Integrated Design Project - An Integration of Fundamental Engineering Courses
Author(s)
Chowdhury, Sanaul
Guan, Hong
Doh, Jeung-Hwan
Year published
2005
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Engineering has traditionally been taught by specialists as a series of separate courses, and it has been assumed that graduates will be able to integrate the knowledge and understanding gained from these diverse courses as required to undertake real world design projects. However students often experience difficulty seeing how the separate courses are related. There is therefore a need to integrate the various fundamental engineering courses to highlight the relationship between them in a complete civil engineering design project. A final year course at the School of Engineering, Griffith University entitled "Integrated ...
View more >Engineering has traditionally been taught by specialists as a series of separate courses, and it has been assumed that graduates will be able to integrate the knowledge and understanding gained from these diverse courses as required to undertake real world design projects. However students often experience difficulty seeing how the separate courses are related. There is therefore a need to integrate the various fundamental engineering courses to highlight the relationship between them in a complete civil engineering design project. A final year course at the School of Engineering, Griffith University entitled "Integrated Design Project" has been developed to address this issue. This incorporates various fundamental courses such as project management, geotechnical engineering, structural analysis, concrete and steel structural design, to name a few. In addition, practising professionals as well as academics act as advisors for this course to ensure practicality of real life problems. This paper discusses in some detail the steps involved in the development of the curriculum, the contents, the conduct and delivery process, the assessment of the project undertaken by the students and the relevant feedbacks from students' evaluation. The first offering of this course in 2004 was successful in enhancing students' understanding of relationships between different courses through the completion of the design project. Continuous improvement of the design project with more realistic features will go a long way towards students being better equipped to deal with practical engineering problems.
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View more >Engineering has traditionally been taught by specialists as a series of separate courses, and it has been assumed that graduates will be able to integrate the knowledge and understanding gained from these diverse courses as required to undertake real world design projects. However students often experience difficulty seeing how the separate courses are related. There is therefore a need to integrate the various fundamental engineering courses to highlight the relationship between them in a complete civil engineering design project. A final year course at the School of Engineering, Griffith University entitled "Integrated Design Project" has been developed to address this issue. This incorporates various fundamental courses such as project management, geotechnical engineering, structural analysis, concrete and steel structural design, to name a few. In addition, practising professionals as well as academics act as advisors for this course to ensure practicality of real life problems. This paper discusses in some detail the steps involved in the development of the curriculum, the contents, the conduct and delivery process, the assessment of the project undertaken by the students and the relevant feedbacks from students' evaluation. The first offering of this course in 2004 was successful in enhancing students' understanding of relationships between different courses through the completion of the design project. Continuous improvement of the design project with more realistic features will go a long way towards students being better equipped to deal with practical engineering problems.
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Conference Title
Program and Proceedings: 4th ASEE/AaeE Global Colloquium on Engineering Education