In the Spring of 1991, Maryland began to replace its traditional introduction to engineering course with an exciting hands-on "Introduction to Engineering Design" course called ENES 100. By Fall of 1992, this program was offered to all entering engineering students at Maryland. Today the program is flourishing - almost five thousand students have completed the course or one of its spin-off variants. These variants now exist at other four-year institutions, feeder colleges, and a high school; and negotiations with other schools are underway. Frank L. Huband, Executive Director of ASEE, has summarized the effect of Maryland's program early in its development in an editorial in the May 1993 issue of Prism, "Clearly, the course, developed through Maryland's participation in the NSF-sponsored ECSEL coalition and led by Thomas M. Regan, ..., is onto something.... Maryland design projects represent the beginnings of a revolution - or maybe something more like a quest - to reform engineering education."

The goal of ENES 100 is to provide a diverse nurturing learning environment for students to master the skills of life-long learning. This is accomplished through a project-driven approach where students work in teams to design, manufacture, assemble, and quantitatively test a "real world" engineering product. Students come to understand the need for the engineering curriculum as they struggle with the technical challenges and trade-offs of a significant product realization process. They are introduced to many concepts: critical thinking, team work, customer requirements, just-in-time learning, design, manufacturing, cost constraints, engineering sciences, elementary engineering software, engineering in societal context, and written, oral, and graphical communication. In short, students are introduced to the key skills which must be mastered to successfully complete the modern engineering curriculum and to become an attractive graduate.

The more significant attributes of the Maryland course are its generality and flexibility to mesh with many curriculum models. For example, variants of the Maryland program are now offered at the University of Wisconsin, Morgan State University, the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore and the University of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia. Several Community Colleges are in pilot stages of ENES 100 and have set Fall, 1998 as their goal for full implementation. The Montgomery County High School system is in the pilot stage of a pre-engineering course based on extensive collaboration between the University and the high school faculties. A course textbook has been published and is now in use. The faculty teaching teams confirm that this has made a significant improvement in the quality of the course and has facilitated the learning for the students.

The development, institutionalization, and dissemination of this major innovation in engineering education was made possible by a team of very committed and talented senior and junior faculty and staff. Upon observing the effectiveness and scale of ENES 100, George E. Dieter, while President of the American Society of Engineering Education, made the observation, "In my over 30 years in engineering education, I would rank this accomplishment at the top in educational innovation."

In the Spring of 1991, Maryland began a curriculum revision effort that brought many more hands-on design and manufacturing team projects into the engineering curriculum. In ENES 100, students are introduced to the concepts of engineering process, design, and manufacturing. Through the pioneering work of Dally and Zhang [1], the curriculum for a new first freshman engineering design course was developed.

We believe our first course in engineering, ENES 100, should have the expected educational outcomes listed below:

Communication Skills

1. Engineering Graphics

• Understand the role of graphics in engineering design.
• Understand orthographic projection in producing multi-view drawings.
• Understand three-dimensional representation with pictorial drawings.
• Understand dimensioning and section views.
• Demonstrate capability of preparing drawings using both manual and CAD techniques.
• Demonstrate understanding by incorporating appr~pri~te high-quality drawings in the design documentation.

2. Design Briefings:

• Within a team format present a design review for the class using appropriate visual aids.
• Each team member participates in the briefing.

3. Design Reports:

• The team's design is documented in a professional style report incorporating time schedules, costs, parts list, drawings and an analysis.

Team Experience

• Develop an awareness of the challenges occurring in teamwork.
• Demonstrate teamwork in the product realization process through a systematic design concept selection process involving participation of all the team members.
• Demonstrate planning from conceptualization to the evaluation of the prototype.
• Understand and demonstrate share responsibility among team members.
• Demonstrate teamwork in preparing design reports and presenting design briefings.

Software Applications

• Demonstrate entry level skills in using spreadsheets for calculations and data analysis.
• Show a capability to prepare graphs and charts with a spreadsheet.
• Show a capability to prepare professional quality visual aids.
• Understand entry level skills in employing a CAD program.
• Demonstrate these skills in preparing appropriate materials for design briefings and design reports.

Design Project

• The design project is the over arching theme of the course.
• Utilize all the skills listed above to assist in the product development process.
• Demonstrate competence in defining design objectives. Generate design concepts that meet the design objectives.
• Understand the basis for design for manufacturing, assembly and maintenance.
• Manage the team and the project effectively.

Overview: ENES 100, "Introduction to Engineering Design"

ENES 100 is offered in sections consisting of thirty incoming engineering students, one faculty instructor, one undergraduate Teaching Fellow, and a technical staff of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) that support all sections. A typical class of thirty is divided into teams of five or six students who embark on a journey through several phases of a product realization process. All teams from all classes work to develop a single product from a common generic product objective. Example products have included swing sets, see saws, solar desalination stills, porch gliders, windmills, human-powered water pumping systems, solar cookers, and wind-powered vehicles [1,2].

During the first phase of the course, skill development is emphasized. Students work individually and collectively to build their skills in teamwork, engineering graphics, and spreadsheets. In addition, the freshmen are introduced to the product realization process and some fundamental engineering principles. This need for teaching a diverse set of skills is handled by a team of instructors. Faculty, Teaching Fellows, and GTAs combine to teach this breadth of skills during the course's first phase, which often culminates with a guest lecture by an engineering director or vice president from industry.

During the second phase of the course, student teams formally focus on design. They work from the stated generic product objective to define their product specifications and constraints. Students visit the library and conduct patent searches to learn about suitable technology. They use their newly-acquired knowledge about design concepts and begin trade-off studies to determine the best approach to meet specifications. The total product cost is limited to $25 per student which is collected and accounted for by the students. Students contact vendors to assess the availability of suitable off-the-shelf hardware, and they are encouraged to consider in detail how the device will be manufactured and assembled. Critical thinking is stressed. Safety considerations are addressed. The teams also learn about design critique, as they are asked to evaluate other teams' designs. Phase two culminates in a formal design review to the class and a complete design package including drawings, design analysis, costs and a descriptive report.

The third phase deals with manufacturing the components and assembling the product. Student teams must start with their own design package and manufacture and assemble their product. This is where "the rubber hits the road," and students are awakened by the realities of the difficulty of real-world design. This hands-on activity is a welcome relief for many students, and compared to the abstract concepts covered in math and chemistry, the opportunity to get in a shop and build their own creation is clearly appreciated by all. Using a model shop, the students manufacture sub-components and assemble these parts (usually 20 to 30) into a prototype.

The final phase of the course consists of product testing, product evaluation, and the concept of scale-up. Each student team has a scheduled test period in which they must subject their product to a specified test procedure, previously defined by the faculty and technical staff. For example, students tested their electricity-generating windmills in the Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel on campus. During the test, the students measure data that indicate the performance of their design, e.g., electrical output for a variety of electrical loads and wind speeds. While there is no formal emphasis on competition, the students are very concerned with the performance of their prototype and how it compares to those of their classmates. The students then revise their design packages to reflect the actual products as built and analyze their performance data. The final examination is a formal presentation in which the teams submit their revised design packages and orally present a final review. Also, they usually are given a scale-up question, e.g., how would you design a windmill to produce enough electricity for a dormitory?

The goal of the course is to provide a diverse nurturing learning environment to master the skills for lifelong learning. Critical thinking is strongly encouraged, and the need and advantages of teamwork are laid. Further, ENES 100 outlines the rationale behind the subsequent engineering curriculum. The course is an extraordinary introduction to engineering.

A GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF AND TOTAL COMMITMENT TO TEAM WORK

The Clark School of Engineering has implemented a significant increase in the use of team work (both on the part of the students and the faculty) to develop a world-class college of engineering. Prior to 1990, students may have only participated on teams in their engineering laboratory courses and in their capstone design course. Today, team work is critical in many more courses. Likewise before 1992, faculty members rarely had to participate in teaching teams. Today's team-centered hands-on design and manufacturing courses also require faculty members to function in teams.

Students are assigned to teams very early in the semester, usually on the first or second day of class. In some sections, the team formation is based on student responses to questionnaires from which the section's facilitator tries to balance the backgrounds of the teams. There is follow-up with an interactive team building exercise. This exercise is effective in bringing these students together immediately to work as a team and to learn the value of team effort as demonstrated by the exercise.

The course "outputs" require team-based performance, rather than individual performance. For example the projects are sufficiently complex and time-consuming that an individual student cannot complete the necessary work; the projects cannot be completed without functional teams. Furthermore, significant portions of the student grades are based on the team's performance, and on a peer review. Good team work is critical for success in these courses.

We have learned that large, distributed, and complex processes can only be run effectively by using multi-disciplinary teams of teachers, who come from the academic and the industrial communities. The ENES 100 "teaching team" is large because eleven sections are offered in a typical semester. In this course, the products are multi-disciplinary; and a variety of technical engineering specialties are required to support the course. To build the ENES 100 team, faculty members from all departments in the college are recruited, and they are paired with Fellows typically from a different discipline. Graduate teaching assistants also come from many different departments in the college. About 25% of the Engineering Faculty have taught ENES 100

The ENES 100 textbook [4],, contains short sections of material on engineering concepts relevant to the design assignment as shown in Appendix I. The book is custom-published over the summer to minimize customer (student) costs.

Before the start of the Fall semester, a two-day orientation workshop is held for the incoming teaching team. This workshop covers issues such as team building, teaching and learning styles, diversity and classroom climate considerations, product-specific technology and engineering science, and course-specific software tools. Elements of the workshop are led by campus experts in the respective areas.

Each section's faculty and Fellow pair are also given time to develop the section's own syllabus and policies. One or more industrial experts also play a role by providing a guest lecture to the students during the semester. This lecture may be on an industrial perspective of team work, an illustration of real-world product development, or an illustration of how products are marketed world wide. The use of"teaching teams" and the empowerment and of the summer core has enabled ENES 100 to function effectively with a rapidly changing staff. Typically only 20% of the ENES 100 team (faculty, Fellows, and GTAs) carry over from one year to the next. Only through the use of a team concept could this course operate.

A STRONG UNDERSTANDING OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE FUNDAMENTALS

In ENES 100, the technical content required to analyze the design of the product is taught just-in-time. The students are encouraged to ask their instructor to explain where in the curriculum they will gain the expertise to make such a decision with more confidence. By showing the students the need for engineering science fundamentals first, the students later seize the available opportunities. For example, one statics professor was quoted, "I've never seen students so motivated to take statics in 30 years [since the start of ENES 100]." As they will learn about different branches of engineering, students come to view the curriculum as a series of learning opportunities, rather than hurdles, toward a degree.

A GOOD COMMUNICATOR

Excellent communication skills, i.e., speaking, writing, and graphics, are stressed throughout the curriculum. For ENES 100, the oral presentations are the preliminary design review and the final design review.

The course has a major final design report and a preliminary design report. The course also relies on the use of intermediate writing assignments: team progress reports, team journals, technical notes, and in-progress documents. Graphics are emphasized.

OVERVIEW: "ECSEL TEACHING FELLOWS PROGRAM"

A critical component of our design and manufacturing team activities is the "ECSEL Teaching Fellow." An ECSEL Teaching Fellow is a senior engineering student that is assigned to a single section (to at most thirty students), and he/she acts as the mentor, facilitator, and coach for the students. The Fellows' duties include facilitating the team dynamics, answering questions about homework assignments, giving technical advice, putting the project details into perspective, and encouraging students to participate in student professional societies. Some Teaching Fellows maintain office hours in the ECSEL Fellows office, but many meet the students in dorms, pizza restaurants, or wherever the students choose to hold their team meetings. In addition, the Fellows provide a critical communication link between the faculty and the students. These assignments relieve faculty members of a multitude of tedious yet important details enabling the faculty to focus on the "larger problem." The Teaching Fellows provide our students with a very high quality support structure.

The selection and training of the ECSEL Teaching Fellows are the responsibility of the School's Special Program Director, J. F. Fines [3]. The Fellows receive specialized training through a one-credit course entitled "Seminar in College Teaching." Each week they have an opportunity to report on the status of their particular section and to discuss, collectively, problems that may have occurred in class and how to solve them. Additionally, topics on college teaching are discussed each week, such as student development theory, learning styles, classroom teaching techniques, classroom climate issues, and group facilitation. We began to use Teaching Fellows in ENES 100, but the program has expanded to include ENES 389M, a freshman-level physics course, Dynamics, and a junior-level mechanical engineering course. Becoming a Teaching Fellow is a competitive, highly sought position, and carries the prestige of being an integral part of the new way to learn engineering.

INSTITUTIONAL "BUY-IN"

The School regularly uses standard student surveys to evaluate all of its courses. For these new courses, more detailed and specific questionnaires are used, and an external evaluator conducts focused studies. Student responses to both forms of assessment have been very positive. For example, the most prevalent response to the question, "What did you like best about this course?" has been "the freedom to work on our own." In the focused interviews, more than half of the hundreds of interviewees indicated that the hands-on project approach gave them a greater insight and understanding of engineering concepts. In a lead story of the Feb. 22, 1995 issue of the Diamondback, the campus student newspaper, a female engineering student was quoted, "The course made me confident that engineering was something I wanted to do." This very strong student endorsement made the institutionalization of these courses relatively easy.

It is equally encouraging to note the faculty's response to ENES 100. For example, many faculty members volunteer to teach this course, including one faculty member from a department (Agricultural Engineering) outside the College. Faculty members from every department within the College teach the course. Further, faculty instructors meet regularly during the semester to review progress and discuss problems. This level of teamwork and cooperation is not typical of a large research university. Before the 1992-93 offering of ENES 100, the general faculty commitment to this labor-intensive course was unknown. However, the faculty commitment has turned out to be overwhelmingly positive.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction to ENES 100 has led to some wonderful new programs. The course is quoted by the University president as the model of Total Quality Management on campus - at levels up to the Board of Regents. The ENES 100 program has helped the College obtain such major enhancements as the $15,000,000 A. James Clark undergraduate engineering endowment, the acquisition of the J. M. Patterson building, and the creation of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. The ENES 100 program now occupies 8000 square feet in the J. M. Patterson building. ENES 100 has led the way for the A. James Clark School of Engineering at Maryland to become a national and international leader in innovation in engineering education.

"INTRODUCTION TO ENGINEERING DESIGN" AS AN ENGINEERING MODEL FOR OUTREACH

• A strength of Maryland's "Introduction to Engineering Design" is that it is well suited for other schools.
• "Introduction to Engineering Design" is a key element of the Women in Engineering Program of the Clark School of Engineering in their summer residence program for high school women interested in engineering.
• During the local and national scale-up of ENES 100, Maryland's team worked in collaboration with other freshmen engineering ECSEL schools, specifically, Penn. State, Howard University, City College of New York, Morgan State University, and the University of Washington. This academic stimulation and external political impetus aided all programs.
• Maryland assisted the Morgan State freshmen engineering program by sponsoring joint faculty development workshops and donating curriculum materials, shop equipment, and product test facilities and procedures. The product selected by Morgan State for the Fall 1994 term was windmills, and their students tested them in the Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel at the University of Maryland.
• "Introduction to Engineering Design" is a key element of Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering Program of the Clark School of Engineering in their summer residence program for high school underrepresented minorities interested in science and engineering.
• Maryland is actively working to extend the model to local colleges and community colleges. In 1993, Maryland offered a training workshop for faculty from other Maryland colleges. As a result, the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore now offers ENES 100. Plans are underway to implement ENES 100 variants at Montgomery Community College and Prince George's Community College.
• "Introduction to Engineering Design" is a key element Institute for Systems Research in their summer residence program for high school students interested in engineering.
• In 1995, the School expanded its high school outreach activities by entering into a collaboration with Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, an enterprise "engineering and science high school." This academic year, a Maryland faculty member and a Poly teacher are jointly teaching the "Introduction to Engineering Design" course at Poly's campus to all of the Advanced Engineering students. The students are working on the same project as the Maryland freshmen, and the Poly students will test their products at the Maryland campus at the end of the year.
• A high school physics teacher from Montgomery County Public School System was on campus last year to observe the ENES 100 course. This teacher developed a curriculum plan for a high school offering. It is being offered as a pilot course and we look forward towards a county-wide scale-up in 1997-98.
• Negotiations are also underway with another neighboring county's public school system for ways to collaborate between our ENES 100 program and the county's engineering college prep. and technology prep. tracks. This project is also aimed at a 1997-98 deliverable.

The Maryland team has also helped other major four-year institutions adopt similar ' lntroduction to Engineering Design" programs. In addition to giving seminars at Penn. State University, University of Washington, University of California at Berkeley, Air Force Academy, University of Pittsburgh, the University of Missouri at Rolla, Duke University, University of Colorado at Boulder, Washington State University, and the SUCCEED coalition, the Maryland team has hosted visiting faculty from the University of Wisconsin, Texas A & M, and the University of Pittsburgh, and all parties exchange product ideas. Maryland's contribution to the Wisconsin program was summarized by the acting coordinator of its program, Prof. John G. Webster:

"In the Spring of 1994, we decided to create a freshman engineering design course for the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which we implemented in the Fall 1994. We gathered information that was available and found that by far the best information was created by Tom Regan in the form of papers in the Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference, presentations by him at these conferences, documents created by the University of Maryland describing this course, and course notes created for students in this course."

SUMMARY

The Maryland team of senior and junior faculty and staff have developed a process in which critical engineering design and manufacturing skills are introduced to engineering students. This process employs a team of faculty, graduate students, senior undergraduate students, and staff to create a diverse learning environment in which engineering students participate in product realization processes. In the case of the first engineering course, the students take the product realization journey from the conceptual developmental stage to the manufacturing and testing phases of a prototype product. The results of this program have been overwhelmingly positive, as measured by customer surveys and focused interviews. The enrollment statistics are shown in Appendix II. The ENES 100 course model has also proved very effective as an outreach vehicle; outreach programs are underway at numerous four-year and two-year colleges and a high school, and more programs are being planned. Frank L. Huband, Executive Director of ASEE, has summarized the effect of Maryland's program early in its development in an editorial in the May 1993 issue of Prism [5], "Maryland design projects represent the beginnings of a revolution - or maybe something more like a quest - to reform engineering education."

APPENDIX I

ENES l00 Textbook Table of Contents

Introduction to Engineering Design

- Book I Solar Desalination
- Book 2 Weighing Machines

Part I Introduction and Design Product

Part II Engineering Graphics
a. Three-View Drawings
b. Pictorial Deawing
c. Tables and Graphs

Part III Software Applications
a. CAD Key
b. Microsoft Excel
c. Power Point
d.World Wide Web

Part IV Product Development
a. Development Teams
b. A Product Development Process

Part V Communications
a. Technical Reports
b. Design Briefings

APPENDIX II

ENES 100 Enrollment Statistics, University of Maryland, College Park

REFERENCES

1 . Dally, J. W., and G. M. Zhang. "A Freshman Engineering Design Course", J. Eng. Ed., 82, 2, 83-91, (1993).

2. Regan, T. M. and P. A. Minderman, Jr., "Engineering Design for 600 Freshman - A Scale-up Success", Proc. of the Frontiers in Education Conference, 56-60, Crystal City, VA, (1993).

3. Fines, J. F., T. M. Regan, and K. K. Johnson, "Building Community Through a Freshman Introduction to Engineering Design Course: The ECSEL Teaching Fellows Program", Proc. of the ASEE Conference, Anaheim, CA, 2358-2362, (1995).

4. Dally, J. W. in collaboration with T.M. Regan, Introduction to Engineering Design, Book I - Solar Desalination; Book 2 - Weighing Machines, College House Enterprises, LLC, 5713 Glen Cove Drive, Knoxville, TN 37919 (1997).

5. Meade, J., "Change Is in the Wind", ASEE PRISM, 2, 9, 20-24, (May 1993).

Back to Table of Contents