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Session 2249

Are We Asking Our Students to Do Too Many Projects? It Depends Donna C.S. Summers Charlie P. Edmonson University of Dayton

Abstract

We have all heard our students groan as we assign them a project. Most of us accept this sound as the natural order of things, but have we really listened to what the students are telling us? Have they been the first to recognize that we are asking our students to do too many projects?

The impetus for utilizing projects in a wide variety of courses comes from many sources. Industry prefers to hire graduates who have experience working in teams. They are also interested in graduates who have the skills to combine knowledge from a variety of areas and synthesize this knowledge to complete a project. In order to meet a variety of ABET criteria such as, the ability to function effectively on teams and the ability to apply creativity in the design of systems, components, or processes, educators have added projects to their courses. With projects appearing in nearly every course, from Economic Analysis to Design of Machine Elements to Circuits, has the use of projects to meet external customer requirements affected the learning experience of our internal customers?

There is no doubt that projects are useful, interesting, and challenging additions to the learning experience. However, the questions still remain:

-Are We Asking Our Students to Do Too Many Projects? -Has the use of projects to meet external customer requirements had a negative impact on the learning experience of our internal customers?

In order to gain insight and more definitive answers to these questions, members of the Engineering Technology program at the University of Dayton conducted a survey of engineering technology programs nationwide. An analysis of the results, as well as suggestions for improvement are included in this paper.

Survey Response

Throughout November and December we received 50 responses to our survey questions. Those responding were from a variety of programs including but not limited to Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright  2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Summers, D. (2004, June), Are We Asking Our Students To Do Too Many Projects? Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13389