New directions in freshman Engineering Design at the University of Maryland (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
As both a student and teaching fellow in an Introductory Engineering Design class, experiences and observations have allowed me to see the many benefits of the course’s design project requirement. For many young engineers who chose their major based on an interest in math and science, the design project provides their first encounter with synthesis and evaluation, two skills that distinguish the engineering profession from the natural sciences. The design project requires that students utilize their knowledge and comprehension of math and science to inexpensively and efficiently build something to accomplish a set objective given a series of problem constraints. The design project also requires students to evaluate and reflect on not only their own work, but the work of their colleagues in the class as well. The skills of synthesis and evaluation later become crucial as students progress through their years as upperclassmen and enter the research or industrial fields. My own experie...
2001 Annual Conference Proceedings
Five years ago, a new first-term freshman engineering course, Introduction to Engineering and Computer Science, was introduced to the curriculum at Union College. Since then, the course has undergone significant revision based on assessment. The current course is ambitious and seeks to accomplish several objectives. These include introducing the students to the discipline, introduction to and application of the design process and teamwork for solving problems, introduction to the concepts of ethical practices and decision-making, developing good communication skills, and introduction of some basic topics in engineering and computer science. The last of these objectives is centered about a unifying theme of intelligent transportation systems. This provides an interesting and contemporary context in which to present some fundamental engineering concepts. The course is structured with two small section lectures, one common lecture, and a 3-hour design studio session each week. The common lecture is used to bring in speakers from outside. These are typically practicing engineers from the different disciplines who talk about their area and the kind of work they do. The weekly section lectures are devoted primarily to introducing some fundamental engineering and computer science principles all tied into the concept of intelligent transportation. Three main areas are explored: Energy and Cars, Cars and Computers, and Transportation Infrastructure. In the design studio portion of the course, the students learn basic design methodology and apply it to several individual and team design exercises. They also cover ethics, project scheduling, and report preparation. The design studio also includes a 5-week long design project in which the students work in teams to design and build simple, small-scale, electromechanical devices to perform a task. The teams participate with their devices in a large design competition at the end of the term. Along the way they must satisfy project milestones and defend their design in an oral presentation before a panel of faculty judges. This paper describes the details of the current version of this course and discusses the process used to assess the effectiveness of the course.
The rapid pace of technological progress and future challenges for globalization, sustainability, complexity, and adaptability of engineering professionals call for a paradigm shift in engineering design education. The School of Engineering at James Madison University, which is graduating its inaugural engineering class in May 2012, has been developed from the ground up to not be an engineering discipline-specific program, but to provide students training with an emphasis on engineering design, systems thinking, and sustainability. Our vision is to produce cross- disciplinary engineer versatilists. One important place in the curriculum where this is achieved is the six course (10-credit) design sequence which is the spine of the curriculum. Starting with the sophomore design courses (Engineering Design I and II), the focus is on teaching students the process of design including the phases of planning, concept development, system-level design, detail design, as well as testing and re...
2009
An investigation into the impact of a simple team design experience in teaching the engineering design process is described. The design experience occurred early in an Introduction to Engineering course after a single lecture on the engineering design process. The design activity, necessarily simple at this stage, consisted of designing, building, and testing a drag racer, constructed from LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT parts and powered by a single rubber band. Assessment of the value of the experience focused not only on gains in student perceptions of knowledge of and confidence in applying the engineering design process, but also on actual gains in knowledge, as judged by written responses, and on the use of the engineering design process, as judged by student design step logs. Student learning was assessed through questionnaires at the beginning and end of the laboratory period. The questionnaires addressed both student knowledge and student confidence levels. In addition to assigning n...
Description of, and Outcomes from, a Novel First Year Engineering Design Course
Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA)
In the Fall of 2021, the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Engineering implemented a new first year Engineering Design course called GE 142 (Design I). In comparison to similar courses in other Engineering programs, the course was unique in a few respects. First, it ran from mid-October to mid-December, and it included 7 lectures and 4 labs. Second, it was focused almost entirely on problem definition. Third, the assessment system was competency based. Each of these elements made for a unique design course, and each element will be described in detail. The course had a number of Learning Outcome goals in the general areas of knowledge, skills, experiences, and attitudes. Knowledge was assessed using an automated adaptive quiz system employing Mobius™ software, linked to the Canvas™ Learning Management System (LMS). Design skills were assessed through a series of six assignments that focused on the ability to characterize design problems, maintain an effective logbook, ...
2020
Students enrolled at Michigan Technological University and are pre-calculus ready follow a three-course sequence through the first-year engineering program (ENG1101, ENG1100, and ENG1102). As part of the NSF Funded IDEAS project (DUE-0836861), design modules were created in biomechanics, wind, and aquaculture for this course sequence (~200 students). For the biomechanics module, students designed, built, and analyzed a prosthetic leg. Students in the wind turbine module completed and analyzed a lab-scale wind turbine constructed from recycled materials for their first course and used 3-D modeling software to design turbine blades for a second semester project. These blades were printed on a 3-D printer an attached to an existing stand for a performance analysis. In the aquaculture project, students design, built, and analyzed a small-scale aerator for an aquaculture facility. In the second semester, students developed the layout of the facility and evaluated the pumping system currently in place. like solving problems or improving processes In accordance with the old paradigm, traditional engineering education has focused on the fundamentals of engineering and their application to engineering problems. However, recent studies show that engineers need additional skills in order to thrive in the current business environment. Additionally, the old paradigm is often at odds with the interests, socialization and experiences of women and other underrepresented groups 2. While it is important for engineering education to continue providing a strong technical background, other skills (i.e. communication skills) are becoming increasingly more important. 3 It has also been shown that the lack of experience in bringing an engineering design concept to a working prototype and poor written communication skills significantly contribute to retention problems. 4 The importance of data analysis and interpretation, and communication skills in engineering education is outlined in ABET criteria 3b and 3g 5. Therefore, the skills students need to succeed in engineering are not only quantitative, but qualitative. Engineering schools need methods to evaluate the development of communication and creative ability. Many schools are incorporating project-based interdisciplinary exercises into their engineering curriculum in order to develop the qualitative and quantitative skills simultaneously. 3 It has been shown that introducing design in the freshman engineering course has a positive impact on retention, stimulates interest in engineering and enhances communication, teaming and time management skills. 6,7,8
2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings, 2015
Physics and Keystone Instructor in the A. J. Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. Broadly speaking he is interested in modeling learning and reasoning processes. In particular, he is attracted to fine-grained analysis of video data both from a rnicrogenetic learning analysis methodology (drawing on knowledge in pieces) as well as interaction analysis methodology. He has been working on how learners' emotions are coupled with their conceptual and epistemological reasoning. He is also interested in developing models of the dynamics of categorizations (ontological) underlying students' reasoning in physics. Lately, he has been interested in engineering design thlnking, how engineering students come to understand and practice design.
First-year Project-Based Engineering: Secret Weapon for Student Success
2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
This paper describes a project-based first-year introductory course at a community college which emphasizes working in teams on hands-on projects that require using EXCEL and MATLAB. Assignments involve graphing data for Ohm"s Law and the speed of sound in air, distance measuring using ultrasound, programming in MATLAB to control the movement of a steppermotor rotor and programming in MATLAB to analyze and identify the visible spectra of several translucent materials. Students are required to make presentations of the projects and the results obtained. To document student success, data on student achievement in the course was collected for seven offerings of the course over three semesters: fall of 2011, spring of 2012, and fall of 2012. In addition, an outside evaluator used a self-survey to assess pre-and post-student attitudes toward certain skills thought to be enhanced by participation in the course. Course beginnings Recognizing that project-based learning is a very valuable way to introduce beginning students to engineering 1-4 , Professor Stephen McKnight of Northeastern University offered a two-week professional development workshop for community college instructors in June, 2010. Attending that workshop were faculty members from three Massachusetts community colleges: Northern Essex Community College (NECC), Middlesex Community College, and Massachusetts Bay Community College. Over a span of two weeks, the community college faculty worked in teams to complete the same hands-on projects that first-year engineering students at Northeastern University completed in a semester. The workshop featured programming in MATLAB and C++. At the end of the workshop the community college faculty selected certain projects as most appropriate for their institutions. Subsequently, Whittier Regional Technical School, a local technical high school with a machine shop and an electronics fabrication shop, agreed to build the needed equipment using diagrams, parts and advice from Northeastern University. In the fall of 2010, the paperwork for a new course entitled Engineering Essentials and Design (EED) was submitted to the Academic Affairs Committee of NECC by engineering faculty from NECC who had attended the two-week workshop. In the spring of 2010, the Academic Affairs Committee approved EED as a required course for Engineering Science and added EED to the college catalog as EST104. A second two-week professional development workshop for community college instructors in June, 2011 was used to further the skills of the community college instructors in MATLAB and further adapt the projects to the community college environment. Development of EST104 as a transferable, project-based, engineering course, emphasizing computer programming in MATLAB continued throughout the summer. Further details on the work done developing this course and a similar course at Mass Bay CC can be found in a paper presented at the