Proposal for Changing the University of Minnesota
Mechanical Engineering Design Curriculum
Design Studies Committee
ver: 9/1/94
Background
The reason for revamping the design curriculum is simple. Our students do not have sufficient exposure to creative synthesis, multidisciplinary problems, team work or total design. To prepare students for industry or graduate research, students need this experience.
The current required curriculum in ME contains a single required course, ME 5254 Design Morphology, that concentrates on the design process and (sometimes) design realization. Because of the extensive prerequisite stipulations, all students take ME 5254 in their senior year, thus delaying their exposure to design until just before they graduate. Many of the skills we teach in ME 5254 would serve our students better if they were introduced earlier in the curriculum, preferably in the freshman or sophomore years. Some of these include working in groups, oral, visual and written communication and handling unstructured problems.
The curriculum is also lacking in opportunities for students at any level to experience hands-on design through fabrication, prototyping and test. This important part of engineering education not only brings reality to design, but also serves to motivate students by introducing some of the excitement and utility of mechanical engineering that may be missing in the more traditional engineering science courses.
Graduate students with interests in design have no opportunities for an intensive experience in advanced design where they can learn and utilize design skills at a level that cannot be included in the undergraduate curriculum.
Other areas in need of improvement include making a commitment to bring design across the curriculum rather than segregating it to the design courses; developing cross-disciplinary design activities with other departments in the Institute of Technology, the Carlson School and the School of Architecture; increasing involvement by local industry in the design program; and creating facilities for design activities including fabrication and prototyping.
This document outlines a new design program which addresses many of these deficiencies. Where possible, the proposed program remains within the bounds of credit caps and the existing curricular structure in recognition that radical changes in how we teach our students are unlikely to occur in the short term. This is a living document which should be viewed as a starting point for discussion.
Summary of the Changes
* Institute a new, 4 credit required course for the Lower Division, ME 10xx Introduction to Design. This course will rely extensively on a hands-on experience and is best suited to sophomores.
* Introduce a new, 4 credit Lower Division elective, ME 10xx Engineering Communication. The course will emphasize oral, written and visual communication and will be structured around take-aparts. The course would be most suited for the freshman or sophomore year and could replace or be an alternative to ME 1025 Engineering Graphics in the required ME curriculum.
* Retain ME 5254 Design Morphology with its recent change in focus and objectives. Experiment with project structure. Introduce consistency. Change the course name to "Design Projects". Encourage two quarter projects.
* Restore ME 5255 Engineering Design Projects as the sequel to ME 5254 where 5254 designs are carried through a required stage of prototype fabrication and test. Change the name from "Engineering Design Projects" to "Design Prototyping".
* Develop design across the curriculum in a logical, coherent manner with the cooperation of the entire ME faculty.
* Introduce a new 3 quarter sequence of courses at the graduate level, ME 8xxx Product Design. Prototype new product development will serve as a vehicle for introducing the theory and practice of advanced design methodology concepts. Projects are expected to be substantial , have industrial sponsorship and guaranteed deliverables. Course would be offered jointly with the Carlson School of Business.
* Establish the Design Center, a space for meetings, presentations, information gathering and prototype fabrication.
* Institute the Design Partners Program to establish a formal link between local industry and our design curriculum.
ME 10xx Introduction to Design
A new, 4 credit required course for the Lower Division. The focus of the course will be design through prototype fabrication. Emphasis will be placed on analysis, simulation and prediction at a level consistent with the students' skills. The specific curricular content of ME 10xx will depend on whether a companion course in Engineering Communication is instituted.
This will be a showcase course that will both stretch students and completely hook them on mechanical engineering. It will be the most exciting course at IT. It will convince students to become mechanical engineers. The course will introduce the challenge of good design. It will demonstrate the reward of good design.
The salient features of the course include the following:
* Design through prototyping and fabrication.
* Learn by doing approach.
* Teach a structured design process (product need, product design specification, concept generation, concept selection, detail design, prototype fabrication and test).
* Build products from "bag of parts" or from a limited list of stock in store. Problem definition will be loose. "Cost" counts. Specific nature of "products" to be determined. Could be machines that compete head to head (e.g. like MIT's 2.70) or individually. Could be simple consumer products. The important part is to have all students building hardware.
* Analysis of physical principles which drive the design at a level appropriate to student background (elementary physics and calculus). Emphasize performance prediction through simulations.
* Introduce the use of spreadsheets for design "optimization". (Coordinate with ME 3020.) Examine tradeoffs based on simple analysis. The key concept is to have the students do design based on analysis and simulation from the start.
* Design documentation through drawings. You can't build it unless you get your drawing checked off. (The course could also be structured in teams where each student had to build the other's design based on the drawing.)
* Teach basic drawing/design documentation skills. Largely through course materials and examples versus through lectures. Coordinate closely with Engineering Communication course.
* Teach basic prototype fabrication by example. Expected fabrication skills include simple cutting, shaping, forming, joining. Include basics of materials.
* Teach estimation skills.
* Work individually but make some aspect of the course dependent on cooperative learning.
* One of the deliverables is a professional design portfolio.
* Make it easy for fabrication to work at a commuter campus with large course and limited shop space. For example, make use of personal tool kits which are checked out at the beginning of the semester.
* Possibly introduce smart machines using simple, embedded microcontrollers in the fabricated products.
* Evaluation based on process and product.
ME 10xx Engineering Communication
A new, freshman or sophomore level course with an emphasis on developing a new level of professionalism in engineering communication and presentation of all types. By teaching students how to communicate, we can set a high standard for what we expect from students in other IT courses and what we expect of them in the workplace.
The course will be structured around take-aparts (also known as "mechanical dissection" and "reverse engineering"). At the freshman level, we can effectively teach something about design by the study of existing designs. This is a "how things work" approach. Topic areas for consideration include materials, structures, assembly, manufacturing, basic machine elements.
Basic format: take a product apart, understand it, draw it, write about it, talk about it.
Features of the course include the following:
* Oral communication: How to speak effectively. How to design foils. Stand up and give a "this is how this product works" presentation. Have the oral presentation workshop (Candace Facchino's) here rather than in the senior year.
* Written communication: Weekly progress memos or other writing assignments. Integration of writing and graphics in a report. Demand level of professionalism.
* Data communication: How to present data in a chart.
* Visual communication: Intro to 2-D and 3-D drafting plus rapid visualization.
* Introduction to CAD for design representation.
* Introduction to formal working and assembly drawing conventions.
* Rapid visualization of design concepts through thumbnail perspective sketching.
* Develop visual thinking skills.
* Early emphasis on self-learning. "Here is the book on orthographic projections, you are on your own but will be expected to know the material." Our students are smart and we should expect more self-directed learning from them.
(Note: A pilot version of "Engineering Communication" is being run during Fall Quarter 1994.)
ME 5254 Design Projects
The senior level "capstone" design projects course which provides students with an opportunity to use their engineering skills on an unstructured, multidisciplinary problem.
The name change from "Design Morphology" is suggested as a more accurate representation of the course to the students.
If ME 5254 remains a single quarter, 4 credit course, radical changes are not proposed. The focus of the course has been and should remain on proceeding through a structured design process. It is not a course on detailed technical design although many projects will require detailed design.
Changes are being instituted to increase accountability and to ensure that students receive a more uniform design experience no matter which project or advisor they have.
Specific, written guidelines for projects and project advisors are being instituted. More uniform expectation of deliverables across projects will be required, including documentation that a process was followed.
The course will shift from an emphasis on detailed technical design towards teaching "Total Design" where the entire design cycle is considered. The focus will be on product designs where the term "product" is broad enough to cover mass-produced consumer products and one-of manufacturing machines or research equipment. Projects should require extensive work in developing a product design specification based on customer needs. Repeating projects will be discouraged unless a case can be made that a new product is being considered.
Innovations for ME 5254 may include:
* Increased industrial sponsorship of products. Codify confidentiality and intellectual property policies.
* Run jointly with EE capstone course?
* Integrate with Carlson School field study projects?
* One or two quarters per year, have all students work on a single product. Split the class into teams of 20 or 25 and set up as competing product development firms.
ME 5255 Design Prototyping
New, continuation course to ME 5254. This is for those students (plus new ones) who wish to continue with their designs for an additional quarter (or more) to bring the product into the fabrication, test and prototype stage. Unlike the current ME 5255, students are not starting from the beginning with a new project.
By having a formal continuation course, more senior design projects will be carried into the hands-on stage. Students will gain valuable experience in seeing their project through to completion and we can take on industry sponsored projects that require physical realizations for the deliverable.
The course will proceed largely on an independent project basis under the guidance of the project advisor, but some lectures may be developed on effective prototyping.
The new ME 5255 would be introduced as elective course with the expectation that the department will move towards making it a required part of the curriculum so that all of our students would participate in a 20 week, substantial design experience.
Design Across the Curriculum
Our design program will not succeed unless it encompasses the entire curriculum including the basic engineering sciences and does not stop at the few courses with "design" in their titles taught by the Design Division. It is essential that students are faced with open-ended problems throughout their four years in mechanical engineering. Courses such as ME 5254 focus on the design process. Detailed technical design may be a part of some capstone design projects, but should be experienced in the context of the standard curriculum to ensure the students fully utilize their engineering skills.
Design through modeling and predictive simulation should be an important part of the design across the curriculum program. The new, introductory design courses will emphasize the relationship between design and analysis, but this must be reinforced throughout the curriculum, particularly in the engineering sciences.
If design across the curriculum is to be successful, a contractual commitment to it must be made by the entire ME faculty. Principles of design across the curriculum must be a structured part of specific courses and not dependent on having particular instructors teaching the course.
There are several possibilities for developing design across the curriculum. They include:
(1) Changing the problems on homework assignments to incorporate synthesis activities as well as analysis activities. This is how most schools attempt design across the curriculum, but it tends to have minimal impact because very little design can be done in the context of one problem on a weekly problem set.
(2) Each course picks a single, substantial design problem relevant to the course material. The problem should be realistic and could be sponsored by industry. It could also be derived from a design case study. The problem would be visited throughout the quarter as the students' analysis skills grow more powerful. One format would be for each weekly problem set to contain several "traditional" problems plus a separate section on the design problem for the quarter. The problem should contain aspects that fall outside the course domain. For example, a problem for a heat transfer course could include some structural components aspects. Design process (as learned in the introductory design course) would be followed. Having students do brief information gathering and concept generation in an engineering science course should be accepted practice. Students can work in competitive or complementary teams. If appropriate, the work could include laboratory testing of concepts.
The deliverable at the end of the quarter is a written report that is a compilation of the work done on the weekly problem sets. Additional oral and visual presentations are encouraged.
(3) Like (2) but problems span courses. That is, for any given quarter, cooperating instructors pick one or two design problems that their courses will handle. The final report integrates the work of the students in all courses. The advantage is that multidisciplinary problems can be tackled. The disadvantage is that it requires coordination across courses. Attempting problems that span more than one quarter would not be successful because of scheduling difficulties and the transients associated with the start of the course each quarter.
(4) Like (2) but focus the design experience on case studies of existing designs developed for specific courses. Case studies would be written by ME faculty in cooperation with engineers from local or national industry.
ME 8xxx Product Design
An addition to the graduate design program. The course is a three-quarter sequence. Students work in teams over nine months to develop a prototype product. The curricular focus will be on advanced design methodologies.
The course will fill a large hole we have in the graduate program. Currently, there are no advanced design courses for our graduate students who are interested in design (ME 8701(2) is dormant). The course may also serve as a prototype for a possible future New Products Program where industry and university combine to develop prototype products over 18 months using Masters level students in a research setting.
Important components of the course include:
* Industry sponsored projects.
* Design team includes students, faculty and design engineers from the sponsoring company. The team stays together for nine months.
* Project client pays for fabrication and prototyping costs.
* Joint offering with the Carlson School (discussions have been started with Carlson faculty). Business and engineering students may have different curricular contents but all will be working on a common design.
The course could focus on smart products, that is those containing embedded processors. In this case, curricular content would include providing students with electronic and software design skills.
(Note: The first version of ME8xxx New Product Design and Development will be run during the 94-95 academic year.)
The Design Center
The Design Center will be the focal point for the design program. It will contain meeting areas, presentation space, display space, prototyping facilities, some computation resources and the Design Library. It will be staffed by one department staff member and course TA's.
(Details on what the Design Center might look like are in the planning phase.)
Design Partners Program
A program which formalizes the participation of local and possibly national industry in our design program. Each Partner will appoint a Design Liaison, a high-level manager who will serve as the main point of contact for the program. Industry will be solicited to participate as full or associate partners. Full partnership may imply a financial commitment to the program. Participation in the program will be formally recognized.
Benefits to the University:
* Will use Partners as a source of projects for undergraduate and graduate design courses. Will solicit project advisors from the company.
* Will use company designers as juries for design reviews.
* Will use company engineers as "Design Experts" who have agreed to accept calls for information from design program students.
* Will use financial resources of Partners to fund prototype fabrication.
* Will use general (non-project specific) funds from the partners to develop common design facilities.
Benefits to Participating Industries:
* Product concepts and/or product prototypes developed by student and student/company design teams. If the project is part of the graduate design program, a prototype is guaranteed. Sponsoring company has exclusive rights to use the results.
* Increased ties to faculty and faculty research
* Better opportunities to recruit the best students.
Challenges
There are many challenges which must be faced before the new design program can be fully implemented.
* Creating a program that is acceptable to all ME faculty. This is particularly important for design across the curriculum which will affect existing courses.
* Faculty and TA time to develop new courses.
* Faculty and TA time to teach new courses (particularly since they may have multiple sections, each with a small number of students).
* Realistic implementation schedule given faculty and TA resources.
* Handling throughput of 250 students a year in new, required Lower Division courses.
* Handling transfer students and students in the Coop Program.
* Funding and space for the Design Center
* Shop facilities to handle large numbers of students building prototypes
* Developing state-of-the-art prototyping facilities available for student use (resources and training).
* Parts costs for fabricated projects in new Lower Division course. (Should students pay lab fees?)
* Access to computation facilities (number of available seats) if computers are to play an important role in the new Lower Division courses.
* Including ME 3020 in the planning process.