Educator Orientation
Welcome, Educators!
This page contains information to help orient you!
We recommend starting with the Program Handbook.
Please make sure to read the Official Rules on the Challenge Details page
if you plan to submit student work for awards consideration.
2023-2024 YDC Curriculum
If you’re new to us, the Youth Design Challenge serves as a bridge from core concepts to advanced project-focused learning for students. We equip learners with the tools they need to solve the world’s pressing problems using the techniques of nature. Students choose which Sustainable Development Goal(s) (SDGs) they’d like to pursue based on their interests.
Our challenge provides a framework for educators of all types to introduce biomimicry as a lens for exploration and problem solving — within and beyond the classroom. It sparks curiosity and ingenuity in middle and high school students, turning learners into makers.
For more information on how the YDC aligns with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the SDGs, visit this resource.
NGSS Alignments: High School | Middle School
Possible Additional Alignments: NGSS Alignments for UN Sustainable Development Goals
If you’re using the MIMIC curriculum but don’t intend to submit student projects, you can access the curriculum here.
The MIMIC Framework
While there are many different ways practicing biomimics look to nature to inform design, we created the MIMIC Instructional Framework to introduce young learners to the core concepts of biomimicry and how to apply them within the context of a creative engineering and design challenge. Each 5E instructional segment within the YDC curriculum addresses one of the five MIMIC phases which, together, encompass the introduction of biomimicry as a concept (Motivate), the core elements of a Biomimicry Design Process (Investigate, Match, & Innovate), and the preparation of an entry to the challenge (Communicate).
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Get inspired! Motivate your team by exploring a local or global problem and introducing the concept of biomimicry. Learn how the unique abilities of organisms help them to survive and thrive and how people have been inspired by them to design solutions to challenging problems.
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Investigate the causes and effects of a problem that learner are passionate about. Identify aspirational goals, constraints for the design, and the sustainable impact that the solution will need to have in order to address the problem effectively.
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Explore how nature addresses challenges similar to yours. Match what you need the design to do with organisms that have similar abilities or adaptations. Examine how those adaptive strategies function, and whether they could inspire your students’ solution.
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Create a biomimicry innovation that would help solve your selected problem. Refine your innovation after evaluating its strengths and weaknesses and exploring how well it creates conditions conducive to life.
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Use the powers of inspiration, storytelling, and scientific evidence to explain how your biomimicry design solves the selected problem and how nature has inspired it. Explain how the natural world has given you the insight into strategies that inform design.
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Visit our Resources page to access additional YDC assets.
