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Design of a Junior-Level Design Class: Work in Progress

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) Technical Session 3

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--42941

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/42941

Download Count

67

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Paper Authors

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Yanko Kranov

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Robert T. Bailey P.E. Loyola University Maryland

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Dr. Robert T. Bailey is currently a Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Engineering at Loyola University Maryland. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Florida, the latter in 1991. He worked in industry for Westinghouse and Science Applications International Corporation, served as a senior program officer at the National Research Council, and taught previously at the University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga. His research interests include mechanistic engineering analyses to support risk and safety assessment of industrial processes; application of computational fluid dynamics to heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems and wind turbines; and improvements in engineering education. Dr. Bailey is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers; the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers; and the American Society of Engineering Education and is a registered professional engineer in the state of Maryland.

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Suzanne Keilson Loyola University Maryland

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Suzanne Keilson is a faculty member at Loyola University Maryland. Her background and degrees are in Applied Physics and her research interests include signal processing, biomedical and materials engineering, design, STEM education and assistive technologies.. She has served in the Mid-Atlantic section of ASEE for a number of years and is active in ASME and IEEE activities.

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Abstract

As part of a process of curricular review and improvement a group of faculty members of the Engineering Department were tasked with considering the development of a semester long junior design course. There was a general informal perception among department faculty that students entering the senior design year-long course sequence lacked certain desired skills, knowledge, and dispositions. This was coupled with feedback from the department’s industrial advisory board which regularly reviews students senior design projects in the fall and spring. Finally, a survey was conducted of recent alumni as to their experiences and confidence both before and after the senior design course. These inputs to designing the junior course suggested that although students had exposure and experience with teamwork, oral and written communication, and a variety of so-called soft skills, they felt less confident in their software programming and maker mechanical skills. This was true regardless of their concentration in mechanical, materials, electrical or computer engineering, the four concentrations offered for the BSE degree at the University. As a result, the basic design for the course is to have two parts. The first is to start with a build of a common platform. This allows students in the teams (3-4) to level-up their build confidence with both electrical and mechanical components and systems. Once the basic system platform is built, each team will propose some addition or modification to the frame. For example, in the first year of offering this course the basic system platform will be a rover and extensions might include manipulator arms, ultrasonic distance sensing for navigation, cameras and other sensors and actuators. The teams will learn to go through the design process with steps of problem definition, ideation, specification, prototyping, test and measurement and process iteration. This will allow a multidisciplinary team of engineering undergraduates to have more of an experience of design with iterative steps than is currently possible. They will also be able to have more authentic experiences of project reporting with periodic reviews or quick poster spotlights as well as having to work with integration of hardware and software systems. All these elements should better prepare the students for the follow-on senior design (capstone) course, where the projects are more complex and more open-ended. As a work-in-progress, details of the course structure and materials will be presented, learning assessment approaches will be proposed and discussed, and preliminary assessment results from the initial offering will be described, but detailed assessment and evaluation will not occur until after the 2022-2023 academic year.

Kranov, Y., & Bailey, R. T., & Keilson, S. (2023, June), Design of a Junior-Level Design Class: Work in Progress Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42941

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