Student Mastery of Engineering with Design Review

Traditional structural engineering pedagogy has consisted of students preparing for class by reading a textbook, followed by a professor giving a lecture, followed by students doing individual homework. Students received feedback in terms of a grade from the professor, and, ideally, the student filed the graded work and possibly reviewed it again before an exam. Following the exam, the professor moved to the next topic and essentially ended any further contact time with the material, resulting in students quickly dumping a good percentage of what was learned. To make matters worse, most faculty would agree that undergraduate students often skip the reading prior to class, and studies have shown that almost half of all students do not pay attention to material presented during a lecture. Thus, it is critical for engineering educators to improve the stagnant method of traditional teaching and learning. Small mistakes in the engineering profession can lead to death or millions of dollars in repair. For the fall 2018 semester, in the Design of Steel and Wood Structures at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Civil Engineering students participated in a cooperative learning technique aimed at improving student learning. These same students tried a different version of this technique in Structural Analysis the prior semester.[1] Prior to submitting individual homework to the instructor for grade, students paired up with a peer within their class hour and checked each other’s work using an instructor provided “Design Review Sheet.” When a student found a mistake, or disagreed with the methodology used by their Design Review partner, the student annotated this on their sheet. The expectation was that when disagreements were discovered between students, they would discuss with each other where the error or misunderstanding existed and subsequently corrected the error prior to submission for grade. This not only required students to explain the work they completed, but it also provided additional contact time with the material. With respect to Engineering Teaching and Learning, Design Review provides the essential cooperative learning characteristic of positive interdependence because individual student learning increases as review partners improved in their Design Review. As a student incentive to complete a thorough review, the quality of review counted for 10% of each assignment. Efforts this iteration were in response to some of the student suggestions following a previous iteration.[1] This iteration, in lieu of students turning in their work in pairs to receive one grade, each student would turn in their individual work and Design Review sheet. This was done to hold all students accountable for the work they completed. In addition, the instructor provided Design Review sheet was modified for clarity and the requirement to write a memorandum summarizing the results of each Design Review was eliminated. This cooperative learning technique was used on six of seven homework assignments during the term and on seven of nine homework assignments in their pre-requisite course. Student feedback was collected from both Likert Scale questions and open-ended questions. This paper will make the case that this pedagogy benefits Engineering Teaching and Learning by: (1) getting engineering students in the practice of what engineers in practice already do (check each other’s work), (2) increasing student learning of course learning objectives through repetition and through observing how others solve problems and present their work, and (3) improving the ability of future engineers to communicate their work clearly and effectively.Cockrell School of Engineerin

How software engineering research aligns with design science: A review

Background: Assessing and communicating software engineering research can be challenging. Design science is recognized as an appropriate research paradigm for applied research but is seldom referred to in software engineering. Applying the design science lens to software engineering research may improve the assessment and communication of research contributions. Aim: The aim of this study is 1) to understand whether the design science lens helps summarize and assess software engineering research contributions, and 2) to characterize different types of design science contributions in the software engineering literature. Method: In previous research, we developed a visual abstract template, summarizing the core constructs of the design science paradigm. In this study, we use this template in a review of a set of 38 top software engineering publications to extract and analyze their design science contributions. Results: We identified five clusters of papers, classifying them according to their alignment with the design science paradigm. Conclusions: The design science lens helps emphasize the theoretical contribution of research output---in terms of technological rules---and reflect on the practical relevance, novelty, and rigor of the rules proposed by the research.Comment: 32 pages, 10 figure

Engineering design project : series 2

This book is a compilation of engineering design projects which illustrates a detail explanation on the design process including all tools and methods involved in each design stage. The presented projects have been selected to prepare engineering students with the adequate knowledge and skills required in organizing product based project, formulating problems, generating and evaluating alternatives, preparing technical documentation and considering the sustainable and economic constraints for the product development and realization stage using the integration of various disciplines in mechanical and manufacturing engineering. This book is generally suitable as a reference to project-oriented problem-based learning (POPBL) activities at engineering institutions

Engineering design project : series 1

This book is a compilation of engineering design projects which illustrates a detail explanation on the design process including all tools and methods involved in each design stage. The presented projects have been selected to prepare engineering students with the adequate knowledge and skills required in organizing product based project, formulating problems, generating and evaluating alternatives, preparing technical documentation and considering the sustainable and economic constraints for the product development and realization stage using the integration of various disciplines in mechanical and manufacturing engineering. This book is generally suitable as a reference to project-oriented problem-based learning (POPBL) activities at engineering institutions

Managing design variety, process variety and engineering change: a case study of two capital good firms

Many capital good firms deliver products that are not strictly one-off, but instead share a certain degree of similarity with other deliveries. In the delivery of the product, they aim to balance stability and variety in their product design and processes. The issue of engineering change plays an important in how they manage to do so. Our aim is to gain more understanding into how capital good firms manage engineering change, design variety and process variety, and into the role of the product delivery strategies they thereby use. Product delivery strategies are defined as the type of engineering work that is done independent of an order and the specification freedom the customer has in the remaining part of the design. Based on the within-case and cross-case analysis of two capital good firms several mechanisms for managing engineering change, design variety and process variety are distilled. It was found that there exist different ways of (1) managing generic design information, (2) isolating large engineering changes, (3) managing process variety, (4) designing and executing engineering change processes. Together with different product delivery strategies these mechanisms can be placed within an archetypes framework of engineering change management. On one side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to open product delivery strategies, have some practices in place to investigate design reuse potential, isolate discontinuous engineering changes into the first deliveries of the product, employ ‘probe and learn’ process management principles in order to allow evolving insights to be accurately executed and have informal engineering change processes. On the other side of the spectrum capital good firms operate according to a closed product delivery strategy, focus on prevention of engineering changes based on design standards, need no isolation mechanisms for discontinuous engineering changes, have formal process management practices in place and make use of closed and formal engineering change procedures. The framework should help managers to (1) analyze existing configurations of product delivery strategies, product and process designs and engineering change management and (2) reconfigure any of these elements according to a ‘misfit’ derived from the framework. Since this is one of the few in-depth empirical studies into engineering change management in the capital good sector, our work adds to the understanding on the various ways in which engineering change can be dealt with

Collaborative Engineering Environments. Two Examples of Process Improvement

Companies are recognising that innovative processes are determining factors in competitiveness. Two examples from projects in aircraft development describe the introduction of collaborative engineering environments as a way to improve engineering processes. A multi-disciplinary simulation environment integrates models from all disciplines involved in a common functional structure. Quick configuration for specific design problems and powerful feedback / visualisation capabilities enable engineering teams to concentrate on the integrated behaviour of the design. An engineering process management system allows engineering teams to work concurrently in tasks, following a defined flow of activities, applying tools on a shared database. Automated management of workspaces including data consistency enables engineering teams to concentrate on the design activities. The huge amount of experience in companies must be transformed for effective application in engineering processes. Compatible concepts, notations and implementation platforms make tangible knowledge like models and algorithms accessible. Computer-based design management makes knowledge on engineering processes and methods explicit

Comparative study of design: application to Engineering Design

A recent exploratory study examines design processes across domains and compares them. This is achieved through a series of interdisciplinary, participative workshops. A systematic framework is used to collect data from expert witnesses who are practising designers across domains from engineering through architecture to product design and fashion, including film production, pharmaceutical drugs, food, packaging, graphics and multimedia and software. Similarities and differences across domains are described which indicate the types of comparative analysis we have been able to do from our data. The paper goes further and speculates on possible lessons for selected areas of engineering design which can be drawn from comparison with processes in other domains. As such this comparative design study offers the potential for improving engineering design processes. More generally it is a first step in creating a discipline of comparative design which aims to provide a new rich picture of design processes