to the student teams and take on primary responsibility for each team. They are responsible for making sure that teams are on track for the course and the project, and for any safety, logistics, and financial considerations that come up during Challenge. They are the primary point of contact for CRE[AT]E staff. Coaches may also deliver some course content to students when provided as guided, in-person exercises. Coaches are often teachers, but are not required to be.

Technical Mentor

Mentors (or Technical Mentors) are non-local adults who provide feedback and assistance to multiple teams, and communicate with CRE[AT]E staff about team progress. They provide expertise in one or more engineering and/or design disciplines to supplement coach expertise. Mentors are matched with teams in the late fall or early spring semester based on teams' projected needs, and meet with teams to decide how they will work together (meeting cadence, communication, etc). For working with teams directly, our rough expectation is that mentors are meeting with their teams about one or twice a month from January to April, and correspond with teams asynchronously (~3 hours per month per team if meeting twice a month). More mentorship time will likely be required leading up to the design reviews. Mentors are also responsible for helping review submitted Design Review videos from teams.

Staff

Staff run the Challenge logistics, course development, Challenge community, fundraising, etc.