Using Insights From Non Engineers To Improve Introduction To Engineering Via Functional Analysis

This work describes an effort to identify and utilize insights from non-engineering students in technological literacy courses to identify themes that may enliven introduction to engineering courses. Beginning engineering students may have interests more closely aligned with their non-engineer peers than current engineering professionals. Technological literacy courses on a number of campuses have established that explaining technology from a “how things work,” perspective captivates the interest of a broad range of students. This “how things work” approach is characterized by a focus on technology familiar to the students in their everyday life, use of visual and graphical explanations such as concept maps, and inclusion of information that helps to establish a sense of empowerment upon understanding the technology. Incorporating this “how things work” approach into introduction to engineering will help achieve engineers that exhibit “practical ingenuity,” and an ability to communicate technical issues to non-engineers, two critical attributes of the Engineer of 2020 as identified by the National Academy of Engineering. This work suggests that the visual and concept map approach is analogous to the engineering design technique of functional analysis or functional decomposition. Functional analysis provides a mechanism to discuss how things work with engineering students that is rooted in established engineering design methodology. Additionally, important devices or components in familiar technology can be treated as sub-functions in the functional analysis context. As these sub-functions consistently reappear throughout products or processes developed by the various engineering disciplines, authentic engineering knowledge can be introduced to introductory engineering students. Initial implementation of this approach in an Introduction to Engineering course at Hope College is outlined.