scholarly journals Using Engineering Design As A Retention Tool For First Year Engineering Students

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber Kemppainen ◽  
Amy Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year

scholarly journals Teaching Design to First-Year Engineering Students

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McGuire ◽  
Kin Fun Li ◽  
Fayez Gebali
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Product Engineering ◽  
Teaching Design ◽  
Integrated Communication ◽  
The University

Design is associated with the invention,planning and building a product. Engineering design, inparticular, takes considerable effort, skills, andintegration of knowledge; hence, it is difficult to teachfreshmen this subject since they have not possessed ordeveloped the proper skill set yet. The Faculty ofEngineering at the University of Victoria has beenteaching engineering design (in two successive courses)to all first-year engineering students. In addition toattending plenary lectures, student teams are working oncompetitive projects in the laboratory, while participatingin highly integrated communication modules. In thiswork, we discuss the curricula of these design courses,model of delivery and share our experience for the pastthree years.

scholarly journals Design Practica as Authentic Assessments in First-year Engineering Design Courses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McComb ◽  
Catherine Berdanier ◽  
Jessica Menold
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Skill Level ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Entry Level ◽  
Learning Attitudes ◽  
Perceived Change ◽  
Common Learning

This paper describes the design and evaluation of a novel assessment for first-year engineering design courses that is rooted in an authentic design challenge. This approach modifies the traditional written-exam approach typically found in engineering courses, which is inherently inauthentic and cannot easily capture the exploratory nature of engineering design. Our assessment improves alignment with common learning objectives found in first-year engineering design courses and additionally prepares students for the type of case study interviews that are increasingly common for entry-level engineering jobs. To evaluate our assessment, 50 first-year students completed the engineering design self-efficacy instrument once before beginning the assessment and a second time approximately 48 hours later upon completion of a reflection assignment. In addition, students retrospectively reported their perceived change in self-efficacy during the assessment. Analysis shows that students perceived a large retrospective increase in skill level, despite only a small increase in directly measured self-efficacy. These results are analyzed in light of the Dunning-Kruger effect and we posit that the assessment helps to align students’ self-efficacy with their actual skill level. Increased alignment of self-efficacy with skill level may minimize student frustration when encountering challenging tasks in the future, potentially increasing retention of engineering students as well as facilitating the development of lifelong learning attitudes.

Can Design Teams Be Empathically Creative? A Simulation-Based Investigation on the Role of Team Empathy on Concept Generation and Selection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Jacquelyn Huff ◽  
Christopher McComb
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Computational Simulation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Research on empathy has been surging in popularity in the engineering design community since empathy is known to help designers develop a deeper understanding of the users’ needs. Because of this, the design community has been invested in devising and assessing empathic design activities. However, research on empathy has been primarily limited to individuals, meaning we do not know how it impacts team performance, particularly in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Specifically, it is unknown how the empathic composition of teams, average (elevation) and standard deviation (diversity) of team members’ empathy, would impact design outcomes in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to investigate the impact of team trait empathy on concept generation and selection in an engineering design student project. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 13,482 teams of noninteracting brainstorming individuals generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique drawing upon a design repository of 806 ideas generated by first-year engineering students. The main findings from the study indicate that the elevation in team empathy positively impacted simulated teams’ unique idea generation and selection while the diversity in team empathy positively impacted teams’ generation of useful ideas. The results from this study can be used to guide team formation in engineering design.

scholarly journals DESIGN DAYS BOOT CAMP 2.0: IMPROVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS TO CEAB GRADUATE ATTRIBUTES

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Howcroft ◽  
Igor Ivkovic ◽  
Matthew J. Borland ◽  
Maud Gorbet
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Boot Camp ◽  
First Year ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Intended Learning Outcomes

Engineering design is a critical skill that all engineering students are expected to learn and is often the focus of final year capstone projects and first-year cornerstone projects. In the Systems Design Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo, engineering design is introduced to the students during an intense two-day Design Days Boot Camp. Design Days was originally conceived of and run in Fall 2016. The Fall 2018 version, Design Days 2.0, included substantial improvements focused on adding two additional design activities and a writing activity, strengthening the connection with first year content, and providing a greater variety of team experiences. The methods of achieving the nine intended learning outcomes of Design Days 2.0 are discussed and connected to CEAB graduate attributes. This demonstrates that meaningful learning can be achieved during a two-day boot camp that will starts students on the path towards professional engineering. Other departments are encouraged to use the presented intended learning outcomes, graduate attributes connections, and Design Days 2.0 descriptions as a template for their own design boot camp. Finally, Design Days 2.0 inspired ideas for further improvements including the incorporation of a software-focused design activity, adding budgetary constraints, and providing an opportunity for student reflection.

scholarly journals DESIGN-BUILD PROJECT APPROACH IN A FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSE

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Platanitis ◽  
Remon Pop-Iliev
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Academic Careers ◽  
First Year ◽  
Complex Objects ◽  
Project Approach ◽  
Three Dimensional Objects ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Design Build

We found that first-year engineering students often have difficulties to visualize and manipulate three-dimensional objects mentally, especially if the assembly involves multiple parts that need to work together in sequence to produce a required function. Ultimately, this lack of ability leads to poor representation of intended students’ design concepts in paper sketches, as well as poor or unacceptable detailed designs in CAD. Therefore, it is imperative that students develop their ability to manipulate complex objects in space very early in their academic careers. In this context, this paper focuses on the introduction and implementation of a challenging design-build project in the first-year engineering design course at UOIT intended to provide students with early opportunities to physically realize the spatial relationships and the three dimensional causality of the interaction of moving parts in an assembly.

Modification of Robotics Curriculum for Project-Based First Year Engineering Design Course

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Nolte ◽  
Xiaomei Tan ◽  
Alexander Weaver ◽  
Elizabeth Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
First Year ◽  
Usability Study ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
Prototype Development ◽  
Curriculum Making ◽  
Comprehensive Curriculum

Abstract Texas Instruments (TI) currently offers a comprehensive curriculum to supplement their Robotics System Learning Kit MAX (TI-RSLK MAX). While designed for all college students, TI would like to provide a modification of the curriculum specifically for first-year engineering design courses. The goal of this project was to modify the current TI-RSLX MAX curriculum, making it easier to digest for first-year engineering students and more applicable to shorter duration projects (∼8 weeks), while still being information dense. To better understand the user experience of the current TI-RSLK MAX curriculum and determine what users would want from a modified curriculum, user interviews were conducted and analyzed using inductive qualitative analysis techniques. Results showed that while the current TI robotics project has many positives, first-year students primarily struggled with the coding aspect of the project. These results directed and informed the prototype development of a modified curriculum module focused on teaching students code. Low- and medium-fidelity prototypes were developed and tested with users. Data from the usability study were analyzed using descriptive analysis techniques and results indicate that the medium-fidelity prototype helped students learn robotics coding. This research has implications for a high-fidelity modified TI-RSLX MAX curriculum and robotics education for first-year engineering design students.

scholarly journals AN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING ACTIVITY TO PROMOTE SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Bishop ◽  
A. Hurst ◽  
B. Mantin ◽  
S. Bedi
Keyword(s):  
Remote Control ◽  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Skill Development ◽  
Learning Activity ◽  
First Year ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Clinic Experience

This paper describes an experientiallearning activity to promote skill development infirst year engineering students. The exercise involvesthe assembly of a remote-control car using readilyavailable part kits. Students work in small teamsunder the mentorship of experienced faculty membersfrom a variety of engineering backgrounds. The goalof the exercise is to introduce engineering design intofirst year engineering by providing students with anengaging, hands-on experience. The exercise is oneof several new activities being incorporated into theIdeas Clinic Experience for engineering students atthe University of Waterloo.

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