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Teaching Collaborative Engineering Design in a Distributed Environment through Experiential Learning

Abstract

This paper presents a collaborative project conducted by Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and Missouri University of Science and Technology (MS&T) to jointly develop collaborative engineering design instructional projects. The projects integrate engineering design, design methodology, and project management in the teaching of multidiscipline courses at two universities. Collaboration tool Teamcenter Community (TcC), and CAD tool NX are utilized in the collaboration. The collaborative design projects have been implemented in Fall 2006 and in Spring 2008. Students from two universities teamed up as groups to work on the projects. This paper presents the implementation of Teamcenter Community and the utilization of it in the collaborative design projects. Challenges and lessons learned through the collaboration are also discussed.

Introduction

Global collaboration has become necessary in industry because of the globalization of the economy in the 21st Century. The new economy demands that today’s engineers are able to work in a distributed, interdisciplinary, problem-based, and technology-enhanced environment1. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) has been adopted by many industries which enables the global collaboration. As defined by Grieves2, PLM is “an integrated, information-driven approach comprised of people, process/practices, and technology to all aspects of a product’s life, from its design through manufacture, deployment and maintenance –culminating in the product’s removal from service and final disposal.” With such a PLM system the members of a design team in geographically dispersed locations are able to interact with each other effectively in the collaborative design process. These trends have challenged college education to develop engineering students with the necessary skills for collaborative design in a geographically distributed environment.

To meet this emerging need, Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) and Missouri University of Science & Technology (MS&T, formerly University of Missouri-Rolla) have jointly developed collaborative engineering design instructional projects and implemented these collaborative design projects in the teaching of engineering design courses at two universities. Two pilot projects have been carried out in Fall 2006 and Spring 2008. The students at both universities teamed up to work on the collaborative design projects, by dividing up the project tasks among different team members. The members of each team consisted of students from both universities. The projects were funded by GM Foundation through PACE program (Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education), which is a consortium established by GM, EDS, Sun Microsystems, Siemens PLM Solutions, HP, Autodesk, and their global operations.

The objectives of the collaboration projects are:

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Peng, X., & Grantham Lough, K., & Dow, B. (2009, June), Teaching Collaborative Engineering Design In A Distributed Environment Through Experiential Learning Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5145