Engineering Design Education: U.S.—Retrospective and Contemporary

1981 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 696-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Mann
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Quantitative Evaluation ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Current State ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
The Status ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
American Society ◽  
The U.S

For the Centennial of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, its Design Education Committee asked the author to discuss the “status of design education in the U.S.” In an attempt to discharge this substantial responsibility in an informed and impartial manner, a Resume´ of the author’s personal retrospective impression of engineering design education was prepared and distributed to ninety persons nationwide known by the author to have been actively involved in engineering design education, together with a Worksheet seeking their assessment of the Resume´ and their opinion on the current state of engineering design education. Global and detailed information from the forty-seven replies was collated, evaluated, presented and discussed at the Century 2 Conference in San Francisco, August, 1980. This paper is comprised of the Resume´ and the Worksheet, with quantitative evaluation of the responses on the state of various aspects of engineering design education supplemented by pertinent and pithy remarks of respondents. The overall sense of the surveyed faculty is that engineering design education is in a “so-so” to “bad” state. The paper concludes with the author’s now updated evaluation of the contemporary status of engineering design education and his prospective prognostications thereupon.

The Status of Design for Sustainability in Mechanical Engineering Design Education

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Mountain
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Carbon Balance ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Mechanical Design ◽  
Bottom Line ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
The Status

Sustainability is gaining national and global prominence as a key external constraint in engineering design. Courses in solar energy and wind energy have been common offerings, but due to their power production focus, do not address sustainability in the broader context of design. The question becomes, are undergraduate mechanical engineering programs evolving to introduce design for sustainability concepts, such as life cycle assessment, the triple bottom line, and carbon balance, in the broader context of mechanical engineering design? A review of mechanical engineering programs at well recognized universities indicates that most course offerings with definable sustainable design content remain focused on sustainable energy production. In addition, most of these courses are primarily graduate level offerings, indicating a substantial population of recent graduate engineers with limited knowledge of the scope of design for sustainability. Isolated efforts to broaden awareness of sustainability concepts were also identified and will be reported. These programs may serve as models for integration of sustainability into the general mechanical design education.

Training the Participatory Renaissance Man: Past Creative Experiences and Collaborative Design

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sauder ◽  
Yan Jin
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Protocol Analysis ◽  
Creative Cognition ◽  
Collaborative Environment ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Renaissance Man ◽  
Current Engineering ◽  
And Training

Students are frequently trained in a variety of methodologies to promote their creativity in the collaborative environment. Some of the training and methods work well, while others present challenges. A collaborative stimulation approach is taken to extend creative cognition to collaborative creativity, providing new insights into design methodologies and training. An experiment using retrospective protocol analysis, originally conducted to identify the various types of collaborative stimulation, revealed how diversity of past creative experiences correlates with collaborative stimulation. This finding aligns with previous research. Unfortunately, many current engineering design education programs do not adequately provide opportunities for diverse creative experiences. As this study and other research has found, there is a need to create courses in engineering design programs which encourage participation in diverse creative activities.

A Pillar of Mechanical Engineering Design Education in Australia: 25 Years of the Warman Design and Build Competition

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren F. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Institutional Learning ◽  
History Of

The “Warman Design and Build Competition”, running across Australasian Universities, is now in its 26th year in 2013. Presented in this paper is a brief history of the competition, documenting the objectives, yearly scenarios, key contributors and champion Universities since its beginning in 1988. Assuming the competition has reached the majority of mechanical and related discipline engineering students in that time, it is fair to say that this competition, as a vehicle of the National Committee on Engineering Design, has served to shape Australasian engineering education in an enduring way. The philosophy of the Warman Design and Build Competition and some of the challenges of running it are described in this perspective by its coordinator since 2003. In particular, the need is for the competition to work effectively across a wide range of student group ability. Not every group engaging with the competition will be competitive nationally, yet all should learn positively from the experience. Reported also in this paper is the collective feedback from the campus organizers in respect to their use of the competition as an educational experience in their classrooms. Each University participating uses the competition differently with respect to student assessment and the support students receive. However, all academic campus organizer responses suggest that the competition supports their own and their institutional learning objectives very well. While the project scenarios have varied widely over the years, the intent to challenge 2nd year university (predominantly mechanical) engineering students with an open-ended statement of requirements in a practical and experiential exercise has been a constant. Students are faced with understanding their opportunity and their client’s value system as expressed in a scoring algorithm. They are required to conceive, construct and demonstrate their device with limited prior knowledge and experience, and the learning outcomes clearly impact their appreciation for teamwork, leadership and product realization.

Challenges and Strategies in Remote Design Collaboration During Pandemic: A Case Study in Engineering Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Belanger ◽  
Caroline Bartels ◽  
Jinjuan She
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
College Education ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Design Collaboration ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Geographically Distributed ◽  
Remote Design ◽  
Challenges And Strategies

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic forced college education to shift from face-to-face to online instruction. This effort is particularly challenging for freshmen and sophomore students, in engineering design projects where collaborations are needed. The study aims to qualitatively understand challenges and possible strategies revealed by students in remote design collaboration through the lens of an undergraduate-level engineering design introduction class. The authors closely observed team members’ struggles and how they handled them through bi-weekly and final reflections in a semester-long project. The challenges and strategies from 11 teams (42 students) were analyzed and implications for future engineering design education were discussed. The findings provide insights to experimentations that aim to establish a successful remote learning environment that reaches core education objectives of engineering design while also helping students adapt to a geographically distributed engineering workforce in future. The study also illustrated the usefulness of reflections as a tool to capture students’ learning dynamics.

AN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING APPROACH FOR DEVELOPING MENTAL MODELS IN ENGINEERING DESIGN EDUCATION

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Li ◽  
C. Chua
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Mental Simulation ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Support Engineering ◽  
Prior Experiences

Mental simulation represents how a person interprets and understands the causal relations associated with the perceived information, and it is considered an important cognitive device to support engineering design activities. Mental models are considered information characterized in a person’s mind to understand the external world. They are important components to support effective mental simulation. This paper begins with a discussion on the experiential learning approach and how it supports learners in developing mental models for design activities. Following that, the paper looks at the four types of mental models: object, making, analysis and project, and illustrates how they capture different aspects and skills of design activities. Finally, the paper proposes an alternative framework, i.e., Spiral Learning Approach, which is an integration of Kolb’s experiential learningcycle and the Imaginative Education (IE) framework. While the Kolb’s cycle informs a pattern to leverage personal experiences to reusable knowledge, the IE’s framework suggests how prior experiences can trigger imagination and advance understandings. A hypothetical design of a snow removal device is used to illustrate the ideas of design-related mental models and the spirallearning approach.

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