Understanding Non-functional Requirements for Precollege Engineering Technologies

The design of accessible learning technologies for precollege engineering education is a multi-faceted problem that must take into account a multitude of physical, social, and environmental factors. Using literature reviews and assessment by a participant observer during an 18-hour intervention with a local middle school, we propose that the elicitation of non-functional requirements for precollege learning technologies can be better understood by dividing schools in clusters which share similar resources and constraints. Developers can utilize the proposed scheme as a means to establish minimal criteria that learning technologies must satisfice to be viable for adoption by a wider range of users and better meet the needs and priorities of students and educators.