An integrated engineering systems laboratory

Abstract

Undergraduate engineering laboratory courses are coming under increasing scrutiny as to their relevance, content and innovation in the engineering curriculum. Many will argue that the academic laboratories have become disconnected from the expectations of true engineering laboratory practice. While the traditional laboratory course is typically oriented toward the verification of a narrow theoretical topic, the practical demands of the real engineering laboratory are multi-faceted and call for the intellectual integration of disciplines, skills and methods on a foundation of underlying principles. The traditional engineering laboratory course has also become disconnected with a modern student audience which has little innate experience in how things work, and it has also become a neglected area of the curriculum in pedagogical reform. To address these shortcomings in the Engineering Division at the Colorado School of Mines, the authors have embarked on the development, implementation and dissemination of a new integrated engineering systems laboratory practicum. They are restructuring three existing traditional laboratory courses in experimental stress analysis, fluid mechanics and electrical engineering to make way for the practicum, and are exploiting some of the existing equipment base for this purpose.