Creative Thinking of Practical Engineering Students During a Design Project

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shlomo Waks ◽  
Moti Merdler
Author(s):  
Michele Hastie ◽  
Jan Haelssig

The Thermo-Fluid Engineering I course provides all first-semester second-year engineering students at Dalhousie University with a basic introduction to thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. In the past three years, we have used a combination of six traditional laboratory exercises and a short four-week design project to provide students with hands-on learning experiences in this course. In general, these projects have been well-received by students as a welcome break from the many abstract theoretical concepts that are normally associated with introductory thermodynamics. However, two of the continuing challenges with these projects have been the students’ limited engineering design experience and the availability of time to perform a design project. To address these challenges, in the fall 2015 offering of Thermo-Fluid Engineering I, the four-week design project was replaced by an open-ended design-based lab exercise.The open-ended lab exercise required groups of students to develop specific laboratory experiments related to thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, given a limited quantity of resources. While the focus shifted away from a traditional short design project, the open-ended lab exercise continues to allow students to develop their creative thinking, critical analysis, hands-on, communication, and team work skills, which was the primary purpose of the short design projects in the first place.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-156
Author(s):  
Kumar Yelamarthi ◽  
Joseph Slater ◽  
John Wu ◽  
P. Ruby Mawasha

AbstractInnovation in the changing undergraduate engineering curriculum mandates efficient management of interdisciplinary capstone senior design projects. This effort requires collaboration and management of students and faculty from multiple disciplines, and provides students an opportunity to learn from other engineering disciplines. In addition, this approach will i) emphasize problem solving and creative thinking skills; ii) provide students first-hand experience in generating a management plan; iii) expose students to multiple engineering disciplines, and work in diverse, multi-cultural teams; and iv) prepare students with an in-depth understanding of the interdisciplinary skills necessary for success. The senior design project (SDP) presented is based on the interdisciplinary collaboration of electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering students and faculty to design an integrated high altitude balloon system that would reach an altitude of 100,000 feet and return safely to earth. This paper presents methods by which all the above issues are addressed, results obtained over the recent years.


2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.J.F. Martin ◽  
J.C.C. Rodriguez ◽  
J.C.A. Anton ◽  
J.C.V. Perez ◽  
C.B. Viejo ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fan Lau ◽  
Kathryn Hollar ◽  
Eric Constans ◽  
Kauser Jahan ◽  
Bernard Pietrucha ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Brian Dick ◽  
Thai Son Nguyen

Abstract – First-year engineering students at Vancouver Island University in Canada and second-year engineering students at Tra Vinh University in Vietnam have been brought together to work on a cooperative cornerstone design project as a means to introduce intercultural competencies early in the students' academic experience.  Student teams at each institution were partnered, whereby a design proposal developed by a team at one institution was constructed by their partner team at the other institution. Each team provided stakeholder input early in the design stage, and team pairs established a change management structure to respond to challenges occurring during the construction phase of the project. We explore the challenges and successes of the students experience as they navigated the linguistic, cultural, technical, and geographic barriers towards successfully completing this major design project.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 216-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonte Bernhard ◽  
Anna-Karin Carstensen ◽  
Jacob Davidsen ◽  
Thomas Ryberg

Author(s):  
Paul M. Kurowski ◽  
George K. Knopf

A successful product designer must combine natural creativity with the systematic use of structured design methodology and modern computer-aided design tools. Practice without proper instruction and formal guidance fails to recognize the vast knowledge of the design process developed by successful professionals. However, designing a product solely by theory without the experience derived from practice is ineffective because many subtleties and exceptions are learned by working on actual design project. In this paper, the authors discuss how formal lectures on product design and development methodology can be effectively combined with a hands-on design project leading to viable solutions by novice engineering students to open-ended problems.


2012 ◽  
Vol 591-593 ◽  
pp. 2254-2257
Author(s):  
Bo Gao ◽  
Zhi Qiang Zhao ◽  
Wei Min Wang

Basic specialized courses play a "bridge" and "link" role between the basic courses and specialized courses. The study on how to develop students’ practical engineering capabilities in the teaching of basic specialized theoretical courses is of great significance for the cultivation of application-oriented engineering students. “Post-Press Processing Technology” is an important core specialized course for printing engineering specialty. Using the course teaching of “Post-Press Processing Technology” as an example, based on the in-depth study of the course’s knowledge and theory layout, this paper seriously explores on the ways to improve the academic quality of printing engineering students and enhance their practical skills, and carries out some preliminary exploration and practice in cultivating and improving practical engineering capabilities of engineering students with comprehensive application of various teaching methods and so on.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document