Introducing the Fundamentals of Systems Engineering to Freshman through Various Interactive Group Activities

The concepts and tools taught in an introductory course to Systems Engineering involve a mindset which is not familiar to freshman undergraduate students and is slightly different from that needed for more traditional engineering disciplines. Teaching Systems Engineering at a freshman level is challenging because students do not have work experiences to draw from to solidify the tools they are learning. In order to overcome this barrier, immersive group activities were introduced to provide a simulated context in which students can apply and learn about the benefits of Systems Engineering. Thus, the Introduction to Systems Engineering course is structured around three group projects, which collectively provide an overview of the fundamental lessons of the field. The projects are an egg drop challenge which teaches the value of upfront Systems Engineering and rapid prototyping, a LEGO MindstormsTM competition which teaches the importance of problem decomposition, testing and validation, in addition to design under operational uncertainty, and a Lean Simulation game which teaches user needs, the importance of balanced work and enterprise value. While it has been well established in the general pedagogical literature that group projects and active learning are effective teaching tools, they are not widely used in Systems Engineering for a variety of reasons. Creating realistic and accessible Systems Engineering problems is difficult in a classroom setting and coordinating effective group projects can be complex and costly. In this paper, we document our attempt to overcome these challenges and explore how they impact the student’s learning experience. First, we compare the content of our Introduction to Systems Engineering to other similar undergraduate introductory Systems Engineering classes at peer institutions to identify core differences in our approach. Second, we measure the learning progress through class observations and feedback from the students. The class observations include our perceptions of how students’ questions evolve over the semester and also the extent of their engagement. The feedback portion provides the results and analysis of a survey where students rate the projects in the course, exploring which projects successfully tied our learning objectives to their perceived knowledge of Systems Engineering.