Freshman Design Course At Ipfw

Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) is the sixth largest public university in Indiana with an enrollment of 12,000 students. Typically a commuter campus (although residence halls open in the fall of 2004) the students are a mix of part and full time students, as well as one of traditional and non-traditional types (who have been out of school for several years). The School of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science (ETCS) comprises of five departments, that of Engineering and Computer Science and three Technology departments. All engineering majors are required to take an introductory course on engineering design. The course that was offered during the fall of 2003 had students that were majoring in mechanical, electrical and computer engineering, and also a few undecided majors. This paper outlines some of the novel approaches adopted in this course. Some of the concepts were: (a) use of student teams to study a number of actual case histories at different stages of instruction as well as to perform a number of classroom activities, (b) introduction of a hands-on team project, (c) implementation of a design project in which the student teams apply the engineering design process to conceptualize a real world design problem, and (d) introduction of case studies to teach engineering design.