Teaching Consumer Product Design to Engineering Students

Author(s):  
Sridhar S. Condoor ◽  
Heath Doty

Consumer product design blends engineering and industrial design principles, and marketing strategies to bring functional, aesthetic products to market. While competitions motivate a diverse set of students to churn out products/ventures, a systematic approach for tackling consumer product design tasks and case studies that demonstrate the approach greatly benefit a number of students by focusing their design efforts. The paper elaborates such an approach using a case study highlighting the thought process. The case study involves the design of an innovative keychain. While the case study was primarily mechanical engineering in scope addressed by a student team of mechanical engineers, the approach outlined in the paper is generic and can be applied to product designs involving other disciplines.

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-130

The scientific research works concerning the field of mechanical engineering such as, manufacturing machine slate, soil tillage, sowing and harvesting based on the requirements for the implementation of agrotechnical measures for the cultivation of plants in its transportation, through the development of mastering new types of high-performance and energy-saving machines in manufacturing machine slate, creation of multifunctional machines, allowing simultaneous soil cultivation, by means of several planting operations, integration of agricultural machine designs are taken into account in manufacturing of the local universal tractor designed basing on high ergonomic indicators. For this reason, this article explores the use of case studies in teaching agricultural terminology by means analyzing the researches in machine building. Case study method was firstly used in 1870 in Harvard University of Law School in the United States. Also in the article, we give the examples of agricultural machine-building terms, teaching terminology and case methods, case study process and case studies method itself. The research works in the field of mechanical engineering and the use of case studies in teaching terminology have also been analyzed. In addition, the requirements for the development of case study tasks are given in their practical didactic nature. We also give case study models that allow us analyzing and evaluating students' activities.


GERAM ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-72
Author(s):  
Fauzul Etfita ◽  
Sri Wahyuni

Teaching materials are a set of tools or facilities that contain materials, methods and evaluations used by teachers or lecturers in learning. So far, the teaching materials released by several developers have rarely been in accordance with the needs of Mechanical Engineering students, where some of the teaching materials available still use general English. In this study, in order to compile an appropriate teaching material, researchers have conducted a needs analysis. Needs analysis is a fundamental aspect for English language lecturers for specific purposes (ESP) in identifying information or the main needs of students and investigating areas of student shortages. In line with this statement, this research is a case study design that aims to determine the needs of mechanical engineering students in learning English through Padlet at the Faculty of Engineering in the 2019-2020 academic year. The data in this study were collected from researcher observations, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 40 students and two English language lecturers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The results revealed that speaking and writing are the main focus of English skills in the Mechanical Engineering department and listening along with reading are the next English skills needed than others.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Romero Di Biasi ◽  
Guillermo Eliecer Valencia ◽  
Luis Guillermo Obregon

This article presents the application of a new educational thermodynamic software called MOLECULARDISORDER, based on graphical user interfaces created in Matlab® to promote critical thinking in youth engineering students, by means of the energy and entropy balance application in different systems. Statistics of the results obtained by the youth students are shown to determine the influence of the software in a regular course in thermodynamics to promote critical thinking. Two case studies were done by the students, where parameters such as temperature of the fluid and metal surfaces, pressure of the system, mass of the fluid and solid, volume, and velocity of the fluid are used to obtain output variables such as enthalpy, entropy, changes in entropy, entropy production, and energy transfer in the chosen system. Four cognitive skills were considered to evaluate the cognitive competencies of interpreting, arguing and proposing, and interacting with the different graphical user interfaces; these cognitive skills (CS) were argumentative claim (CS1), modeling (CS2), interpreting data/information (CS3), and organization (CS4). Student´s T-test was used to compare the degree of difficulty of each criterion. The case studies were evaluated first without using the software and then with the use of the software to determine the significant effect of the software quantitatively. A population of 130 youth students was taken to perform the statistical analysis with a level of significance of 5%. With the help of the software, the students obtained an improvement when performing case study 1 since the p-value obtained was 0.03, indicating that there are significant differences between the results before and after taking the software. The overall averages of the grades for case study 1 had an increase after using the software from 3.74 to 4.04. The overall averages for case study 2 were also higher after taking the software from 3.44 to 3.75.


Author(s):  
Albert Huynh ◽  
Mike Klassen

 Abstract – Engineering students are well equipped with a technical background to become agents of social change. This paper highlights a co-curricular social innovation program that aims to foster that potential through team-based project-based learning. Key teaching methods are described, such as how students establish a vision, scope complex projects, effectively build teams, and leverage failure and iteration for learning. The program faces challenges maintaining student engagement and getting them to fully embrace learning through failure, but has had significant success in fostering self-reflection. It has also been successful in creating a structure whereby personal and leadership learning happen alongside design and project-oriented learning. There is opportunity for the teaching methods and structure of this program to be applied to other contexts in an effort to improve student team learning outcomes and find ways to integrate leadership learning into core technical and design courses.


Author(s):  
Mingli Han ◽  
Chang Duan

Abstract The paper is to present a case study where different methods of programming are utilized by Mechanical Engineering Students to design a device. The objective is to provoke discussion and explore best practices on teaching Mechanical Engineering students the programming aspects. The task is to design a low-cost device that can accurately measure the period of a simple pendulum. Same raw materials, infrared break beam sensor and Arduino microcontroller, are given. But different programming approaches can be undertaken. Option 1 is to use C language and Arduino’s free Integrated Development Environment. Option 2 is to use Simulink with Arduino Support. Student survey is designed based on whether it is intuitive, whether it is easier to debug, etc. Further studies can be conducted to understand the effectiveness of a mixture of these different methods and sequence of exposure to these different methods.


2019 ◽  
Vol 105 ◽  
pp. 04033 ◽  
Author(s):  
Svetlana Kolomiets ◽  
Elena Medvedeva ◽  
Alena Perevalova

Currently, the minerals’ extractive industries are going through a deep technological modernization, with a characteristic expansion of international exchange of knowledge and know-how. The unification of the equipment used in open-pit and underground mining, the global spread of advanced mining technologies increases the importance of the linguistic competencies of mining engineers. At the same time, the specifics of training mining engineers is the uniqueness of situations in the extraction and processing of mineral resources, which actualizes the case study method in the training of mining engineers. The paper provides a description of the term «case study» and its basic characteristics and principles of application. The content is based on the authors’ own experience of mining engineers in case studies while teaching English. Some examples of case studies for mining engineering students studying English are presented. The paper notes the effectiveness of implementing case study method and shows its benefits for introducing in the process of mining engineers training. In addition to listing positive effects of the method for developing skills necessary for competitive specialists such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, etc., the authors mention possible problems that are likely to occur while using this method as well.


Author(s):  
Cynthia C. M. Deaton ◽  
Jacquelynn A. Malloy

Design-based case studies address research questions that involve instructional innovations within a bounded system. This blend of case study and design-based research provides a systematic approach to examining instructional innovations that are bounded by perspective, context, and time. Design-based case studies provide a framework for engaging in iterative cycles of data collection and analysis that are used to determine how, why, and whether the goals of an instructional innovation have been met. The authors note common concerns surrounding case study and design-based research and how design-based case studies address these concerns by building on the strengths of both approaches.


2011 ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Enid Mumford

In the last three case studies there has been a logical progression through the management of change, considering first the definition of the problem; second, the development of a strategy for handling it; and third, the creation of an appropriate organizational structure. But, in today’s fast-moving world, there are many situations in which it is difficult to carry out this systematic approach. For example what do we do if change involves a technological jump, bringing with it new problems and challenges which have not been experienced before and which are poorly understood? This happened to white-collar work in the next case study. It has also happened many times in the past and is likely to happen many times in the future.


Author(s):  
J. M. Munoz-Guijosa ◽  
A. Di´az-Lantada ◽  
J. Echa´varri ◽  
J. L. Mun˜oz ◽  
E. Chaco´n ◽  
...  

Along with theoretical knowledge acquisition, knowledge application and professional competence acquisition must be important teaching objectives in any engineering subject. This is especially remarkable for subjects aiming the acquisition of product design knowledge, provided that, in actual professional practice, product design is done in multidisciplinary teams, taking into account technical and non-technical criteria, and with tight deadlines and budgets. This work describes the contents and teaching planning and execution for the subject “product design methodology” at the Mechanical Engineering Department of Universidad Polite´cnica de Madrid, aiming for the student acquisition of important professional competences to be used on professional product design practice, such as systematic decision making, global company view, task prioritizing, internal and external entrepreneurship, or teamwork, as well as hard competences such as design procedures, quality or project economics. Student teamwork examples from the problem-based learning (PBL) experience, together with internal and external surveys are shown to check the validity of the proposal.


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