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Effects Of Student Customer Interaction In A Cornerstone Design Project

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Conference

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Louisville, Kentucky

Publication Date

June 20, 2010

Start Date

June 20, 2010

End Date

June 23, 2010

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

The Best of Design in Engineering Education

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education

Page Count

16

Page Numbers

15.447.1 - 15.447.16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--16934

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/16934

Download Count

404

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Paper Authors

biography

Christopher Williams Virginia Tech

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Christopher B. Williams is an Assistant Professor at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, where he directs the Design, Research, and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems (DREAMS) Laboratory. His joint appointment in the Mechanical Engineering and Engineering Education departments reflects his diverse research interests which include layered manufacturing, design methodology, and design education. As a member of an instructional team that orchestrated a service-learning design project for the first-year engineering program, Professor Williams has been recently awarded the Virginia Tech College of Engineering Dean’s Outreach Excellence Award. Dr. Williams is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS).

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Erin Crede Virginia Tech

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Erin D. Crede is a PhD student at Virginia Tech. Working with Dr. Maura Borrego, Ms. Crede’s research focuses on the social aspects of graduate engineering education as they relate to recruitment and retention. In 2008 she was awarded a College of Engineering Graduate Teaching Fellowship, and is currently teaching undergraduate courses for the Department of Engineering Education, the Aerospace Engineering Department, and the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity, where she is an engineering instructor for the summer bridge program. She is a member of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

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Janis Terpenny Virginia Tech

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Janis P. Terpenny is a Professor with joint appointment in the Departments of Engineering Education and Mechanical Engineering with an affiliate position in Industrial & Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. Dr. Terpenny is the director of the multi-university NSF Center for e-Design. Her research focuses on design process and methodology, knowledge engineering, product families and platforms, methods to predict/respond to obsolescence and design education. She is a member of ASEE, ASME, IIE, and Alpha Pi Mu and the Associate Editor for Design Education in the Journal of Mechanical Design and the Area Editor for Design Economics in The Engineering Economist.

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Richard Goff Virginia Tech

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Richard M. Goff is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education. He has been teaching engineering for over 30 years and is currently assistant department head and co-director of the engineering first-year program in the Department of Engineering Education. He is the director of the Frith Freshman Engineering Design Laboratory in operation since 1998. He is committed to creating interdisciplinary, innovative, sustainable, and engaging design projects in engineering education. His educational background is in Aerospace Engineering and has worked in the aerospace and motorcycle industries. He is an active member of ASEE, ASME, and SAE. Dr. Goff teaches first-year, senior and graduate design courses and is the faculty advisor of the VT Baja SAE Team. His research areas are in curricular design and design education.

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Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Effects of Student-Customer Interaction in a Cornerstone Design Project

Abstract Similar to other first-year cornerstone engineering design courses, at a large land-grant university features a large enrollment of students (1000+) that represent a wide variety of engineering disciplines. The instructors are faced each year with the challenge of providing a meaningful, appropriate and valuable project experience that supports learning and fosters interest about engineering design for their diverse audience.

In response to this challenge, the course instructors initiated a service-learning design project as a means of achieving broad engineering design learning objectives, such as identifying customer requirements, framing an open-ended design problem, and following a systematic approach to

eXperiences In Engineering), this project provides students the opportunity to work with real -profit organizations. Through their

solution by following the design methodology taught in class.

To investigate the potential benefits of the student/customer interaction found in ROXIE, the authors compare it with an alternative design project program. Students working on projects in -centered Engineering Learning Projects) are tasked with designing an assistive technology device. While similar to ROXIE in that its projects are centered in community service, HELP projects are speculative in nature and thus do not provide stude

In this paper, the authors perform a comparative analysis of the ROXIE and HELP projects using data from student survey responses as a means of identifying the effects of including a student/customer interaction component in a cornerstone design experience. Excerpts from student interviews and reflection essays are provided as a means of placing survey responses in context.

1 Introduction

1.1 The Cornerstone Design Project First-year engineering courses with design project elements are an emerging trend [1]. A 1999 study identified 43 ABET accredited universities and colleges that featured a first-year design experience for mechanical, civil and electrical engineering majors [2]. A description of several courses (and their associated projects) that expose first-year students to design experiences is provided in [3].

The creation of a first-year design project is an important task. Dally and Zhang suggest that first-year engineering courses without design experiences are unsatisfactory because theoretical content is not sufficiently linked to application [4]. First-year design projects provide students

Williams, C., & Crede, E., & Terpenny, J., & Goff, R. (2010, June), Effects Of Student Customer Interaction In A Cornerstone Design Project Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16934

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