Paper Authors

Abstract

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

Session 3257

The Oklahoma State University Experience in Teaching Engineering Design and Drafting at the Freshman Level

Dr. John W. Nazemetz, Dr. John B. Solie, Dr. David R. Thompson Oklahoma State University

Introduction. This paper is intended to convey the process by which a freshman level course in design and drafting was developed at Oklahoma State University and the experiences and lessons learned during the first three years of the course. The course was developed to present the engineering design process by instructing students in the concepts and procedures used in engineering design and then exposing them to the entire design process by requiring student teams to conceptualize, develop, analyze, document (CAD drawings and report), and test a prototype physical device which is to solve a specific problem under time and cost constraints. This course, which provides students with an early, hands-on, thorough design experience, provides a venue for assessing the impact of an early design experience on students.

Background The convergence of several independent events in the early 1990’s led to the development of an expanded course in Engineering Design and Drafting. These events included a College decision to move to centralized computer facilities to replace and expand those which had been developed and were being maintained by the individual Schools of Engineering. As Oklahoma State University’s Engineering College operates on a professional school concept, this computer development strategy resulted in a focus on the computing needs of upper-class students. While freshman and sophomore computing labs existed, much of the software was distributed among the various departments; the individual departments had limited budgets and the breadth of software requirements resulted in each department purchasing minimum numbers of copies of software that were used for only a portion of the year (i.e. only for certain classes). Thus, many Schools found that their students were frustrated by the limited number of software copies in the home departments while the same software had been purchased by other departments and was being used at different times of the year but was not available for use by students outside the departments. Several sharing arrangements developed between departments but these were somewhat haphazard and awkward to administer. In order to address the problems with utilization and maintenance, a scheme for centralization of hardware, software, and maintenance was developed. This centralization was administered by the College and its goal was to provide the computer capacity (hardware and software) to support the computing requirements of all students at all levels. The funding source for these resources was a student technology fee which was implemented and collected at the University level.

At the same time, the College initiated a study of its freshman drafting course. The course was a one hour manual drafting course. The course focused primarily on sketching (isometric and oblique), lettering, and multiview (2-D) drawing of mechanical parts. The committee reviewing the course represented the various departments of the College and developed a number of objectives for the course after reviewing the literature available. The members of the committee were charged with developing a course that would meet the basic drafting needs of the various Schools of Engineering and, at the same time, introduce the student to the

1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Nazemetz, D. J. W., & Solie, D. J. B., & Thompson, D. D. R. (1996, June), The Oklahoma State University Experience In Teaching Engineering Design And Drafting At The Freshman Level Paper presented at 1996 Annual Conference, Washington, District of Columbia. 10.18260/1-2--6217