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ERIC Number: EJ1050920
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0304-3797
EISSN: N/A
Teaching Design in the First Years of a Traditional Mechanical Engineering Degree: Methods, Issues and Future Perspectives
Silva, Arlindo; Fontul, Mihail; Henriques, Elsa
European Journal of Engineering Education, v40 n1 p1-13 2015
Engineering design is known as an answer to an ill-defined problem. As any answer to an ill-defined problem, it can never be completely right or absolutely wrong. The methods that universities use to teach engineering design, as a consequence of this, suffer from the same fate. However, the accumulated experience with the "chalk and talk" teaching tradition has led to a reality in which the employers of fresh graduates are not happy with the engineers they are getting. Part of their complaints are related with the inability of recently graduate engineers to work in problems where the boundaries are not well defined, are interdisciplinary, require the use of effective communication and integrate non-technical issues. These skills are mostly absent from traditional engineering curricula. This paper demonstrates the implementation of engineering design perspectives enhancing some of the aforementioned skills in a traditional mechanical engineering curriculum. It emphasises in particular a design project that is tackled in a sequence of conventional courses with a focus that depends on the course objectives and disciplinary domain. This transdisciplinary design project conveys the idea (and effectively implements it concurrently) that design is multidisciplinary.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Portugal
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A