Engineering design meets generative AI

Upper School students in Jon Amory’s Engineering Design and Methods course have been studying how generative AI can be leveraged to expand skills and capabilities. This work fits squarely within the course’s focus on learning new technologies and developing new skills to solve problems. While some students entered the course with prior programming experience, most did not.

Before beginning this project, students completed several activities designed to expose the limitations of AI. The goal was to help them understand that AI is a powerful tool only when paired with effective prompting and critical evaluation of its output. These exercises established a baseline for recognizing where AI excels and where it falls short.

For the final project, students were asked to use their creativity to develop web applications. Using AI did not make the work easy—students still had to break down complex tasks, refine prompts, and iterate rapidly. The project highlights what’s possible when students use AI not as a shortcut, but as a collaborative tool.

Sample student apps include:

Three-body problem simulation
Wildfire simulator
4D geometry simulator
Restaurant survivability simulator
Asteroid simulator