Engineering Commons^™

Exploring The Development Of Engineering Design Creativity And The Role Of Spatial Skills In This Process, Clodagh Reid, Sheryl Sorby

Research Papers

This study aims to investigate the development of creativity in engineering education and how spatial skills relate to creativity of design solutions.

Undergraduate students in the first (n=86) and fourth/fifth year (n=48) of their engineering programme were invited to participate. Students completed four spatial tests to precisely measure visualisation skills. In a separate session, students were invited back to solve two engineering design tasks: a ping pong problem where they designed a ping pong ball launcher game to meet specified criteria and a rain catcher problem where they were tasked with developing as many ideas for capturing rainwater as a …

Can Designing For Mars Stimulate Our Thinking About Designing More Sustainably For Earth?, Lucy Berthoud, James Norman, Ella Good, Nicola Kent

Practice Papers

This work describes the use of an arts-based project to stimulate creative thinking about design and sustainability for engineering students of all disciplines and years. ‘Building a Martian House’ was a public art project where a house designed for Mars was built in the centre of the city of Bristol, UK. It was conceived by artists, designed by the public, architects and engineers and built by construction companies. In this work, a workshop for students was developed and run based on this art project. Its aim was to use the challenge of designing for Mars as a provocation to thinking …

Fostering A Sustainable Future Through Inclusive Design, Samara Omar, Kate Youmans, Aubrey Wigner, Henry Archer, Carrie Mcclelland

Practice Papers

Fostering a sustainable future requires a balance between human necessities, societal institutions, and environmental systems; and this delicate equilibrium is best attained through strategic and innovative design. With this, and the growing diversity of our communities, it is imperative to equip engineering students with inclusive perspectives that allow them to critically assess the socio-technical elements of sustainable design. Recent research within engineering education has elevated the importance of empathy as a design practice and inclusivity as a design principle; exploring topics of bias and exclusion are essential to this work. As part of a first-year design course, we introduced these …

Drawing From Sefi Ethics Knowledge To Support Eco-Ethics Education Within The European University Of Technology, Jye Benjamin O'Sullivan, Shannon Chance

Practice Papers

We are leading a project called Ethico within the European University of Technology (EUt). Ethico aims to design and promote the uptake of innovative, ecological ethics for technological education.

This practice paper briefly summarizes the aims and structure of the Ethico project, and then focuses on the work completed as part of the teacher training module developed in Cluj, 7-9th March, 2023. This workshop drew its conceptual framework from the short abstracts currently available for the Engineering Ethics Education Handbook. The structure developed was then implemented in a student facing workshop in Troyes between the 10-14th July 2023. The handbook …

Critical Consciousness And Engineering Design Teaching Framework, Renata Alejandra Revelo Alonso, Joel Alejandro Mejia, Luis Montero Moguel, Alex Stutts

Practice Papers

Sustainability in engineering design is not just about the processes and practices established or the materials used and sourced, it is also about the mindset that engineers bring to design to carry forth solutions that promote a sustainable world. In this practice paper, we review a teaching framework for an engineering course on design with a contextual perspective. To contextualize engineering design, we incorporate critical consciousness topics to discuss alongside each design process topic. For example, during the unit when we discuss design alternatives in the engineering design process, we also discuss implicit bias and how implicit bias may impact …

Comparing The Meaning Of ‘Thesis’ And ‘Final Year Project’ In Architecture And Engineering Education, Rahman Tafahomi, Shannon Chance

Articles

Architectural education shares much in common with engineering, including the use of a culminating capstone experience in the final year. The form of this experience varies, with the research-based thesis and final-year project being most common. This paper explores the literature on traditions of enquiry and the meaning of research in various fields and the evolution of the ‘thesis’ and ‘final year project’ approaches over time. It then briefly summarises empirical research conducted on a case study institution struggling to bridge gaps in understandings of these distinct forms of learning and teaching. Throughout, the paper presents a comprehensive set of …

Centering Meaning-Filled Design Within Engineering Education: Recommendations On How To Integrate Interdisciplinary Architectural Design Charrettes, Community Engagement, Sustainability Principles, And Adapted Agile Methodologies Into A Student-Centered, Project-Based Engineering Program, David D Gillette, Michael Haungs, Thomas Fowler

Practice Papers

The Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies program (LAES) is a hybrid engineering and humanities degree housed in both the engineering and liberal arts colleges. LAES requires the same required math and science courses of standard engineering degrees, adding upper-level concentrations split equally between advanced engineering and humanities courses.

LAES was designed for retaining and recruiting a diversity of students in engineering, and to address recent innovations in industrial practice, technology design, and community-centered education. Through fifteen years of trial and error, the LAES program has developed a set of meaning-filled design guidelines for project work, combining engineering and humanistic problem …