scholarly journals EXPERIENCE WITH A SMALL UAV IN THE ENGINEERING DESIGN CLASS AT CAPILANO UNIVERSITY – A NOVEL APPROACH TO FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wlodyka ◽  
Margaret Dulat
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Video Camera ◽  
Field Investigation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Teaching Methodology ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Small Uav ◽  
Practical Design ◽  
Diploma Program

Capilano University offers a very successfulfirst-year Engineering Transfer and EngineeringTransition Diploma program. A key learning experiencefor students of both programs is a one-semesterEngineering Design course, in which the instructor leadsthe student through a practical design project, applyingengineering design principles that are presented in thecourse. In 2014, a new project design theme wasintroduced, specifically working with small UnmannedAerial Vehicles (UAVs). The teaching methodologycombined both lecture and student led learningexperiences. Student teams of 4 were provided a commonassignment to carry out a field investigation using a UAVand video camera to simulate an industrial application.With experience gained on a PC based flight simulator,all teams successfully completed their designs, carried outtheir UAV flights and documented their results. Studentsdeveloped project management and communication skillsearly in their engineering education. This innovativeapproach in first year provides students with immediateexposure to the practical limitations that constrainengineering design. The teaching methodology isexpected to result in graduate engineers who havestronger skills in teamwork, communication, and designcapability. This first year teaching methodology hasshown significant promise as demonstrated through thequality of the design projects, as well as positive feedbackfrom the students.

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 INCORPORATING A COMMUNITY-BASED RAPID MANUFACTURING FACILITY INTO A FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Wlodyka ◽  
Bruno Tomberli
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
First Year ◽  
Design Tools ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Laboratory Equipment ◽  
Manufacturing Facility ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Design Students ◽  
Manufacturing Technologies ◽  
The University

University engineering departments are often challenged to maintain state of the art manufacturing facilities due to the rapid technological changes that are occurring in industry. Older or obsolete engineering laboratory equipment, manufacturing machines, and design tools are difficult to replace due to limited department budgets, space, and staff resources.At Capilano University, where a hands-on project-based one semester first year engineering design class is offered, the Engineering department has taken a novel approach to meet the above challenge.The Engineering Design students are required to design, build, and test original prototype electrical circuits, and mechanical structures as part of their design projects. Construction of these student-designed units requires a rapid turnaround manufacturing facility to meet the peak demands of the students, capabilities that smaller universities are often limited in their ability to provide.To meet this specific requirement, a community-based private rapid prototyping design and manufacturing facility, Zen Maker Labs, was approached, and a partnership agreement has been developed. The agreement consisted of cooperation between the university and the Zen Maker Lab to support up to 60 engineering design students. The students were provided with tools, safety training, and support for manufacturing. The facility has provided CAD design stations, several 3D printers, laser cutters, and numerically controlled milling machines to support manufacturing of student designs. Access to the manufacturing facility was initially provided on subscription basis, where students used the library to “sign-out” membership cards, and access the facility on a controlled,  supervised basis. The controlling of student numbers through the  university library provided a method for managing student access to themanufacturing facility over a period of 8-10 weeks. This arrangement for laboratory access has recently been expanded through a revised collaboration arrangement, and has provided engineering design students with handson experience with several manufacturing technologies and CAD engineering modelling and design tools.

scholarly journals OUTCOMES AND LESSONS FROM DEPLOYING DIGITAL NOTEBOOKS ACROSS A MULTI-SECTION ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Dickinson
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Content Delivery ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Individual Student ◽  
First Year ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Individual Assessment ◽  
Implementation Approach

The instructor team of large cohort, team- and project-based, first-year engineering design course were faced with a number of common and persistent challenges; effective modelling and scaffolding of the design process; realizing consistent content delivery, marking, and feedback across multiple sections; keeping student teams on track; capturing individual marks related to teamwork; and establishing good design notebook keeping practices. As part of continuing course updates, distributed digital notebooks including worksheets were progressively introduced to support project and team learning activities and individual assessment and feedback. This paper examines the outcomes and lessons learned from the increasingly expanded role these notebooks have taken and their impacts on both instructors and students. In practice, the digital project notebooks have shown themselves to be surprisingly versatile as a platform to 1) deliver course content, 2) enable regular evaluation of individual student participation, contribution, and/or understanding, 3) record and assess team-level progress on the project, and 4) capture and monitor the evolution of team plans and ongoing activities. However, there are some observed costs to the implementation approach taken so far, including potential loss of flexibility, inhibiting teams from taking initiative or learning to manage their own time and effort.

scholarly journals AN INQUIRY AND BLENDED LEARNING MODULE FOR SENIOR ENGINEERING DESIGN

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Eggermont ◽  
T. Frieheit ◽  
F. Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Pilot Project ◽  
First Year ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
E Learning ◽  
Mind Maps ◽  
Teaching Modules ◽  
Main Message

University of Calgary delivers a full-year “Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Design Methodology and Application” course where students gain basic design methodology knowledge and associated skills through lectures and tutorials. The primary “vehicle” used for student experiential learning is a team-based, open-ended design project. The problem often encountered is that students fail to see “the forest for the trees”. More specifically, they often fail to see how the design process applies to their project and potentially miss the main message of the course. This paper proposes a short inquiry based learning exercise, augmented with web-based teaching modules, to more effectively prepare students for the “application” aspect of the course. Student teams will experience the full design methodology through a compressed “mini-project” at the beginning of the term, before they have any preconceived notions about the design process. Mind-mapping has been identified as the e-learning tool to organize this mini-project. A pilot project testing the use of mind-maps was conducted in a first year design course, exploring issues related to its implementation.

scholarly journals Sourcebook update: intestinal smooth muscle contractility and autonomic control

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip D. Langton
Keyword(s):  
First Year ◽  
Smooth Muscle Contractility ◽  
Gut Motility ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Authentic Inquiry ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Functional Antagonism ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Design Experiments

This laboratory practical requires first-year students to anticipate the effects of drugs active at cholinergic and adrenergic receptors on gut motility in order to design experiments during an authentic inquiry exercise. Rather than specifying a strict sequence of drug additions that aim to provide ideal demonstrations of pharmacological and physiological antagonism, I have instead designed switches into the drugs provided and set students, working in small teams, the task of identifying the switched drugs, an inquiry activity. To extend the teamwork aspect, laboratory reports were submitted by the student teams rather than individual students. Staff observed that discussions within the teams were stimulated by the inquiry-led nature of the practical. The quality of the laboratory reports submitted by teams were substantially improved over the individual reports submitted in previous years. (Students previously worked in teams, but simply followed a list of prescribed experiments and wrote individual reports.) Although, in conversation, teams of students had an improved understanding of the regulation of gut motility by the parasympathetic and sympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system and could readily distinguish between pharmacological and functional antagonism, no attempt was made to evaluate learning because the revision was triggered by the observed effect of a technical error and was not otherwise planned. It is likely that laboratory practicals, in general, would benefit from inclusion of inquiry.

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