A case study on engineering faculty design projects

There is an established trend in engineering education to incorporate a design component for preparing students for real life practice. A recent report entitled Educating Engineers for the 21st Century[9] stresses that engineering courses need to adapt to the changing needs of businesses and to place a greater emphasis on real-life problems by working in collaboration with industrial partners. An initial investigation of design projects across four engineering disciplines was carried out to understand the breadth and depth of design projects. This included identifying key characteristics of the design projects, analysis of learning and teaching activities with respect to constructive alignment and investigation of assessment practices in these design projects. This research also examines the type of students’ experiences. This paper ends with a discussion on the implications of these findings for design projects.