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.

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.

Employing the Concurrent Design Philosophy in Developing an Engineering Design Science Programme

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. M. Wild ◽  
C. Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Concurrent Engineering ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Design Science ◽  
Design Philosophy ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Design Paradigm ◽  
Education Of Students ◽  
Typical Design

North American undergraduate mechanical engineering design education has failed to meet the needs of industry in educating students in effective design philosophies typified by the concurrent engineering design philosophy. Current programmes emphasize traditional engineering analysis courses, leaving little room for truly educating the students in the fundamentals of mechanical engineering design. This paper uses the concurrent engineering design paradigm to design a programme for the education of students in mechanical engineering design. The basics of concurrent engineering design are outlined, the failings of typical design education stated, and an exploration of the required features of a new design curriculum presented.

Enhance Engineering Design Education in the Middle Years With Authentic Engineering Problems

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yen-Lin Han ◽  
Kathleen Cook ◽  
Gregory Mason ◽  
Teodora Rutar Shuman
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Problem ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Engineering Problems ◽  
Structured Problems ◽  
Thinking Process

Engineering design has been a requirement in the curriculum for engineering accreditation since the mid-90 s. This emphasis on engineering design has introduced significant changes to engineering curricula in freshmen and senior years with many engineering programs offering capstone (senior) and/or cornerstone (freshmen) design courses. Yet design-related content and experiences in the second and third years of the engineering curricula remain less common due to the heavy emphasis on fundamental engineering science courses in the middle years. This study investigated the possibility of developing design ability (thinking, process, and skills) in one of these courses. The method used was to incorporate real world, open-ended problem solving, specifically authentic engineering problem centered learning (AEPCL), into a junior-level heat transfer course. AEPCL uses authentic engineering problems (AEPs) as the backdrop to develop students' design abilities through solving open-ended, ill-structured problems. Results indicate that students who experienced AEPCL showed better design abilities than comparable students who did not experience AEPCL. Through AEPCL, students learn how to collect better information, make more reasonable assumptions, engage in better processes, and arrive at a more plausible, error-free, and high-quality solution in engineering design.

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.

scholarly journals Aligning Engineering Design Education with Accreditation Requirements

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 110-121
Author(s):  
Sivachandran Chandrasekaran ◽  
Aman Maung Than Oo ◽  
Guy Littlefair ◽  
Alex Stojcevski
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Engineering And Technology ◽  
Professional Body ◽  
Curriculum Education

This paper focuses on aligning engineering design with accreditation requirements in engineering education. To be an accredited curriculum, education programs must incorporate graduate attributes required by program accrediting professional bodies. Graduate attributes are the required benchmarks for students to attain their specific qualities and abilities within a higher education institute. Most higher education institutions identify a list of expected graduate attributes or outcomes that are incorporated in their educational programs to be accredited by an accrediting professional body such as Engineers Australia (EA), Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) in the United States, and the European Accreditation of Engineering Programs (EUR-ACE) in Europe. This paper evaluates the program educational objectives, student outcomes, assessment methods and evaluation of different undergraduate engineering programs. It assesses how engineering design is practiced and incorporated as an important element of the graduate attributes through project oriented design based learning curriculum aligned with professional accreditation requirements.

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