Course Purpose and Objectives
Provide students with a complete design experience, including the need to set design goals and objectives, integrate knowledge, practice engineering judgment, plan to meet a budget and timetable, do teamwork, and written communication.
Learning
Understand and achieve the objectives set out above and the potential for further understanding of applications.
Course Content
Integrated design courses provide the opportunity to apply the engineering knowledge and skills that have been accumulated so far and to learn new concepts in applied engineering. An engineering system design project is jointly agreed with a group of students and the supervising professor. The team studies the problem, develops design alternatives, and selects the most feasible solution. The prototype of the system is completed after obtaining all the necessary materials and then error checking and correction. Upon completion of the system the team presents the design and prototype of the system to a panel of judges for evaluation.
These courses put students in an environment completely opposite to the majority of the courses in their previous curriculum. They tackle aspects of applied engineering that have not been addressed in academic classroom discussions so far. There is a need to distribute responsibilities to team members and to support the work needed to successfully accomplish team goals with others. These and other aspects of group-member interactions are often regarded as valuable experiences gained through this course.
