Design Squad Executive Summary
Cover Notes From WGBH, Thea Sahr

During Season 1, Design Squad and our partners hosted 120 events, trainings and workshops and reached over 49,000 kids, parents, teachers, and engineers. (And, these are just the ones that WGBH knows about.)

Over 550,000 people are watching Design Squad each week.

Evaluation Results:

I am pleased to share with you the results of our Season 1 Design Squad evaluation (ATTACHED). Working with an independent evaluator, Goodman Research Group, we set out to: assess the extent to which children’s knowledge, interest, and awareness of engineering increased as a result of watching the Design Squad series, assess the effectiveness of the Educator's Guide with afterschool leaders and students, and document the implementation of community events resulting form the November 2006 Engineering Summit. We are happy to report that Design Squad successfully achieved all of our goals. Some evaluation highlights include:

Students showed increased understanding of the steps of the Engineering Design Process (EDP) after watching four Design Squad Episodes.

Students’ attitudes about engineering and about engineering stereotypes improved significantly after viewing four Design Squad episodes.

After viewing four Design Squad episodes, students had a greater interest in participating in an engineering afterschool program (

After completing the Design Squad Educator’s Guide activities, afterschool students significantly increased their understanding of the Engineering Design Process.

After completing the Design Squad Educator’s Guide activities, a large majority of students demonstrated a strong understanding of engineering and science concepts.

After completing the Design Squad Educator’s Guide activities, afterschool leaders showed a much greater depth of understanding of the Engineering Design Process

Engineers who attended the Design Squad Engineering Summit and completed surveys about their activities reported highly successful and extensive Design Squad volunteer outreach activities, including educator trainings, visits with kids, and community events.

We are extremely proud of these results. Feel free to share the evaluation results with others. WGBH will be putting out a press release in the coming weeks announcing this exciting news.

Design Squad Executive Summary (.pdf)