First Year Engineering Design: Course Design, Projects, Challenges, and Outcomes

Abstract

This paper outlines the essential components of developing an introductory course in Engineering Design for the first year, fi rst semester students at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). The course design accounts for the teaching context, stakeholder interests, and Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) criteria. The proposed course design scaffolds engineering design projects of three different levels. Through the described course, students become familiar with the engineering design process including translation of the design idea into virtual and physical prototypes. The course design is built around the concepts of engineering sustainability, ethics, and professionalism helping students understand the linkage between engineering design and social and human factors. The course is lecture and laboratory based with a focus on experiential hands-on learning where the Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) are achieved by means of PowerPoint slides, presentations, lecture and laboratory notes, class discussions and activities, teamwork, lecture and lab video recordings, hand sketching, and virtual prototyping via Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software (Solidworks). Student performance was evaluated through quizzes, reports, homework assignments, laboratory assignments, projects, midterms and final exams. To ensure effective communication between students, anonymous team member peer review and evaluation were incorporated. Continual improvement of the course design was achieved by modifying the course structure based on student feedback.