Engineering Design Course Research Articles

Real-Time Classroom Behavior Analysis for Enhanced Engineering Education: An AI-Assisted Approach

Modern teaching has made significant progress, with many advanced equipment and technologies being introduced into the teaching process. Experimental teaching of engineering design courses is important. Due to limited teaching resources, engineering students need effective guidance during limited laboratory time. We will introduce artificial intelligence solutions to engineering education. We will use artificial intelligence technology for classroom behavior analysis to improve engineering design practice courses' teaching effectiveness. In an instructional milieu, image acquisition tools such as cameras are capable of real-time data capture, facilitating the identification and enumeration of students' emotional states. Concurrently, analytical software gauges the students' interaction patterns and performs comprehensive cluster analysis. Such multifaceted information provides valuable insights into the students' educational engagement, allowing educators to tailor their approach, thereby fostering enhanced pedagogical outcomes. The emotion recognition model we have developed, namely ERAM, demonstrates a rapid response rate coupled with dependable accuracy, making it a robust tool for classroom implementation. In contrast to the conventional post-lesson evaluations, our proposed technique furnishes immediate feedback throughout the instructional process. This real-time approach heralds a significant shift in instructional methodology, promoting timely intervention and adaptive teaching strategies. The control group experiment showed that intelligent systems improved teaching effectiveness by 8.44%. Intelligent systems can help teachers understand students' learning status and improve laboratory teaching quality in engineering design courses.

2022 개정 고등학교 공학 선택과목에 대한 기술교사 교육요구도 분석과 지원 방안

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze the level of technology teachers’ education needs for elective high school engineering subjects in the 2022 revised technology curriculum and derive specific demands for improving the expertise of technology teachers. Methods: In order to achieve the purpose of the study, literature related to the 2022 revised curriculum and education needs analysis was reviewed. A questionnaire was developed by the research team basedon the literature review and was revised and supplemented through a review by experts. The survey subjects of this study were limited to those eligible for the 2023 level 1 technology teacher qualification training. The survey tool asked technology teachers to respond to a 5-point Likert scale regarding the importance and feasibility of performance based on achievement standards for each subject. Educational needs were defined as the difference between the importance and performance scores. The IPA matrix method was used to determine the priority of support measures based on needs analysis. Results: The results obtained through this study are as follows. First, the demand for education in the world of robotics and engineering was the highest. Second, in the case of general intellectual property subjects, there was a high demand for education in specialized content area related to intellectual property rights. Third. In the case of the creative engineering design subject, there was a high demand for developing skills related to research and development projects in the engineering field. Conclusion: Through this study, it was determined that overall learning support is required for roboticsand the world of engineering, along with intensive training in intellectual property rights in the general intellectual property course, and project-based product development and prototyping in the creative engineering design course.0

Iteration and Communication During the Development of a Smartphone Endoscope Adapter

A smartphone endoscope adapter was developed by students for Health PEI to reduce the impact of the limited access to healthcare in rural communities. The adapter allows doctors to connect their smartphones to endoscopes to record procedures, which can aid practitioners in remote diagnosis, record keeping, and follow-up appointments. This article contains a case study of the eight-month service-learning experience to offer insights from two students and their instructor in the second-year engineering design course. The design process, communication, and iteration are outlined in the case study. Throughout the experience, twelve CAD models and seven physical prototypes were developed, and the students continued to iterate and test the device after the academic year ended, demonstrating their devotion to the project. The involvement of the community partner influenced the quality of the design, the motivation of students, the timeline, and the number of iterations. Also, the students’ desire to positively impact a community by providing access to technology was a motivating factor throughout the project, which aligns with the intentions of a service-learning project. A discussion on the impact of reflection and iteration is offered and recommendations are provided for instructors, students, and community partners to optimize service-learning experiences.

Digitalisation of engineering design education: structured freedom, flipped engagement, hybridity, and transparency

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to current discussions of digital teaching and technology within the field of engineering design education. We enter this dialogue by analysing a hybrid digital learning design for a 15-ECTS engineering design course. The course design pedagogically integrates principles from networked learning research, Problem-Based learning (PBL), as well as established pedagogical traditions. Specifically, we analyse and discuss the case based on four pedagogical principles underpinning the course: structured freedom, flipped engagement, hybridity, and transparency. The purpose of our discussions is to understand and contribute knowledge of digitalising engineering design education. Specifically, our pedagogical approach to hybrid and digital modes of learning rethink and expand the integration of digital technologies in physical design studios in a PBL context by employing networked learning principles. Following this, we draw out interesting contributions that have emerged and use the discussions to feed into the ongoing research on digitalising engineering design education.

Enhancing the Outcome of Mechanical Engineering Design Course with the SCAMPER Methodology Framework

Methodology frameworks in engineering education are structured approaches or models used to design, implement, and evaluate educational practices in engineering disciplines. These frameworks provide a systematic way to organize and optimize the teaching and learning process, ensuring that engineering students receive a comprehensive and effective education. SCAMPER is a creative thinking technique used to generate new ideas and approaches for problem-solving or project development. Each letter in SCAMPER stands for a different prompt to enhance the process targeted. These prompts stand for the substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, and reverse. Evolving SCAMPER as a methodology framework for Mechanical Engineering education involves adapting its principles and prompts to cater specifically to the needs and challenges of engineering students. This study presents the use of SCAMPER methodology as an educational framework for mechanical engineering and application to the Mechanical Engineering Design course given for senior year students with proposed examples based on experiences collected from previous classes thought.

Reframing engineering design: integrating design thinking and systems thinking in engineering education and practice to address wicked problems

The conceptualization of “engineering design”, as outlined by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB), has shifted over the years, however, the gap in engineering education remains a prevailing deficiency in engineering education and practice lies in the exclusion of non-technical competencies (such as empathy, communication, innovation, and creativity) that are impeding engineers from effectively addressing complex issues. These frameworks offer a robust methodology for tackling complex, dynamic, and interconnected challenges—referred to as “wicked problems”. In addition, this paper proposes a fourth-year engineering design course that explicitly incorporates these approaches, addressing the identified gap in social competencies within engineering education. By integrating these approaches into the foundation of engineering design education, there may be an avenue to equip engineers with the skills needed to empathize with stakeholders, understand contextual landscapes and generate meaningful solutions that contribute positively to society.

Preparing Future Designers for their Role in Co‐Design: Student Insights on Learning Co‐Design

AbstractThe state‐of‐the‐art literature indicates an increasing need for co‐design education as it is imperative to equip future designers with the co‐designing mindset. This derives from the significance of involving ‘people with lived experience’ in co‐design processes to better meet their needs. However, the traditional design education system seems to include mostly individual designing skills, causing a lack of skills in design students to facilitate the active participation of people in co‐design. This paper reports on a case study carried out in a third‐year Bachelor industrial design engineering course with design students (n = 32) and design educators (n = 4) to find an effective and efficient way of preparing future designers for their role in co‐design and to gain insights into design students' experience with learning about co‐design. As an instructional method, a co‐design workshop including the game‐play, game‐modding and game‐design approaches is introduced. The obstacles and confusion of the design students regarding co‐design and co‐design education, which they have documented throughout the year on their personalised logbooks, are explained to eliminate them in the future for smoother incorporation of co‐design education into design education curricula. Lastly, for future designers' mindfulness of co‐design and their role as facilitators suggestions are provided such as accreditation of curriculum activities regarding co‐design education.

Spreadsheet-based application integrated with Virtual reality for teaching economic and environmental assessment of subsurface gasification and combustion for hydrogen production

Herein we developed an education game based on a spreadsheet- activity and virtual reality (VR) for teaching the fundamentals of gasification and combustion. The game could be used as a valuable resource to motivate students at the undergraduate and senior high school level to consider economic and environmental assessment including sustainability concerns as they design a hypothetical chemical product or process. The proposed game is intended to be incorporated into any sustainability course design or chemical engineering course. The game is suitable for both chemistry majors and non-chemistry majors as it introduces fundamental energy changes in chemical reactions and design principles. Additionally, the game can be adapted for high school outreach activities. The game is freely available and encourages students to think critically while considering several factors in making key industrial decisions about a product or process. Factors considered include the water availability, socioeconomic impact, environmental impact, and proximity of technological location to infrastructures. The game is designed to raise awareness about hydrogen as an energy carrier, including its economic aspects and its wide range of industrial applications. It could also be used as a means of recruiting students into chemical sciences and engineering degree programs.

First-Year Project-Based Engineering Design Courses in Canadian Institutions

First-year engineering design courses are fundamental component to most engineering programs, and they provide the backbone for the introduction of engineering students to engineering practice and profession. First-year engineering design courses are also essential to begin the development of an engineering mindset. The purpose of this study is to complete a comparative examination of first-year engineering design courses across Canada. The work was inspired by an interactive workshop delivered at CEEA-ACEG 2022. The workshop was based on a comparative examination of the curriculum and delivery of three first-year design courses at different engineering institutions, including number of students and credits, project types, content integration, resources, and logistics. Informed by the discussion in the workshop, this study expands on the work by surveying instructors of first-year engineering design courses. The preliminary results are presented from a subset of the data collected and demonstrate similarities and differences among the different programs. These results provide a foundation for meaningful analysis and discussion of educational practice in first-year engineering design courses.

Integrating Stakeholder Interactions into First-Year Design Courses: Perceived Value & Impact on Students

Incorporating stakeholders into engineering design courses is important but challenging. A case-study-based approach of integrating stakeholder interactions into first-year engineering design courses was studied with the hypothesis that students would see value in stakeholder interactions. First-year students in two programs, Systems Design Engineering (SYDE, n=120) and Biomedical Engineering (BME, n=100), completed a beginning and end of term survey to understand their perceptions of stakeholder interactions in their first-semester engineering design course. The vast majority (96 to 98%) of students indicated that stakeholder interactions should persist in first-semester engineering design courses. Both cohorts placed high importance on stakeholders as an information source. However, BME students placed higher value in stakeholder interactions than their SYDE peers. This may relate to stakeholder alignment and interaction modality. While stakeholder interactions were effectively integrated into these courses, future work includes assessing effectiveness in different cohorts and developing a program-level plan for advancing stakeholder interactions.

Instructor perceptions of the effectiveness of project management skill development in undergraduate engineering design courses

The purpose of this work is to examine how project management is perceived in the engineering undergraduate curriculum at the University of Guelph across its four-year series of design courses, and to gather insight into the skills, elements, and level of mastery required. As a Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board graduate attribute, project management is taught in all engineering programs. The instructor perspective is explored through interviews with instructors that have taught engineering design courses. The instructor responses are analyzed for insights related to the effectiveness of the curriculum for the development of project management skills. This work is the first component a larger study that will examine and compare the findings with the views of students and alumni of the program. The results of these interviews aim to provide insight to engineering programs related to the level of mastery expected of graduating students, and future activities to explore for the purpose of closing gaps that might exist between graduate competencies and industry needs to better equip students with the skills of future leaders.

Answering Questions of Engineering Identity and Topic Relevance Using the Work of Robert Rosen

Some engineering students ask their instructors questions related to the nature of engineering and to the relevance of certain course topics or full courses. Responses to these questions are generally experiential, empirical, and lacking in theoretical rigour. This research paper explores how Robert Rosen’s Modelling Relation and his concept of Anticipatory Systems can be used to understand the nature of engineering in a way that is rigorous, theoretically grounded, and accessible to varied audiences. Abstract engineering and making practices are successfully mapped onto the Modelling Relation, and a concrete example from Civil Engineering is developed. Following from this mapping, engineering is reinterpreted as the actions of an anticipatory system informed by particular predictive models. This mapping and reinterpretation were trialed successfully in an undergraduate engineering design course, and in workshops with participants from a variety of engineering and non-engineering backgrounds. Areas for improvement and exploration include the fractal natural of design, and the challenges associated with complex systems.

Developing a Catalogue of Environmental Sustainability Tools to Inform Biomedical Engineering Design Education

Despite the negative impact that the environmental crisis can have on human health, the healthcare sector is a significant contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. However, biomedical engineering design has primarily focused on human safety, with limited attention to environmental sustainability. To address this, we conducted a review of tools to support environmental sustainability analysis and proposed how we think they can support biomedical engineering design education. We conducted a literature search to identify available tools and categorized them according to the biomedical engineering design process taught at the University of British Columbia. We found that there was a lack of tools to support sustainability at early design stages, limiting student’s ability to take a proactive approach to sustainable design. Moving forward, we plan to use this review as a reference tool to guide curriculum improvements for biomedical engineering design courses to include a greater focus on environmental sustainability.

Using senior undergraduate students as coaches in an introductory chemical engineering design course

Senior undergraduate students were hired as Teaching Assistants (TAs) in CHBE 221, an introductory bioprocess design course offered in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of British Columbia, and the roles were recast from traditional course support, to being coaches and mentors to a small number of teams working on term-spanning design projects. This was done as a means to provide more personalized support to students working on realistic design problems early in their training, leverage the benefits of peer learning strategies, and provide professional and leadership development opportunities to the TAs ahead of graduation. At the end of the course in which this was implemented, surveys were sent to students asking them to comment on their experience with this mentorship model, and the TAs of the course were interviewed to better understand theirs. This paper presents the results of these surveys and interviews, highlights the benefits and challenges of this approach, and provides recommendations for future implementations of this student support model

INTEGRATING PREVENTION THROUGH DESIGN (PTD) INTO ENGINEERING CURRICULA

For many years, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and construction safety experts have advocated for implementing the Prevention through Design (PtD) concept in the United States. PtD aims to eliminate construction hazards during the design phase to prevent or reduce occupational injuries, illnesses, and fatalities during the construction phase. PtD is achieved by incorporating prevention considerations into all designs that may impact workers' safety. Civil and architectural engineers are considered the primary initiators of PtD in the construction industry, with the ability to educate project owners and construction practitioners about its benefits and importance. However, this group has a few, if any, educational interventions or training opportunities to develop PtD knowledge and skills in the United States. As a result, faculty members who may be willing to teach the PtD concept in their design courses (e.g., concrete, steel, foundation and traffic design courses) have limited exposure to the PtD concept and no clear guidelines to integrate PtD into their courses. This study surveys engineering department chairs in the United States to assess their perceptions about integrating PtD into the engineering curriculum. The findings showed that most participants do not favor incorporating PtD as a standalone course in the engineering curriculum. However, they expressed their support for integrating the concept as small modules within existing engineering design courses. Faculty members, teaching engineering design, should be provided the necessary resources to achieve this. This study contributes to our understanding of PtD integration strategies within engineering programs.

Effects of a first-year undergraduate engineering design course: survey study of implications for student self-efficacy and professional skills, with focus on gender/sex and race/ethnicity

BackgroundStudents’ academic self-efficacy maximizes likelihood for success and retention, yet prior research suggests that historically underrepresented (minoritized) undergraduate students in higher education and in college-level engineering show lower self-efficacy, which has been linked to histories of systemic exclusion. To address such gaps in student success, this work examines the effect of a new first-year undergraduate engineering design course on students’ self-efficacy, as measured by students’ assessment of their ability to achieve engineering design goals, and their confidence in their professional skills such as teamwork, communication, and leadership. It draws upon two aligned survey studies that examine this development (a) among the students participating in the course during the academic semester and (b) among both course participants and non-participants in the year following the course. Survey results for all students were considered, with attention to specific demographic subgroups traditionally underrepresented in engineering.ResultsAnalyses indicate effect of the course on self-efficacy and other examined constructs, such as communication and teamwork, during the course semester and continued effects in engineering design self-efficacy and tinkering self-efficacy in the year following course participation. Results also reveal differences for specific racial/ethnic and gender/sex subgroups in numerous constructs, including suggestion of specific effect for female students.ConclusionsThis study’s focus on the implication of engineering design education on self-efficacy and other critical professional outcomes, as well as its attention to specific demographic subgroups, adds to research on engineering education and the effect of design-focused coursework using project-based learning. The study indicates an increased potential role for such coursework, as early as the first year of a university trajectory, in fostering student growth and increased representation in the field. Findings on differences by gender/sex and by racial/ethnic groups, including clearer positive effect for female students but more complexity in effect for underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, support added research probing experience and outcomes within and across these groups.

Learning From Failure: Reinvention of a Service-Learning Praxis in a Community-Engaged Engineering Design Course

Learning From Failure: Reinvention of a Service-Learning Praxis in a Community-Engaged Engineering Design Course

Changes to stakeholder engagement approaches throughout a capstone engineering design course

Changes to stakeholder engagement approaches throughout a capstone engineering design course

The EMI content lecturer as a street-level bureaucrat: discretionary actions and coping mechanisms in micro-level language policy-as-produced

ABSTRACT The field of English as a Medium-of-Instruction (EMI) research in tertiary education is undergoing a context-specific turn, focusing attention on how the official medium of instruction interacts with local languages, as well as the multi-faceted interplay between national and/or institutional language policies and classroom practice. This article reports on findings from linguistic ethnographic fieldwork at a Belgian higher education institution: for two semesters, the interactions between a lecturer and his students in an English-medium Industrial Design Engineering course were observed. The lecturer’s micro-level didactic choices are studied through the lens of Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy. This reveals a systematic pattern of on-the-ground language policy construction which is evidenced in classroom practice. While the findings of this study problematise the pillarized ‘either/or’ language choices that continue to dominate a polarised language policy debate, they equally underline the micro-level agency of the disciplinary EMI instructors in shaping public policy. For EMI-contexts more generally, our analysis suggests the viability and sociolinguistic relevance of an enactment-of-policy-in-interaction perspective which is equally a matter of disciplinary induction. The study of ‘coping mechanisms’ thus becomes an arena for policy development and teacher training.

Review on Chemical Engineering Capstone Design Teaching Model to Drive Continuous Improvement and Achieving Program Outcomes

Project-based Learning (PjBL) is a well-known paradigm for engineering design education, with numerous case studies published in the literature. Capstone is intended to provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their readiness for professional practice. Consequently, this paper suggests a teaching and learning model as a new paradigm for capstone design projects in an effort to perpetually enhance engineering education, particularly in chemical engineering design courses. Rigorously assessing students’ knowledge of the design process is essential for understanding how to best create learning environments to facilitate the development of such knowledge. Such assessment is also quite difficult and hence there is a lack of assessment tools capable of measuring the design process knowledge of every student. The model also intends to assess whether students can explain their tasks through PBL. Besides, it provides such a structure for aligning course learning outcomes, methods of teaching including teaching strategy and learning activity, and methods for assessing students’ performance. Instead of prioritizing student outcomes and mapping them to direct metrics related to curriculum, the model is also used to highlight areas of engineering education where significant opportunities exist for improving the preparedness of our students for capstone and ultimately for professional practice. This paper also addresses an early stage of a study to seek the challenges in incorporating complex engineering problems during designing a capstone design model.