The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) recently announced a collaboration between their LinkEngineering website and TeachEngineering, a digital library with over 1,550 standards-aligned engineering-focused K-12 curricular resources.

LinkEngineering, launched by NAE two years ago and funded by Chevron, provides educators with essential information about engineering as well as connections to peers and experts across the PreK-12 system who are designing and using engineering curriculum in classrooms and in after- and out-of-school settings. Though the LinkEngineering website does provide resources — such as lesson plans, videos of how engineering plays out in PreK-12 settings and background information on engineering and engineering design — it is foremost intended to be an online community. The partnership with TeachEngineering looks to flesh out that community with rich engineering content.

“Bringing together LinkEngineering’s platform for the education community with the curricular resources of TeachEngineering will significantly advance the quality of precollege engineering education,” said NAE President C. D. Mote, Jr.

The TeachEngineering digital library gets three million unique visitors per year, many of whom download and print instructional materials. TeachEngineering users currently do not have an easy way to report how they use the site’s materials. The collaboration will allow site users to share with the LinkEngineering community how they have used or modified the curricular materials and what the impact has been on students. This input will not only be of value to other educators, it will also allow TeachEngineering.org to make improvements in its resource collection.

“We are so excited to partner with the NAE and LinkEngineering,” said Jacquelyn Sullivan, co-director of the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder College of Engineering, and the founding leader of TeachEngineering. “This partnership allows our visitors to share how they used our resources and give advice to educators new to engineering, ultimately leading to improved engineering education at the PreK-12 level.”

More details about the websites and organizations are available in the NAE press release.