scholarly journals Footballs, Rockets, And Legos: A Hands On Approach To Enhancing The Quality Of Engineering Design Education

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Dillon ◽  
Jose Salinas
Author(s):  
Heather Herring ◽  
Peihua Gu

Involving industry in engineering design education would enhance quality of education and student experience as most design expertise resides in industry that can be accessed through guest lectures and interactions with students; and real, meaningful engineering design projects are needed for our students. Good industrial projects with enthusiastic industrial participation in the design capstone course would provide very valuable opportunity for students to gain meaningful experience and would prepare students better to be design ready engineers upon graduation. However, there are a number of challenges in association with industry participation. This paper reports our experiences in dealing with industry-based design projects as well as associated challenges. It is our experience and belief that these challenges can be successfully addressed if both university and industry treat the partnership from a long term perspective and provide reasonable resources to the partnership.


Author(s):  
Gu¨l E. Okudan ◽  
Susan Mohammed

Disassemble/Analyze/Assemble (DAA) activities involve the disassembly, analysis, and assembly of an artifact. Such activities are frequently made a part of the undergraduate engineering curricula in the United States (and elsewhere) as they provide useful ‘hands-on’ active learning components that can be easily integrated into various courses. DAA activities are central to product dissection and reverse engineering, terms which have been used interchangeably in the engineering design education literature and course titles. In some cases these activities are coupled with redesign activities, paving the way for a good context and providing a background for a meaningful engineering design. Despite this fact, however, based on our review of the literature it is not clear how do these DAA activities help with the redesign activity, if at all. Accordingly, in this paper we present results of our data collection that aimed at uncovering students’ perception regarding if DAA activities help with redesign (e.g., is it easier to redesign after dissection?). Overall, students had positive perceptions toward dissection, specifically with regards to its impact on redesign. We also report on the relation of student perceptions to design task, team functioning, and tolerance for ambiguity.


Author(s):  
Andrew Berlin ◽  
Jacob Nelson ◽  
Jessica Menold

Abstract With the rise of the “maker” culture, the prevalence of affordable and rapid “maker” tools has increased dramatically, and the mass proliferation of 3D printers has become a staple of engineering design and engineering design education. The increased use of digital prototyping tools, such as Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies, is fundamentally transforming the way students and educators approach engineering design courses and hands-on projects. This work investigates the effect of AM prototyping efforts on student perceptions of design processes through an in-situ study conducted across two project-based design courses. Results suggest that students’ perceptions of prototype value, time spent prototyping, and the development of designer knowledge is significantly affected due to AM use during prototyping activities.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Sauder ◽  
Yan Jin

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.


Author(s):  
Warren F. Smith

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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