The Children Designing & Engineering (CD&E®) Project is a collaboration of the College of New Jersey's Department of Technological Studies, the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. With support from the National Science Foundation, project teams have developed contextual learning units for children in grades K to 2 and 3 to 5. These units challenge students to solve practical problems related to real-world settings inspired by several New Jersey businesses. To solve these problems, the students must learn techniques and concepts of mathematics, science and technology. They must carry out investigations, generate ideas, plan a course of action, make and test things and reflect upon what they have learned.

Units are planned to last from four to six weeks (or between 15 and 22 hours) and begin by posing a challenge to be completed in the final week. The project is then broken down by asking: What do we need to know to meet this challenge? The answers to that question identify the topics to be studied in the following weeks. As active investigators and designers, students become owners of knowledge rather than passive recipients of information.

Students engaged in unit activities will have fun discovering how to use science, math and technology to solve real-world problems. Children Designing & Engineering strives to develop innovative and unique contextual learning units that challenge students to think, act and share.