Designettes: An Approach to Multidisciplinary Engineering Design Education

Abstract

Design and other fundamental topics in engineering are often isolated to dedicated courses. An opportunity exists to foster a culture of engineering design and multidisciplinary problem solving throughout the curriculum. Designettes, charettelike design challenges, are rapid and creative learning tools that enable educators to integrate design learning in a single class, across courses, across terms, and across disciplines. When two or more courses join together in a designette, a multidisciplinary learning activity occurs; multiple subjects are integrated and applied to open-ended problems and grand challenges. This practice helps foster a culture of design, and enables the introduction of multidisciplinary design challenges. Studies at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) demonstrate learning of engineering subject matter in a bio-inspired robotics designette (MechAnimal), an interactive musical circuit designette, and an automated milk delivery (AutoMilk) designette. Each challenge combines problem clarification, concept generation, and prototyping with subject content such as circuits, biology, thermodynamics, differential equations, or software with controls. From pre-and postsurveys of students, designettes are found to increase students' understanding of engineering concepts. From 321 third-semester students, designettes were found to increase students' perceptions of their ability to solve multidisciplinary problems.

Design prototyping methods: state of the art in strategies, techniques, and guidelines

“…In this context, active learning applies not only in the educational sense, but in terms of advancing designer's mental or analytical models of phenomenal interactions. Hands-on prototyping activities support gaining tacit knowledge regarding complex phenomena (Telenko et al 2016). Physical models demonstrate flexibility across a range of disciplines and generally support design education (Green & Smrcek 2006).…”

Shape Memory Polymers: A Joint Chemical and Materials Engineering Hands-On Experience

“…In Fall 2014 an expanded version of the "hands-on experience" was included as a full lab investigation in the sophomore MSE 202 lab (enrollment: [20][21][22][23][24][25]. Distinct from the demo version of the experience in MSE 101, student lab groups in MSE 202 were asked to measure properties of the polymers they synthesized as a function of the polymer composition, and to deduce empirical rules for the glass transition temperature and/or the degree of polymer crosslinking.…”

“…As rapid and rich communication becomes less costly, more reliable, and more readily available to stakeholders across the globe, the ability to collaborate across disciplines and backgrounds while solving engineering problems has become critical to the modern practice of engineering. [18,[22][23][24][25] Engineers in different fields and at distant locations now have ample opportunity to combine their respective expertise and pursue ideas that are only feasible collaboratively. From this perspective, cross-disciplinary experiences should be available to students throughout their academic studies.…”

“…From this perspective, cross-disciplinary experiences should be available to students throughout their academic studies. [24][25][26] Cross-disciplinary labs and demonstrations not only foster collaboration skills, but also allow students to make better-informed decisions regarding their own interests and goals.…”

IDC Robocon: A Transnational Teaming Competition for Project-Based Design Education in Undergraduate Robotics

“…Few of them place emphasis upon robotics education aspects which have been a popular discipline because robotics can merge mechanical, electrical, electronic, and computer engineering [15,16]. Meanwhile, competitions are a commonly-used way in engineering education [17,18]. Especially for robotics education, such kinds of competitions are usually problem-based [19][20][21] and design-oriented [22][23][24] in a university setting.…”