CONCURRENT APPROACH TO TEACHING CONCURRENT DESIGN ENGINEERING

Abstract

By extending the rationale of concurrency into undergraduate engineering educational settings, this paper proposes an innovative approach to design engineering training and education, the essential objective of which is to achieve “the consideration of all downstream challenges which are likely to affect an engineering graduate’s professional career at the earliest possible point in the future engineer’s education.” The goalof this approach is to ensure that engineering graduates embark on their industrial careers adequately prepared for dealing with the specifics of the workplace, i.e., to train them “to expect the unexpected”. A second-year Concurrent Engineering and Design course taught at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) is utilized as an implementation example.