scholarly journals THE USE OF LEGO ® SERIOUS PLAY IN THE ENGINEERING DESIGN CLASSROOM

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Bulmer
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Planning Problem ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Instructional Technique ◽  
Experiential Process ◽  
Design Innovation ◽  
The University ◽  
Innovation And Entrepreneurship

With the belief that teaching design, innovation and entrepreneurship studies requires methods and techniques that are themselves innovative and entrepreneurial in nature, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY™ (LSP) has been used within the Technology Management and Entrepreneurship (TME) Program at the University of New Brunswick, Faculty of Engineering, as a complementary instructional technique since 2005. LSP is a creative and experiential process that can facilitate strategic planning, problem solving, team building, and innovation mining through the use of specialized LEGO® brick kits. Designed for the corporate environment, it made its formal debut in 2002. Since then, over 250 global organizations, in 27 countries have used this facilitated thinking technique. Example companies that offer enthusiastic testimonials for the methodology include Daimler/Chrysler, Verizon Wireless, Ikea, and Pfizer. LSP is now emerging in the educational environment. The current generation of students, before becoming gripped to electronics, was encouraged by parents to use their hands and imaginations to construct models using LEGO® bricks. They were at one time ‘Imagineers’. In addition, engineering students tend to work hard and play harder. Thus it became desirable to test how introducing the element of play [1][2] with purpose into the Entrepreneurship and Design classrooms could awaken students’ creative energies that spur innovation. “Constructivism” [3] has been increasingly emphasized as an effective approach to learning. Also, the related “Constructionist” theory suggests that by using our hands and 3D modeling to explore ideas we can surface more information, past experience, intuition and understanding than we can effectively express through speech alone. Based on the promising LSP initial TME pilot results in 2006, it was predicted that Engineering students as a whole could further benefit from the LSP experience and use this form of concrete thinking to solve design/innovation challenges and teaming issues. The LSP pilot action research was extended in collaboration with graduating Civil Engineering students in their Team Capstone Design Course winter 2008. Lego based (LSP) workshops subsequently conducted demonstrated a positive impact on the design teams with respect to their views on team responsibility and accountability, ability to collaborate and cooperate as well as their awareness of team risks and responsibilities over those teams with no LSP workshop experience.

scholarly journals EXPERIENCES WITH INTER-YEAR CAPSTONE DESIGN TEAMS

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. D. Mann ◽  
D. S. Petkau ◽  
K. J. Dick ◽  
S. Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Engineering Degree ◽  
Diverse Backgrounds ◽  
The University ◽  
University Setting ◽  
Capstone Design

Design teams in industry are composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds at various stages of their careers. A unique set of group dynamics will be created with one member, likely someone with sufficient experience, assuming the responsibility of being the team leader. Design teams formed in engineering classes within the university setting typically consist of individuals at the same stage of their academic training, thus students do not experience the same group dynamics as they will find in industry. In an attempt to give undergraduate engineering students this experience, inter-year design teams were formed from engineering students registered in courses representing different stages of completion of the engineering degree. Students registered in the final-year design course were expected to assume the roles of team leaders or coleaders. This paper will discuss a number of issues that were observed with inter-year capstone design teams. It has been concluded that the disadvantages of inter-year design teams outweigh the advantages.

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.

scholarly journals Compartmental Learning versus Joint Learning in Engineering Education

Mathematics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 662
Author(s):  
María Jesús Santos ◽  
Alejandro Medina ◽  
José Miguel Mateos Roco ◽  
Araceli Queiruga-Dios
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Chemical Engineering ◽  
Linear Equations ◽  
Mathematical Software ◽  
Mathematical Concepts ◽  
Joint Learning ◽  
The University ◽  
Academic Year ◽  
Non Linear Equations ◽  
Mathematics And Physics

Sophomore students from the Chemical Engineering undergraduate Degree at the University of Salamanca are involved in a Mathematics course during the third semester and in an Engineering Thermodynamics course during the fourth one. When they participate in the latter they are already familiar with mathematical software and mathematical concepts about numerical methods, including non-linear equations, interpolation or differential equations. We have focused this study on the way engineering students learn Mathematics and Engineering Thermodynamics. As students use to learn each matter separately and do not associate Mathematics and Physics, they separate each matter into different and independent compartments. We have proposed an experience to increase the interrelationship between different subjects, to promote transversal skills, and to make the subjects closer to real work. The satisfactory results of the experience are exposed in this work. Moreover, we have analyzed the results obtained in both courses during the academic year 2018–2019. We found that there is a relation between both courses and student’s final marks do not depend on the course.

scholarly journals A Simple but Efficient Concept of Blended Teaching of Mathematics for Engineering Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 56
Author(s):  
Saray Busto ◽  
Michael Dumbser ◽  
Elena Gaburro
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Video Quality ◽  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Teaching Of Mathematics ◽  
Online Streaming ◽  
The University ◽  
Blended Teaching

In this article we present a case study concerning a simple but efficient technical and logistic concept for the realization of blended teaching of mathematics and its applications in theoretical mechanics that was conceived, tested and implemented at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering (DICAM) of the University of Trento, Italy, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept foresees traditional blackboard lectures with a reduced number of students physically present in the lecture hall, while the same lectures are simultaneously made available to the remaining students, who cannot be present, via high-quality low-bandwidth online streaming. The case study presented in this paper was implemented in a single University Department and was carried out with a total of n=1011 students and n=68 professors participating in the study. Based on our first key assumption that traditional blackboard lectures, including the gestures and the facial expressions of the professor, are even nowadays still a very efficient and highly appreciated means of teaching mathematics at the university, this paper deliberately does not want to propose a novel pedagogical concept of how to teach mathematics at the undergraduate level, but rather presents a technical concept of how to preserve the quality of traditional blackboard lectures even during the COVID-19 pandemic and how to make them available to the students at home via online streaming with adequate audio and video quality even at low internet bandwidth. The second key assumption of this paper is that the teaching of mathematics is a dynamic creative process that requires the physical presence of students in the lecture hall as audience so that the professor can instantaneously fine-tune the evolution of the lecture according to his/her perception of the level of attention and the facial expressions of the students. The third key assumption of this paper is that students need to have the possibility to interact with each other personally, especially in the first years at the university. We report on the necessary hardware, software and logistics, as well as on the perception of the proposed blended lectures by undergraduate students from civil and environmental engineering at the University of Trento, Italy, compared to traditional lectures and also compared to the pure online lectures that were needed as emergency measure at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation of the concept was carried out with the aid of quantitative internet bandwidth measurements, direct comparison of transmitted video signals and a careful analysis of ex ante and ex post online questionnaires sent to students and professors.

scholarly journals The Impact of Embedded iPad Use on Student Perceptions of Their Digital Capabilities

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Elphick
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Key Skills ◽  
The University ◽  
Teaching In Higher Education ◽  
The Impact

Digital capabilities are recognized as key skills that students must possess to learn and work in our increasingly digital world and have been the subject of a growing focus over recent years. Similarly, smartphones and, to a lesser degree, tablets are now ubiquitous within the student body, and many academics are beginning to leverage these devices for the purposes of learning and teaching in higher education. To further explore the possibilities of mobile technology, the iPilot project was created to explore the effects that embedded iPad use had on undergraduate students’ creativity, ability to collaborate with their peers and their perception of their digital capabilities. Focusing on the digital capabilities aspect of the project, this paper explores the results gathered. While the results are mixed, when combined with data taken from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digital Experience Tracker, it does appear that using iPads in the university classroom can have a positive impact on certain digital behaviors and students’ perceptions of their digital skills.

scholarly journals Development and delivery of a work experience week programme for mechanical engineering

2020 ◽  
pp. 030641902098104
Author(s):  
A Gonzalez-Buelga ◽  
I Renaud-Assemat ◽  
B Selwyn ◽  
J Ross ◽  
I Lazar
Keyword(s):  
Work Experience ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Impact Analysis ◽  
Legal Term ◽  
Stage 4 ◽  
Engineering Design Problem ◽  
Hands On ◽  
University Of Bristol ◽  
The University

This paper focuses on the development, delivery and preliminary impact analysis of an engineering Work Experience Week (WEW) programme for KS4 students in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (CAME) at the University of Bristol, UK. Key stage 4, is the legal term for the two years of school education which incorporate GCSEs in England, age 15–16. The programme aims to promote the engineering profession among secondary school pupils. During the WEW, participants worked as engineering researchers: working in teams, they had to tackle a challenging engineering design problem. The experience included hands-on activities and the use of state-of-the-art rapid prototyping and advanced testing equipment. The students were supervised by a group of team leaders, a diverse group of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students, technical staff, and academics at the School of CAME. The vision of the WEW programme is to transmit the message that everybody can be an engineer, that there are plenty of different routes into engineering that can be taken depending on pupils’ strengths and interests and that there are a vast amount of different engineering careers and challenges to be tackled by the engineers of the future. Feedback from the participants in the scheme has been overwhelmingly positive.

An Empirical Study on the Relationship between Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education and Employ-ability in Higher Vocational Colleges

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 1067-1074
Author(s):  
Zhiqin Li
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Entrepreneurship Education ◽  
Questionnaire Data ◽  
Vocational Colleges ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Innovation And Entrepreneurship

Through the modeling and data analysis of the questionnaire data on the relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship education and employ-ability in higher vocational colleges, this paper concludes that all innovation and entrepreneurship education will have a significant positive impact on employ-ability, and it has a significant impact on higher vocational colleges. The promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship education in the school puts forward corresponding strategies.

Design Odyssey: A Co-Curricular Design Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program for Systemic Change in Design Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lim Siow Yuan Sio ◽  
Arianne Collopy ◽  
Aditya Batura ◽  
Lim Jia Xuan ◽  
Ashreya M. Venkatesh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Systemic Change ◽  
Curricular Design ◽  
Design Innovation ◽  
Innovation And Entrepreneurship
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