Effect of Providing an Opportunity for Competition in Design Education

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenji Iino ◽  
Masayuki Nakao
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Functional Requirement ◽  
Good Opportunity ◽  
Good Design ◽  
Creative Solutions ◽  
Students First ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
To Come ◽  
The University

We have been offering conceptual design courses to graduate level mechanical engineering students. The courses are taught at three different graduate schools; Kyushu Institute of Technology, Sophia University, and The University of Tokyo. The mechanisms of course offering are different among these three schools, however, the underlying theme is the same. That is to identify a problem that the students want to solve and work in groups to come up with creative solutions. The students first go through sessions to sharpen their sense of feeling inconveniences. We then emphasize the importance of properly stating the functional requirement for their yet-to-build solution. Engineering students often struggle with this first stage. Once they set the goal, the course teaches brainstorming, Design Record Graph, and prototyping. Last year, we experimented with a final assignment of producing posters of their new products. The posters were collected and presented at an adult conference. The conference participants cast votes for their preferred posters. The top three winners received book cards to purchase books. This poster competition gave the students high incentives to produce good design proposals. The winning factor was not just technical supremacy but the votes were strongly affected by the solution presentation on the posters. It provided a good opportunity to teach engineering students that technology alone is not always the most important factor in winning businesses.

scholarly journals A NOVEL DESIGN COMPETITION FOR THIRD-YEAR CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janaka Y. Ruwanpura
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Construction Material ◽  
Successful Outcome ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
Design Competition ◽  
The University ◽  
Novel Design

At many Canadian universities, there are few courses for design education in the civil engineering curriculum except in fourth year. This paper explains an innovative approach introduced by the author to promote design education using a design competition at the University of Calgary. Through this design competition, third-year students learn design concepts and apply them using a real project, integrate several civil engineering deliverables in one project without doing them in a separate course, and gain experience that prepares them for their final-year design course. The eight courses included in the competition comprise all civil engineering aspects, including structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, construction, material, and project management. This inaugural year’s design competition is based on the new Alberta Children’s Hospital Project. The paper discusses the competition’s purpose, structure, student participation, deliverables, and successful outcome.

The Design Studio

2014 ◽  
pp. 93-110
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Design Studio ◽  
University Culture ◽  
Reflection In Action ◽  
Technical Rationality ◽  
To Come ◽  
The University

The design studio is the prototype of design education, particularly for architects but more and more for engineers too – though engineers prefer the word “lab” to “studio.” Although the design studio is known today mainly through the “reflection in action” theory of Donald Schön (1984, 1988), this manner of education first developed at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the seventeenth century for the promotion of neoclassical aesthetic values, and it has continued ever since to be used, even by the Bauhaus in Germany in the early twentieth century after function had replaced form as the primary architectural value. The principal value of the design studio for Schön is that it properly emphasizes creativity for designers, instead of analysis and criticism, as preferred by the “technical rationality” of university culture as a whole. The university has responded by criticizing the design studio for being too subjective and therefore isolated within the academic world. In recent years the design studio has also been criticized for being elitist by focusing too much on aesthetic concerns, instead of promoting cultural sensitivity to social justice and environmental sustainability. Other critics complain that the design studio still relies on paper and hand drawings too much, instead of committing fully to ICTs and the virtual reality (VR) of cyberspace. Such criticisms, however, tend to be overstated, and the design studio is likely to continue in its present form for some time to come, because that is where most designing students learn the culture of design and develop a lifelong identification with their instructors and their fellow students.

scholarly journals A DESIGN CHALLENGE - INCORPORATING DESIGN INTO THE FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING CURRICULUM

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott B. Nokleby ◽  
Remon Pop-Iliev
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Solid Modelling ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Engineering Graphics ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
The University

This paper outlines a novel engineering graphics and design course at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). The course is designed to enable first year engineering students to learn the engineering design process while at the same time developing strong free-hand sketching and 3-D solid modelling skills. The dual nature of the graphics-design course enables students to learn engineering graphics in a non-isolated manner. The results after two years of offering the course show that first-year team-based projects are feasible and manageable and that first-year engineering students are capable of completing rather complex and innovative solid modelling design projects.

Literature Review Skills for Undergraduate Engineering Students in Large Classes

2012 ◽  
pp. 240-261
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Yong
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Skill Development ◽  
Communication Course ◽  
Large Classes ◽  
Engineering Communication ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Students First ◽  
Online Learning Resources ◽  
The University

Writing a literature review for a design project, which may be undergraduate engineering students’ first encounter with published research on the impact of engineering solutions in a broad context, requires effective skills of interpretation and communication. Engineering Communication curriculum at The University of Adelaide is designed to enhance students’ skills in writing literature reviews. This chapter outlines the development of students’ skills in interpreting the literature and structuring a literature review; it explains the scaffolded learning approach of an Engineering Communication course, and describes means by which skill development may be facilitated in large classes. Students’ skill development can be traced from a descriptive, ‘cut-and-paste’ approach, to a relatively critical use of evidence from peer-reviewed sources, integrated into a well-structured discussion. A scaffolded approach to learning supports students’ improvement of their skills through staged-design of materials, and detailed feedback on draft attempts, according to highly specific assessment criteria. The process can be facilitated in large classes by the creation of online learning resources, including model texts and model seminar presentations.

Concepts in Biomimetic Design: Methods and Tools to Incorporate Into a Biomimetic Design Course

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Glier ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams ◽  
Julie S. Linsey
Keyword(s):  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
University Of Maryland ◽  
Biomimetic Design ◽  
Engineering Problems ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
The Many ◽  
The University

Biomimetic design, the use of nature to inspire solutions to engineering problems, has been practiced on an ad hoc basis throughout human history. Only recently, however, have researchers sought to develop formal tools and principles to effectively tap the wealth of design solutions found within nature. Texas A&M University is developing an undergraduate course to introduce interdisciplinary engineering students to the current concepts, principles, and methods of biomimetic design, as found in published literature. This paper seeks to concisely present the results and conclusions of the many research efforts that will be incorporated into the developing course. The research reviewed in this paper is discussed with some emphasis on its pedagogical implications. Research efforts in applying design tools such as functional modeling, analogical reasoning, and the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) to biomimicry are summarized. This paper also discusses the efforts to develop effective tools to search biological information for design inspiration. As similar courses in biomimetic design have been conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Maryland, the published findings from those courses are also presented.

The Sinful University?

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel James Cook
Keyword(s):  
University Education ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
To Come ◽  
The University

There is a difference between doing something well and doing something good. And there is a difference between failing to do something well, and failing to do something good. In this paper, I assess our contemporary University in the latter sense of failure. While the University can be ineffective, or fail to function well, there is more at stake if the University, as an institution, is in conflict with nature. That is, it is one thing for the University to be ineffective in its means, but here I will pose the question: is the contemporary University sinful? Using Josef Pieper's elucidation of moral failure and John Henry Newman's analysis of the proper ends of University education, I defend the thesis that because the aim of our contemporary University seems to come in conflict with the goal of nature as a whole, it may be understood as sinful.

Engineering for good: A case of community driven engineering innovation

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinweike Eseonu ◽  
Martin A Cortes
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technology Innovation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
First Year ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The University ◽  
Social Consideration

There is a culture of disengagement from social consideration in engineering disciplines. This means that first year engineering students, who arrive planning to change the world through engineering, lose this passion as they progress through the engineering curriculum. The community driven technology innovation and investment program described in this paper is an attempt to reverse this trend by fusing community engagement with the normal engineering design process. This approach differs from existing project or trip based approaches – outreach – because the focus is on local communities with which the university team forms a long-term partnership through weekly in-person meetings and community driven problem statements – engagement.

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