A Pedagogical Concept Of Integrating Multidisciplinary Design And Technical Communication

The Engineering Clinic is an eight-semester sequence, based on the medical school model, taken by every engineering student at Rowan University. In these clinics, students and faculty from all four engineering departments work side-by-side on laboratory experiments, real world design projects and research. The solutions of these problems require not only proficiency in the technical principles, but, as importantly, require a mastery of written and oral communication skills and the ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team. In the sophomore year, communication (written and oral) and design (semester long multidisciplinary design project) are integrated. The course is team-taught by faculty from the College of Communication and the College of Engineering. Students pick one of two design projects. The first is to design and build a guitar effects pedal. The second involves an economic and engineering analysis of the design and operation of a baseball stadium. Introduction In 1992, a local industrialist Henry M. Rowan made a $100,000,000 donation to the then Glassboro State College in order to establish a high-quality engineering school in southern New Jersey. This gift has enabled the university to create an innovative and forward-looking engineering program. Since 1996, the exceptional capabilities of each incoming class of approximately 100 engineering students at Rowan (average SAT score of 1260; average class rank of top 13%) have repeatedly verified the need for a quality undergraduate engineering school in the quickly growing region of southern New Jersey. The College of Engineering at Rowan is comprised of four departments: Chemical; Civil and Environmental; Electrical and Computer; and Mechanical. Each department has been designed to serve 25 to 30 students per year, resulting in 100 to 120 students per year in the College. The size of the College has been optimized such that it is large enough to provide specialization in separate and credible departments, yet small enough to permit a truly multidisciplinary curriculum P ge 548.1 in which laboratory/design courses are offered simultaneously to all engineering students in all four disciplines. Indeed, the hallmark of the engineering program at Rowan University is the multidisciplinary, project-oriented Engineering Clinic sequence. The Engineering Clinics are taken each semester by every engineering student at Rowan University. In the Engineering Clinic, which is based on the medical school model, students and faculty from all four engineering departments work side-by-side on laboratory experiments, real world design projects and research. The solutions of these problems require not only proficiency in the technical principles, but, as importantly, require a mastery of written and oral communication skills and the ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team [1][2]. Table 1 contains an overview of course content in the 8-semester engineering clinic sequence. As shown in the table, each clinic course has a specific theme although the underlying concept of engineering design pervades throughout. The solutions of these problems require not only proficiency in the technical principles, but, as importantly, require a mastery of written and oral communication skills and the ability to work as part of a multidisciplinary team. In the sophomore year, the attempt is made to integrate design and communication (written and oral) by serving the dual purpose of introducing students to formalized engineering design techniques and providing them with the necessary foundation for their careers as technical communicators. The course is team-taught by faculty from the College of Communication and the College of Engineering. In the fall semester, the thrust is on integrating discipline specific design modules with communication [3] by applying the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) [4][5]. The focus of this paper is on the spring semester Sophomore Engineering Clinic II (the fourth of the 8-semester clinic sequence) where communication is integrated with a semester long multidisciplinary design project. Students pick one of two design projects. The first is to design and build a guitar effects pedal. The second involves an economic and engineering analysis of the design and operation of a baseball stadium. The theme is entrepreneurship in that students must be able to convince a consumer to buy their product. This necessitates an excellent design and communication with both technical and nontechnical people. Motivation In the modern technological world, it is being recognized in many higher education institutions that an effective engineering education can no longer focus solely on the technical aspects of the curriculum, but must also provide training in both oral and written communication. Page 548.2 Year Engineering Clinic Theme (Fall) Engineering Clinic Theme (Spring) Freshman Engineering Measurements Competitive Assessment Laboratory Sophomore TQM with 3-Week Discipline Specific Design Modules 16-Week Multidisciplinary Design Projects Junior Product Development Process Development Senior Year-Long Multidisciplinary Design and Research Projects Table 1. Overview of course content in the 8-semester Engineering Clinic sequence. Indeed, the ability to think critically and analytically (activities essential to an engineer) depends in great measure on the ability to communicate ideas in a structured and clear manner [6]. The communication skills students need to develop can be fostered by a curriculum that requires students to interact in productive and efficient ways. In particular, emphasis on the ability to function as part of a team is of key importance. Teaming skills are lacking in most students and faculty in many educational institutions. Team skills cannot be achieved within a single course, but should be integrated into the entire engineering curriculum [7]. Furthermore, success for team function depends on the degree of familiarity and comfort of students with interdisciplinary work [8], which makes it a desirable feature of a curriculum to encourage and facilitate such interchanges of knowledge and ideas, as is done at Rowan University. In parallel with the increased emphasis on communication and teaming skills, there is a trend in education to shift to a "student centered" education paradigm [9], where students are given more control over and expected to take a more active role in their own education. This idea can be neatly integrated with Rowan University's educational objective in the Sophomore Clinic course, where teamwork, design and product-oriented material, together with the emphasis on education, can help enhance the students' active participation in their own learning and development as engineers. Educators are recognizing that design, as a formal part of the undergraduate curriculum, is not only important to help achieve a more student centered education, but also to better prepare engineers for the demands to be placed upon them when entering industry [10]. Over the last decade, there has been a growing effort across universities in the United States to increase the design content in the engineering curriculum [11][12][13]. It is of special importance to note that early design courses can provide a rich introduction to the engineering world and enhance the student's comprehension of engineering principles and methods [14]. This is one of the motivations for the Sophomore Clinics at Rowan University. P ge 548.3 At Rowan, the themes of design and communication are closely linked. In Sophomore Clinic II, the emphasis is on oral communication and design for consumer benefit. This is a key concept in our attempt to teach entreprenurial, business and economic skills which are essential for any engineer in today’s marketplace. We now describe the two semester-long design projects that students can pick from. Guitar Effects Pedal The following are the objectives for the guitar effects project [15]: 1. Design, develop, test and build a real electromechanical product. 2. Organize your product development team into a company structure and consider the intellectual property issues, economic issues, marketing strategy and competitor products associated with the development of your product. 3. Culminate the project by rapid prototyping a fully operational device, ready for mass production. Each product development team has a company structure of 4 students. Duties are divided approximately as follows: 1. Project Leader: Logistics, Engineering Economics, Web page. 2. Marketing Manager. Requires an interest in music, focus on the customer. 3. Mechanical Engineer: ProEngineer solids modeling, stress analysis, rapid prototyping, machining. 4. Electrical Engineer: Electronics, signal processing, PSPICE, Quickcircuit. Classroom instruction is given on simulation of sound effects and on three-dimensional solid modeling using ProEngineer. For simulating sound effects, the MATLAB software is used in the digital domain. For the analog domain, circuits with operational amplifiers and diodes are built and simulated using PSPICE. The students build on the competitive assessment skills acquired in the Freshman Clinic II course [1][16][17] and first conduct an assessment of existing guitar effects pedals before designing their own prototypes. The deliverables include: 1. Company Web page: The team web page will be the primary form of communication amongst team members, between the team and instructors. 2. Company binder: Each team will maintain a binder that will contain hardcopies of all technical material related to the project.