Cumulative Knowledge And The Teaching Of Engineering Design Processes

The engineering design process, whether implicitly or explicitly employed, is central to the practice of engineering. Because of this, and because of pressures from the economy and ABET, engineering programs have made an increasing commitment to teaching design and the question “What is design?” is being addressed more and more successfully. One can now see a partial consensus around a new set of ideas that are closely related to the process of product design and development employed by industry. This allows us to employ a pedagogical construct that is standard in other areas of the engineering curriculum: cumulative knowledge. Our students follow curricular paths that are full of necessary prerequisites, but generally not with respect to the design curriculum. We need to identify a cumulative learning process in design from the first course to the first job.