Modification of Robotics Curriculum for Project-Based First Year Engineering Design Course

This work reviews best practices in first-year engineering design courses at 40 universities across Canada and the United States. The authors reviewed the subject matter and instructional methods of these engineering design courses. University selection was based on prominence, level of engineering design content, and availability of data. The authors narrowed the scope of the study to seven Canadian programs and eight American programs for further investigation: University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Manitoba, Queen’s University, University of Sherbrooke, University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, University of Colorado, Franklin W. Olin Engineering College, Harvey Mudd College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The authors then identified six reoccurring themes in the methods of engineering design instruction: full-scale project, small-scale project, case study analysis, reverse engineering project, design tools and methods instruction, and integration. These themes are then discussed from the point of view of educators looking to develop first-year engineering design courses.

This paper presents preliminary results of a currently funded NSF project that is developing and validating an instrument to assess the relationship between project appropriateness in domain relatedness, ambiguity, and genderedness and student efficacy in first-year engineering design courses. Because design is a defining activity for engineers, it is widely adopted as a means to introduce students to engineering. Many engineering schools now have first-year engineering courses, which feature engineering design learning in team-based settings. From a student’s perspective, motivation and self-efficacy may decrease when (1) the project domain (e.g., electrical engineering) is not directly related to their chosen major (e.g., chemical engineering), (2) the projects are perceived to be overly complex and ambiguous vis-a-vis student preparation, and (3) skewed toward a particular gender (e.g., masculine or feminine oriented). With this work, we aim to assist engineering design instructors in refining content to achieve higher retention rates.

<abstract> <bold>Abstract.</bold> For four years (eight academic semesters), the Ohio AgrAbility Program and the University of Dayton Engineering Innovation course (EGR 103) have partnered to provide students with an open-ended engineering design project related to the mission of AgrAbility. This partnership allowed students to identify and solve a variety of problems within agricultural systems, and yielded creative, practical design solutions and prototypes. The partnership and prototypes were shown and demonstrated for farmers at key agricultural workshops/events and highlighted in a ThinkTV® video on agricultural engineering sponsored by the Dayton, Ohio STEM Center. This poster highlights the partnership and the quality, novel, and affordable ($50 or less) design solutions generated by first-year students in the course. Examples include an adaptive crutch tool, ergonomic shovel, watering device for persons with cognitive limitations, compression garments and gloves for arthritis sufferers, safety harness for grain silos, and various assistive devices for farmers in wheelchairs. These design solutions address a host of prevention, safety, and assistive needs. In addition to design solutions, the partnership provides an enhanced experiential learning design experience for students. EGR 103 is a project-based first-year engineering design course, which requires students to work in teams on service-learning design projects, and collaborate on design activities and technical reports to solve open-ended problems using engineering design. Multidisciplinary engineering design teams are given guidance and key deadlines, but the teams primarily work independently on projects and must diligently exercise project management. Realistic, relevant engineering problems and productive client interactions are essential components of the Engineering Innovation course that enhance the design and learning experience. Ohio AgrAbility staff and clients help fulfill these objectives by working with course instructors to craft pertinent problem statements, serving as clients that provide meaningful interaction and feedback, arranging site visits/tours for design teams, and donating materials so students can design and test realistic prototypes.

Students in first-year engineering design courses recognize that the purpose of their design is to solve a problem or meet a need for a new product or process. Therefore, their end user is a major stakeholder for their design. In our design courses, we emphasize that the end user is not the only stakeholder, but that the views of everyone who could be impacted by the new product or process should be addressed by the design and its implementation or manufacture. Stakeholder interests often extend beyond the technical domain and involve broader societal impacts. Conflicts in interests and motives among stakeholders make ill-structured and incompletely defined societal problems perplexing at best. Where are the solutions that used to be conveniently found in the back of a textbook? Instead, our students need to develop a problem solving process, based on the design model consisting of defining the problem, investigating its causes, conditions and constraints, brainstorming alternative solutions, and testing these solutions in view of problem specifications arising from causes, conditions and constraints in order to determine the optimal solution. Stakeholder interests often become part of product or process specifications, therefore, a similar problem solving process can be applied to the resolution of an ethical dilemma in engineering. We had designed an ethics-based exercise to help our students to identify stakeholder interests and apply them to the resolution of an ill-structured problem taken from the engineering workplace, involving a hypothetical software design firmed called Occidental Engineering. Stakeholders from both inside and outside the company were used to define the problem in greater detail provide additional specifications for its resolution. Students worked in teams, in class, to represent certain stakeholders and recommend a solution based on that stakeholder's position, as they perceived it. Our latest version of this exercise combined stakeholder roles and interests with the application of four ethical frameworks for decision making: Deontology, Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism and Utilitarianism. How would each stakeholder recommend a solution under each of these four frameworks? Deontology is based on rules, such as the Code of Ethics for Engineers by the National Society for Professional Engineers or the codes of ethics published by engineering professional organizations. Under Virtue Ethics, individuals act in ways that reflect on their character, by using commonly accepted historical or societal norms of moral virtue. By contrast, Consequentialism is often described as a case where "the ends justify the means", sometimes without regard for either rules or virtue. Finally, Utilitarianism is a framework for "greatest good for the greatest number", or a form of cost-benefit analysis. This GIFT includes a matrix in which students can describe solutions to an ethical dilemma, as expressed by stakeholders under each of these four frameworks. Other frameworks can be used instead. This exercise can be given either in class or as a homework assignment. If used as a homework assignment, students can also share their results with the rest of the class after submitting their responses. Would a stakeholder's response change under any of these frameworks?

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) initiatives have expanded to include ‘art’ withthe moniker: STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math). This acknowledges the importance of creativity in the technical fields and poses the question: How do we incorporate art into the engineering classroom? This paper presents one attempt to incorporate the artof storytelling in a first-year engineering design course in January 2021. It was found that compared with students who received a traditional lecture to learn basic electronicconcepts, the students who used an illustrated storybook to learn the same concepts took significantly less time to replicate a sample circuit (p &lt; .001), and performed better in a post-activity assessment (p &gt; .05). These results indicate that the use of storytelling can be an effective wayto transmit technical content in an engineering classroom, and further studies should be pursued.

– An ongoing debate around classroom organization decisions, particularly with regard to team formation, involves the value associated with team-member diversity. Diversity can be defined, for example, in terms of discipline, marks, race, gender, language, age, experience, or goals. For the researchers in this case, this debate around the impact of diversity motivated further analysis of just what, if any, impact linguistic diversity had on teams in first-year engineering design courses. This is of particular concern given the dramatic increase in the percentage of multilingual students that make up current student bodies across Canada. Our analysis indicates that the effect of having non-native speakers of English (NNSE) on a team is not a de facto detriment to idea generation and discussions within the team. Thus, this paper reports on the effects of multilingualism on team dynamics and idea generation. The authors present here a subset of the data from of a much larger study on effective teamwork behaviours, that highlights two multilingual dominant teams from the larger study. The analysis examines how multilingualism and values associated with it contributed to and developed an integrated understanding of both the problem being addressed and potential solutions to that problem.

Hands-on first-year design courses are used at a growing number of universities as the initial opportunity for students to learn about engineering design. The effects of different hands-on approaches on the development of design process knowledge in students, however, are unclear. In this study, we investigate the effects of three hands-on course models - analysis-driven textbook design projects, dissection projects, and service learning projects with actual clients. The design process knowledge of students in eleven sections of a first-year engineering course was evaluated before and after the course and course evaluations were collected at the end of the course. Results indicate that there are no significant differences in impact on design process knowledge between the three course models. From the course evaluations, the course models show modest effects on student perceptions of their creative, critical thinking, and teamwork skills and their feel for current developments in engineering.

At Memorial University, for the last several years, instructors of the first-year engineering design course have worked closely with the local chapter of the Tetra Society of North America to provide meaningful open-ended doable design projects that are needed by actual clients. Founded in 1987, The Tetra Society of North America is an independent non-profit charitable organization that recruits skilled technical volunteers to design and fabricate custom assistive devices for people with disabilities. In this paper, several projects that have been assigned to students in the past will be described and example solutions provided by students will also be shown. From the feedback of students, instructors, and clients, this collaboration with the Tetra Society has been very successful in providing real, needed, doable projects, with real clients for first year engineering students.

WIP: Evaluating the impact of an introductory first-year engineering design course in shaping students’ experience and academic preparedness

In this study, we investigated the effects of students’ participation in a collaborative, project-based engineering design course on their domain knowledge, interests, and strategic processing. Participants were 70 college seniors working in teams on a design project of their choosing. Their declarative, procedural, and principled knowledge, along with their domain interest and their interest in select roles within that domain were tested at the outset of the semester and at its conclusions. Findings indicated that this course contributed to a rise in students’ declarative knowledge, but not their procedural or principled knowledge of engineering design. Further, there was no significant change in students’ personal interest in the domain over the semester, and their role interests were not associated with their demonstrated knowledge in the field at posttest. Implications for the perceived effectiveness of learning environments consisting of peer collaboration and relevant problems on students’ academic development are considered.

1 INTRODUCTION Design education usually employs project-based learning, in which students learn to research, plan, design and reflect on the creation of technological projects [1], [2]. Student experience issues may influence students' design process, as well as their perception of professional knowledge development. Studies have pointed out students are ill-informed about design education when entering university [3]. In the field of design, although there have been student surveys to analyze design thinking skills and for assessing design literacy. However, these studies are primarily assessment tools, and do not investigate students’ attitudes or experiences of their design courses. While several studies focus on measuring students’ cognitive knowledge, assessments of affective variables, such as attitude, are far fewer in number. The objective of this study was to investigate student experiences, specifically the issues and challenges faced by students in three foundational design courses – focusing on introductory design, architectural design and engineering design – at the . We investigate issues such as how do students experience various instruction modes such as lectures and studio; and their experience of working individually or as teams in the three foundational design courses. 2 METHOD We conducted a survey in three foundational design courses, in both online and paper format. The survey comprised quantitative and qualitative components. Respondents consisted of 248 students from the introductory design course, 48 students from the introductory architectural design course and 71 students from the engineering design course. Respondents rated their perceptions on 23 items in two types of questions: Likert, semantic differential. Additionally, they provided their input in two open-ended questions. 3 RESULTS A principal component analysis conducted on the data revealed five factors that primarily contributed to students’ perception of foundational design courses: (1) the fun aspects of design, (2) the stressful aspects of design, (3) Course Pressures, (4) Student temperament issues, (5) Teamwork experience. Performance pressures majorly affected student experience in all three courses. The architectural design course was seen to be the most enjoyable for students, as fun scores were higher than the stress scores, and low course pressures. The engineering design course was observed to be very stressful for students, with low scores for fun. 4 SIGNIFICANCE Student perception of foundational design courses is important because it can be used to drive forward changes in curriculum and pedagogy. While this study uses data from one university, the issues reported here are generic and relevant for instructors developing design courses across different parts of the world. Research in student experience and perspectives is crucial to develop design education and propel it into the future. REFERENCES [1] Y. Doppelt, “Assessing creative thinking in design-based learning,” International Journal of Technology and Design Education, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 55–65, 2009, [2] N. Lee, “Project methods as the vehicle for learning in undergraduate design education: a typology,” Design Studies, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 541–560, Sep. 2009, [3] A. B. Gencosmanoglu, “Learning, teaching and administration in design education: DESIGNtrain Project: Training tools for developing design education,” in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010.

All the associate degree mechanical engineering technology (2MET) students at The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College are required to take a capstone engineering design course during their fourth semester in the two-year degree program.This project-based three credit-hour course is titled "Product Design with Writing Skills" (MET 210W).In this course students are taught design and selection of spur gears, shafts, helical compression springs, chains and sprockets, keys and fasteners, through teambased assignments and mini projects.These activities prepare students for the major design project to be conducted near the

Assessment in capstone engineering design courses is vital to engineering education programs. The capstone design course is the climax of design education and often the context for much of the assessment done in engineering degree programs. Capstone design course instructors’ admittedly low confidence for assessing student performance in these courses poses a crucial obstacle to the assessment process. A key issue is a lack of clear outcomes definition for engineering design and sound, defensible assessments for these outcomes. This paper draws from findings in design literature and from engineering design education experience to construct a conceptual model of engineering design that guides development of associated design learning outcomes and assessment of student achievements in design. A conceptual model of design is vital to design education, because it is one of three essential cornerstones— model, observation, and interpretation— for constructing assessments. In the context of an engineering classroom, design performance produces two different and complementary types of outcomes: learner development and solution development. Further, design is: open-ended, iterative, creative, collaborative, goal-driven, process-intensive, productfocused, customer-oriented, value-added, and constrained by society. Learner and solution development usually progresses from a state of students’ fragmented understanding and ideas to a more mature state of integrated understanding and design solutions. The proposed conceptual model for engineering design identifies four areas of performance that describe design: (1) personal capacity, (2) team processes, (3) solution requirements, and (4) solution assets. The first two characterize learner development and the latter two characterize solution development. Personal capacity is the designer’s development of skills which support technically sound and responsible design. Team processes address a team’s behaviors and productivity in design activities. Solution requirements address the team’s understanding of stakeholder needs and concerns. Solution assets encompass the value added, practicality, and impact of the design solution. These four performance areas are essential to design. They identify performances that develop over time, contribute to the success of design outcomes, and stimulate growth in one another for integrated enhancement of design performance. They also provide the basis for a versatile, comprehensive definition of engineering design performance that can guide instruction and can focus assessments in capstone engineering design courses.

Engineering design is a broad, yet essential topic for students to study during their academic tenure in the engineering field. Engineering design is the set of fundamental principles necessary to successfully solve a design problem. We propose a model for effective teaching of engineering design by developing a multifaceted engineering design course, whose goals are to introduce students to basic engineering design principles and professional skill methodologies, such as client interaction, teamwork, and presentation skills. We require students to make use of computer technologies taught in-class: Alias Maya for 3D design renderings and MathWorks Matlab for computational analysis of designs. Projects with community partners fulfill the need for real client interaction and robust design problems. Students gain hands-on experience from directly applying concepts taught in the course, while community partners benefit from the projects' research and proposed solution. Over 1000 first-year engineering students have participated in this course structure since its inception in Spring 2004. We have worked with over 50 community partners yielding more than 200 semester-length projects, some of which embark on a continuation over several semesters. Our experience complemented with extended evaluations after each semester shape the course each term to yield successful results.

The Higher Education Quality Council ofOntario (HEQCO) has established a consortium ofinstitutions committed to the development of usefullearning outcomes assessment techniques and to theirwide-scale implementation in their institutions. Queen'sUniversity is one of three universities and three collegesof the consortium, and the Faculty of Engineering andApplied Science (FEAS) is participating due to familiaritywith assessing learning outcomes as part of accreditation.The specific learning outcomes that are of interest toQueen's are Critical Thinking, Problem Solving,Communication and Lifelong learning.The goal of this three-year project is to assess theaforementioned general learning outcomes and cognitiveskills using three assessment methods simultaneously:embedded course assessment, using meta--rubrics toscore student artifacts, and using standardizedtests/surveys. The study will document cost and timerequired to access each of these methods in specificcourses, analyze correlation between scores from thethree methods, and evaluate developments of the genericlearning outcomes over the duration of a program. Weaim to ensure that the work of outcomes assessment issustainable, works within standard course contexts, andcan be integrated into regular course activities. Thepaper identifies the goals of the project, currentapproach, and an example of data collection in one firstyearengineering design course.