Work-In-Progress: Hands-On Engineering Design Activity for First Year Engineering Students Using Lego Pieces (original) (raw)

Engineering students are required to take several mathematics and science courses along with other general university requirements during their first and second year. They have to wait for several semesters after admission before they get to work on engineering design activities. This can have a demoralizing effect on some students and they may start losing interest in, and passion for engineering. Introductory first-year courses present the perfect opportunity to get students to participate in a hands-on engineering design activity. We developed a concept design activity using Lego pieces to engage students by participating in various stages of engineering product design process. Students were divided into groups of 4 per team and were given 10 regular random Lego pieces. The engineering design activity (labeled as the Widget Activity) was conducted in two parts. In Part one, students were asked to design a product and make a model using the Lego pieces. In Part two, student groups...