Leveraging Student Design Experience Throughout the Curriculum using Case Studies
Year: 2012
Editor: Lyndon Buck, Geert Frateur, William Ion, Chris McMahon, Chris Baelus, Guido De Grande, Stijn Verwulgen
Author: Lambert, Steve; Effa, David
Series: E&PDE
Institution: University of Waterloo, Canada
Section: Design Education in Practice
Page(s): 243-248
ISBN: 978-1-904670-36-0
Abstract
While the pedagogical benefits of student design teams are well established, participation is limited by available resources and the level of commitment of each student team member, since participation is predominantly extra-curricular. As a method to leverage this design experience to other students and to help promote the design teams themselves, case studies are proposed. They can be developed from student competition team design experience, and used in classes throughout the curriculum. An example case study on energy storage design is presented, based on the EcoCAR Challenge competition. This has been used in two separate first year engineering courses, in two departments, either as a term-long project or a guest lecture. Students found this an engaging introduction to engineering design, which benefited from the fact that this project was derived from their colleagues’ experience.
Keywords: Case studies, design education, engineering practice, design teams