Upperman High School Special education students will return this fall to a new immersive sensory room made possible by Tennessee Tech engineering students.
Professor of Mechanical Engineering Stephen Canfield said the project originated from a junior-level course called Tech Engineering for Kids. Student teams identify and solve community needs. Canfield said the school provided an open-ended challenge to create a calm and engaging area for students.
“They had some space, they had a range of sensory needs that they’re trying to stimulate,” Canfield said, “They wanted something that could target a variety of different age groups, be engaging, and meet a lot of different needs of the students.”
Canfield said the project was unique because it required the engineering team to conduct extensive creative brainstorming and research rather than following a pre-defined technical prompt. Canfield said the students spent time observing classrooms and collaborating with professionals at Upperman to understand the specific motor skills, strengths, and interests of the children who would use the space.
“And then I remember they came back, we did a preliminary design and they came back and they had a lot of good ideas but it wasn’t really cohesive because there was a room, and so we talked about that some and then they went back and came up with this theme of this like little magical forest and everything in it kind of fits as if you’re going through some sort of little forest-y kind of area or at least an outdoor sort of unusual feel to it, so I liked that,” Canfield said.
Canfield said the finished room features a fiber optic tree and removable sensory components, such as musical instruments shaped like forest animals, that allow teachers to bring specific tools back into their regular classrooms.
“And so that’s really what impressed me, that they could somehow layer this larger feeling on top of very specific therapeutic type activities that the teachers wanted the students to do,” Canfield said. “What I saw the students do as they started to build those individual parts they came back and then said let’s pull this together with a single theme, something that kind of makes sense, makes a bigger story, maybe makes the whole area feel a little more inclusive, like I’m going into not just an area filled with independent components but something that just gives a presence, in this case like this little mystical forest.”
Canfield said the project required a diverse team of mechanical, electrical, and mechatronics engineering students to integrate structural elements with embedded computers and digital electronics. Canfield said these types of projects help students bridge the gap between technical training and the ability to communicate with professionals in the medical or educational fields.
“My students, frankly, they kind of in the back of the mind that’s what everyone thinks engineers solve problems, but a lot of times when you think of engineering school solving problems means you’re just doing math work, and it’s so much more than that, it’s these things that you saw my students do on this project and many of the others,” Canfield said.
Canfield said the engineering program at Tennessee Tech aims to develop students who can take complex, ill-defined problems and turn them into solutions that help society.
