A System Design Integration Approach (Sdia) Integrated Into The Freshman Year

This research paper demonstrates that design can be easily introduced at the freshman engineering year with great success and can be continuously integrated at every level of the undergraduate curriculum. “Attachment A” summarizes the teaching/learning methodology for the first-year ECE 1551/1552 course sequence required for the freshman electrical/computer engineering and computer science students. This design system approach [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] is developed by the main author as the result of his involvement in the “Total Quality Management” revolution of the 1980s. It was a conscious effort to develop a design system methodology to obtain a solution by optimal means. It requires a new teaching methodology and an effort to overcome the unavailability of textbooks to cover this design system approach. The SDIA is fun and exciting for both students and instructors, as each individual student becomes a contributor and co-owner of the course. During a typical class meeting, the SDIA promotes the evolution and continuous improvement of the course structure by introducing new ideas, posing new challenges, and requesting student feedback—all of which combine to yield extraordinary results. As its name implies, the SDIA is a process that aims to produce optimum design system results by meeting stated objectives, while keeping time and resource usage to a minimum. The word “analysis” is never brought up in the course sequence. In addition, a variety of technologies are used throughout the duration of the course to implement and simulate a particular design, however the underlying approach is technology independent. The SDIA succeeds where traditional educational approaches fail, and above all its greatest strength is its compatibility with any engineering discipline. “Attachment B” summarizes the SDIA methodology which can be broken down into two phases—the first of which is used to obtain the mathematical model of the system from the stated requirements. This resultant model is then used during the second phase to implement the actual system. Under the first phase, students begin by envisioning themselves as actually being inside the box trying to obtain and describe a solution in an algorithmic model. This inspires the idea of describing the algorithmic model in a state diagram format followed by a state assignment that ultimately results in the mathematical model. Implementation is the next and final phase, where the system is designed without any degree of fragmentation. Finally, when this approach is compared with that of a traditionally fragmented one, the student gains a true appreciation for the power of the SDIA. “Attachment C” summarizes the effectiveness of the system design methodology used in the SDIA approach. Index term – system thinking, wholeness, integration, segmentation