1 Graduate Study of Design Pedagogy

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association

In the 2011-2012 academic year Queen’s University introduced a new second year faculty-wide design course as part of its initiative to create a four year Engineering Design and Practice Sequence (EDPS) in all engineering programs. This paper discusses the structure, delivery, results, and feedback on the first offering of the second year EPDS course. Based on learning objectives developed by a faculty-wide curriculum committee, the one-term course was designed with a novel hybrid delivery process. The structure incorporates common instructional material and integrated projects across all departments during the first half of the course, and continues with discipline-oriented projects to enhance and reinforce the overall learning objectives through the latter half. Over 600 second year students from the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science were enrolled, and more than a dozen instructors and 34 teaching assistants were involved in the course delivery over both academic terms. De...

Expertise in Design: …, 2003

This project was designed to develop a curricular and pedagogical model for teaching multidisciplinary engineering design to senior-level undergraduate students at the Colorado School of Mines. The two-semester course sequence involved students from seven engineering disciplines working in multidisciplinary teams under the direction of engineering, science, and liberal arts faculty to complete design projects for clients from industry and government. The course was designed to help student creatively solve open-ended "real" problems; learn to use a multidisciplinary approach that simulates actual industrial experience; work with others in small design teams; appreciate and consider nontechnical constraints; develop client relations; learn to conduct independent research; and enhance oral and written communication skills. Two pilot projects were successfully completed, with students, faculty, and clients all rating the program favorably. Included are project descriptions, e...

Shanna R. Daly is an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Michigan in Engineering Education, earning her doctorate from Purdue University's Engineering Education program in 2008. Her research focuses on the investigation and application of complex professional skills, specifically design ideation, innovation practices, and creative processes within engineering, outside of engineering, and cross disciplinarily.

The face of engineering education is rapidly changing as more emphasis is placed on a self- directed, problem-based and design-driven approach. The School of Engineering at the University of Guelph has recognized the importance of engineering design education by introducing capstone design courses and encouraging incorporation of design in many senior-level courses. Two recent initiatives include inclusion of a student- led laboratory design project in the Mass Transfer Operations course (ENGG*3470) and a self-directed, problem-based approach to teaching a new graduate course in Pollution Prevention Engineering (ENGG*6790). Both courses placed a significant emphasis on "learning by doing" and importance of "self-directed learning". Both courses also encouraged the development of various design skills such as problem definition, information collection, collaboration, innovation, communication, life-cycle costing, etc. This paper provides insights on these two cour...

In this paper, we document our qualitative analysis and its results in search for validation of the proposed design pedagogy framework. In the proposed framework, the design learning environment is dynamic with several actors providing and receiving input/feedback. Within the dynamic learning environment, the teachers and students interact through the design task, expectations, the design process, and team composition. All these actors and their activities in this dynamic design learning environment are influenced by predominantly outside parties setting the desired outcomes for design learning, design outcomes, and long term effects (e.g., retention, increased interest in engineering). Through a thematic analysis of interviews with administrators, faculty, students; and classroom observations at Harvey Mudd College, we were able to validate and enhance the conceptual framework by better understanding the relationship between the dynamic learning environment and the desired design outcomes. Figure 1: Conceptual Framework for Design Teaching/Learning

2011

The objective of this thesis is to develop an engineering design educational pedagogy on how to improve the engineering design learning experience. The design engineering activity is a complex mix of skills and knowledge that has been taught over decades by directly delivering to the students the design methodologies developed by design researchers and by exposing the students to open ended projects that could develop their design skills. Understanding this we can conclude that the three main pedagogical components of a successful educational design experience are: the design skills, the design methods and the design projects. On one hand, the individual design skills must be properly developed in the student prior to the project experience, making it an overwhelming challenge. On the other hand the design methodologies can be difficult to implement didactically (i.e. teaching techniques), therefore the student struggles to learn, and even more importantly, to embrace such methodologies. We present an approach to design engineering teaching through seven main steps: First, define the desired skills to be acquired by the student during the learning process. Second, from the vast world of design research, select the proper design theories and methodologies that fulfill all the previous requirements of skills. Third, organize the knowledge and skills to be acquired in complexity levels. Fourth, generate educational objectives for each of the knowledge and skills. Fifth, based on educational theories (teaching styles, learning styles, etc.), transform the design skills and methodologies to didactic tasks (lectures, problems, exams, etc.) in such a way that the student will be able to develop their skills and, learn and embrace such methodologies. Sixth, implement the tasks individually along the curriculum as close ended design experiences. Seventh, expose the student to open ended multidisciplinary senior design projects to integrate all the educational design experience components. This model could serve initially as a diagnostic tool to characterize the current set of skills of a given design course or program. The model can also be used to implement educational tasks into the classroom and labs depending on the desired student profile.