Effects of First-Year Engineering Design Course Models on Student Design Process Knowledge

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Ernst ◽  
Sara Brickley ◽  
Reid Bailey ◽  
Jesse Cornia
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
First Year ◽  
Process Knowledge

Effects of Industrial Experience and Coursework During Sophomore and Junior Years on Student Learning of Engineering Design

2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (7) ◽  
pp. 662-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reid Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Process Knowledge ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Industrial Experience ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Allot Time

While prior work indicates that seniors near the end of their capstone design course know more about design than first-year students, it is unclear where this knowledge is gained. We study two possible sources of seniors’ greater design knowledge: coursework during sophomore and junior years and industrial experience. The design process knowledge of seniors at the beginning of their capstone class was assessed and information about their industrial experience obtained. These data were compared to assessment data of first-year students at the end of an introduction to engineering design course. The results indicate that industrial experience greatly increases students’ recognition that documentation needs to occur throughout the design process. Seniors with industrial experience, however, are less aware that idea generation is an important part of design and are less able to allot time to different design activities than first-year students at the end of a hands-on introduction to engineering design course. For the remaining four aspects of design process knowledge assessed—namely, identifying the requirements for a project at the project’s outset, making decisions with a systematic process based on analysis, building and testing prototypes and final designs, and the overall layout of design including iteration—no differences are found between seniors with industrial experience and first-year students at the end of an introduction to engineering design course. One explanation for why industrial experience does not impact student’s design process knowledge positively in more areas than documentation is that students on internships only experience a small portion of a design process. Due to this “snapshot” experience, either (1) students are not able to learn a significant amount about the bigger picture design concepts or (2) students each learn about different aspects of design but, as a population, do not show any significant increase in design process knowledge. The one activity that all interns will experience is the necessity to document their work. Furthermore, seniors without industrial experience scored no differently than first-year students on any single aspect of design process knowledge measured. This indicates that analysis-heavy sophomore and junior classes do not impact design process knowledge.

Can Design Teams Be Empathically Creative? A Simulation-Based Investigation on the Role of Team Empathy on Concept Generation and Selection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Jacquelyn Huff ◽  
Christopher McComb
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Computational Simulation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Research on empathy has been surging in popularity in the engineering design community since empathy is known to help designers develop a deeper understanding of the users’ needs. Because of this, the design community has been invested in devising and assessing empathic design activities. However, research on empathy has been primarily limited to individuals, meaning we do not know how it impacts team performance, particularly in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Specifically, it is unknown how the empathic composition of teams, average (elevation) and standard deviation (diversity) of team members’ empathy, would impact design outcomes in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to investigate the impact of team trait empathy on concept generation and selection in an engineering design student project. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 13,482 teams of noninteracting brainstorming individuals generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique drawing upon a design repository of 806 ideas generated by first-year engineering students. The main findings from the study indicate that the elevation in team empathy positively impacted simulated teams’ unique idea generation and selection while the diversity in team empathy positively impacted teams’ generation of useful ideas. The results from this study can be used to guide team formation in engineering design.

scholarly journals DESIGN DAYS BOOT CAMP: ENHANCING STUDENT MOTIVATION TO START THINKING IN ENGINEERING DESIGN TERMS IN THE FIRST YEAR

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor Ivkovic ◽  
Thomas L. Willett ◽  
Matthew J. Borland ◽  
Maud Gorbet
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Student Motivation ◽  
Boot Camp ◽  
Student Feedback ◽  
First Year ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Iterative Design ◽  
Design Challenge

Abstract – Engineering design is a core aspect of engineering education. Students might not appreciate the importance of engineering design early on, especially in the first term of their academic study. In this paper, we propose an approach for motivating students to think early about engineering design, namely at the start of their first academic term. The approach entails organizing an immersive design boot camp –“Design Days” – that replaces lectures for the first two days of the term. During the two days, students are divided into randomly assigned teams, and provided specifications to work on a design challenge. As part of the challenge, students are incentivized to fully understand the problem before attempting to solve it, instructed to follow a design process and apply iterative design, and asked to document their design and its rationale. The proposed method was successfully applied in Fall 2016. The approach will be applied again in Fall 2017 with minor modifications based on student feedback.

scholarly journals AN INQUIRY AND BLENDED LEARNING MODULE FOR SENIOR ENGINEERING DESIGN

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Eggermont ◽  
T. Frieheit ◽  
F. Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
First Year ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Mind Maps ◽  
Teaching Modules ◽  
Main Message

University of Calgary delivers a full-year “Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Design Methodology and Application” course where students gain basic design methodology knowledge and associated skills through lectures and tutorials. The primary “vehicle” used for student experiential learning is a team-based, open-ended design project. The problem often encountered is that students fail to see “the forest for the trees”. More specifically, they often fail to see how the design process applies to their project and potentially miss the main message of the course. This paper proposes a short inquiry based learning exercise, augmented with web-based teaching modules, to more effectively prepare students for the “application” aspect of the course. Student teams will experience the full design methodology through a compressed “mini-project” at the beginning of the term, before they have any preconceived notions about the design process. Mind-mapping has been identified as the e-learning tool to organize this mini-project. A pilot project testing the use of mind-maps was conducted in a first year design course, exploring issues related to its implementation.

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