Woodie Flowers has been a major voice in advocating design's use in the classroom for more than 20 years. He is a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, and was one of the creators of MIT's Introduction to Design (2.70) course and the design competition that has been adapted by engineering schools worldwide and mimicked by cable television shows. Currently, Dr Flowers is involved with the FIRST design competitions, which annually involves 20,000 students from the US, Canada, Brazil and the UK. (See www.usfirst.org for more information.)

In MOVIE 1, Woodie describes objectives and powerful questions he uses when starting a design task with students. How does he "enable" students when they start their work? View some first-day movies in any Video Timeline to see how different teachers introduce design tasks. See also a key start-up item from the design pedagogy arsenal, the Design Brief.