Systems Engineering Education for Inexperienced Students by Providing Hand−on Practices

Abstract

We developed a new hands-on type course for systems engineering. This is one of the courses at Keio University, Graduate school of System Design Management. The goal of the course is to provide the students with systems engineering methods proposed by INCOSE, one of the major organizations in the field. We report the effects of the course in this paper. There are two major contributions of the proposed course. The first is that we accept as many students from departments of social science as students from science and engineering. The second is that the course focuses on requirements development rather than on a certain technique or technology. These have not been realized in any of the previous engineering courses worldwide. We analyzed the effects of the course on the students and found out that the course helped them understand systems engineering in a short amount of time. Our students tried to make systems concept, architecture and design, and procured all items for implementing their systems, in order to solve the customer's demand; they want to maneuver an automatic cleaning machine from remote locations, even they are on their business trip.

Active learning via LEGO MINDSTORMS in Systems Engineering education

“…In Systems Engineering the path to finding the right solution will not be a prescribed trail of sequential processes, but often a more seemingly unstructured pattern of leaping from one piece of information to another, in an attempt to establish a holistic view of the system. Nevertheless, published work on the subject within the Systems Engineering field do appear to be rather sparse, with the exception of a case presented by Mills et al [4] and the experiences from a trial Systems Engineering course by Shimazu et al [13]. It is however known to the authors that active learning approaches, in terms of week-long workshops, problem-based group work and decision making exercises, are being used in multiple Systems Engineering educational programs internationally.…”