A framework for design engineering education in a global context

This paper presents a framework for teaching design engineering in a global context using innovative technologies to enable distributed teams to work together effectively across international and cultural boundaries. The DIDET Framework represents the findings of a 5-year project conducted by the University of Strathclyde, Stanford University and Olin College which enhanced student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, directly experiencing different cultural contexts and accessing a variety of digital information sources via a range of innovative technology. The use of innovative technology enabled the formalization of design knowledge within international student teams as did the methods that were developed for students to store, share and reuse information. Coaching methods were used by teaching staff to support distributed teams and evaluation work on relevant classes was carried out regularly to allow ongoing improvement of learning and teaching and show improvements in student learning. Major findings of the 5 year project include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful eLearning implementations. The DIDET Framework encapsulates all the conclusions relating to design engineering in a global context. Each of the principles for effective distributed design learning is shown along with relevant findings and suggested metrics. The findings detailed in the paper were reached through a series of interventions in design engineering education at the collaborating institutions. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the pedagogical and the technological approaches

Influence of sketch types on distributed design team work

Product development is a collaborative activity more often than ever carried out by distributed design teams. It is critical to determine how sketches are used in such environments in order to improve the design process. Sketches produced by students participating in a collaborative design project of three European Universities are classified according to the intention of the designer when producing a sketch, the level of detail shown in the sketch and the phase when the sketch was produced. The adapted classification system used in this paper helps to analyse type of sketches with most variety of ideas. Furthermore, this paper reviews which type of sketches offers the most potential to be further developed. Results show that persuasive sketches offer the broadest range of ideas since they are produced as a combination of ideas from brainstorming sessions. Shared sketches help to achieve consensus in decision-making since the sketches are most likely to be produced by the entire group rather than individually

A training strategy for managing distributed conceptual design work

This paper reviews how sketching can support distributed student design teams in the early phases of concept design. When working in the limited communication channels of distributed teams, sketches can form an important way for teams to build a rapport that would otherwise be difficult. This work reviews the performance of ten distributed student design teams made up of participants from Scotland and Malta who were required to undertake a conceptual design task – the design of cardboard packaging for a wine glass. Issues relating to the creation, use and development of sketches were analyzed for a sample of three teams, and correlated to the communication patterns, team satisfaction and quality of output. It was subsequently found that the team who shared the most ‘talking sketches’, resulted in a higher degree of satisfaction compared to the other teams. Results also suggest that those teams who generated the most ‘thinking sketches’ developed a more robust design solution. These findings form the basis for a strategy to train students to manage distributed concept design work.peer-reviewe

A manually annotated Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis (kiwifruit) genome highlights the challenges associated with draft genomes and gene prediction in plants

Most published genome sequences are drafts, and most are dominated by computational gene prediction. Draft genomes typically incorporate considerable sequence data that are not assigned to chromosomes, and predicted genes without quality confidence measures. The current Actinidia chinensis (kiwifruit) 'Hongyang' draft genome has 164\ua0Mb of sequences unassigned to pseudo-chromosomes, and omissions have been identified in the gene models

Towards principles and project memories for distributed-design information storing in engineering design education

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Online collaborative design projects: overcoming barriers to communication

In describing the educational and technical environment for these design projects, this paper highlights the difficulties and shows ways in which students and staff have developed strategies to overcome them

Online Collaborative Design Projects: Overcoming Barriers to Communication*

As course provision is expanding in the emerging virtual universities, the majority of Internet-based education revolves around online course materials and asynchronous discussion forums. One of the less exploited aspects of the Internet however is its ability to enable students to work together at a distance on collaborative design projects. A wealth of new technologies enables high levels of communication between students working at a distance. Sometimes, though, communication breaks down. Some of the technologies are still unreliable and many are not easy to use. Students are faced with working together in new ways and must develop effective means to collaborate using the technologies available to them. At the University of Strathclyde's Faculty of Engineering students have been working on collaborative online design projects since 1997. Building on the original ICON project, developed under the Clyde Virtual University initiative, a number of projects have identified barriers to communication between students. In describing the educational and technical environment for these design projects, this paper highlights the difficulties and shows ways in which students and staff have developed strategies to overcome them

Working on an assignment with people you'll never meet! Case study on learning operations management in international teams

This paper examines the results of an international team-based operations management assignment that runs between two universities. The work shows the benefits of giving students a taste of real-life operations management problems both from a technical point of view as well as the challenges faced when working to short timescales, with unfamiliar team players and across time zones. The work has generated valuable understanding of the approach required to set up such inter-institution assignments. It has enabled a process model to be developed to allow others to extract the key stages required for setting up and running them

An evaluation study of a digital library of ideas : Workflow Model and classroom use

The Department of Design Manufacturing and Engineering Management at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, has been developing a digital library to support design engineering student learning through the Digital Libraries for Global Distributed Innovative Design Education and Teamwork project (http://www.didet.ac.uk, December, 2007). Previous related studies have observed and analysed how students search for, store, structure and share design engineering information (Grierson et al. in paper presented at the Network Learning Conference, pp. 572-579, 2004; Nicol et al. in Open Learning 20(1):31-49, 2005) and these studies have identified the need for the design and development of a digital library with two system components, which best suit the design process: (i) an informal shared workspace; the 'LauLima' Learning Environment and (ii) a repository of more formal searchable and browsable design information; the 'LauLima' Digital Library (McGill et al. in Br. J. Educ. Technol. 36(4):629-642, 2005). This paper focuses on the Workflow Model developed to populate the digital library and presents findings from early use of the digital library by students and staff