scholarly journals Project-based Learning in Engineering Design Education: Sharing Best Practices

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aruna Shekar
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Engineering Design Education

scholarly journals ENGINEERING DESIGN COMPETENCY: PERCEIVED BARRIERS TO EFFECTIVE ENGINEERING DESIGN EDUCATION

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Strong ◽  
Warren Stiver
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Perceived Barriers ◽  
Hiring Practices ◽  
Promotion Policies ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Engineering Schools

The NSERC Chairs in Design Engineering have developed a white paper on Engineering Design Competency. The Engineering Design Competency document was created to stimulate activity in engineering schools and provide a recommended knowledge and skills guideline for engineering educators. However, engineering schools and individual faculty face a number of barriers in their efforts to excel in engineering design education. To make progress, these barriers must be recognized and understood. This paper will provide a brief review and discussion of five leading barriers to the advancement of engineering design education. The barriers covered are: tenure and promotion policies and procedures, hiring practices, academic structure, funding, and facilities. These barriers are mutually supportive which compounds the challenge. The paper and presentation will also provide some examples of best practices in overcoming these barriers. The goal of these examples is to provide evidence that none of these barriers are absolute, that all can be overcome, and that some engineering schools are succeeding.

Using Model-Based Design in Engineering Design Education

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjell Andersson
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Machine Design ◽  
Project Work ◽  
Capstone Course ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Engineering Design Education

Project-based education in combination with problem-based learning has been one of the key factors for the popularity of engineering design education among students at technical universities. The use of industry-connected projects has boosted this popularity still further. To get feedback from professionals in industry is very stimulating and in this way students also get confirmation that their education is related to industrial needs. In the Machine Design capstone course at KTH Department of Machine Design, the curriculum covers the whole process from idea generation to manufacturing and testing a final prototype. A major part of the course consists of project work where students will develop a product prototype in close cooperation with an industrial partner or with a research project at the department. The benefits of using real prototypes cannot be stressed enough. This is a very efficient way to explain to the students why a product must be designed in a certain way, e.g. to make it possible to assemble. This means that a major part of the course is using project-based learning as a teaching strategy. In addition, the use of model-based design is introduced as a methodology that enables the students to evaluate and “experience” many different behaviors of the product using digital models in a virtual environment. In this way many undesirable concepts and flaws can be avoided even before a prototype is manufactured. This paper describes a model-based methodology for product development. It also shows the application of this methodology in project work in a capstone course in engineering design at KTH, and discusses the effects on student motivation and learning.

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.

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