Defining Criteria and Constraints for Solutions gives Grade 11 science students structured practice with engineering problem definition, including how to turn stakeholder needs into measurable criteria, identify and prioritize constraints, and use conceptual models to develop distinct design approaches.

Build a Clear Engineering Problem Definition

Students work with a societal challenge such as safe drinking water and examine how engineers define goals, identify affected stakeholders, establish system boundaries, and translate needs into performance metrics. The resource distinguishes qualitative criteria from quantitative criteria and explores constraints such as funding, available space, maintenance capacity, land use, reliability, and legal requirements.

The reading and questions also connect conceptual models to system thinking. Students identify inputs, processes, and outcomes in a water supply system and examine how these relationships support the generation and comparison of multiple design approaches.

What Students Do

• Work through a dialogue focused on defining an engineering problem.
• Match key concepts with their roles in problem definition.
• Complete a cloze passage using core engineering design vocabulary.
• Label a diagram representing the problem-definition process.
• Read an applied passage about criteria, constraints, stakeholders, system boundaries, and conceptual models.
• Answer multiple-choice and true-or-false questions that apply the concepts to public systems and engineering decisions.
• Write concise responses defining constraints, proposing measurable criteria, and explaining conceptual models.
• Construct an extended problem definition for improving a city bus system, including qualitative and quantitative criteria, prioritized constraints, and inputs, processes, and outcomes.

Teacher Support Included

A separate Teacher Guide PDF provides Learning Objectives, Teaching Tips, Discussion Questions, and Common Mistakes to support instruction and classroom discussion.

Flexible Classroom Use

Use this engineering design worksheet as guided practice during an Engineering Design lesson, independent student work, a review activity, or a written application task. The progression from terminology and reading to scenario-based questions and an extended response gives students opportunities to move from identifying criteria and constraints toward constructing their own problem definition.

This resource is designed for Grade 11 Science within an NGSS context and focuses on practical engineering reasoning: defining what success looks like, recognizing limits that shape possible solutions, prioritizing unacceptable constraints, and modeling system relationships before comparing design approaches.