Project-Based Learning: Teaching Engineering Design Not Tinkering

Engineering educators are continually faced with the challenge of supplying employers with young engineers who possess the skills necessary to analyze and solve real industrial problems. Industry has specified, and ABET reinforced, that mechanical engineering graduates need to be able to accurately apply design analysis and mechanical design principles within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability. In addition, students need to function on multidisciplinary teams, have good communication skills, and use modern engineering tools to solve problems. These requirements suggest that engineering courses should be using real life project-based learning throughout the curriculum. Research has also indicated that a good percentage of the high quality students who are dropping out of engineering are doing so because they have either lost interest or actually come to dislike studying it. This point provides another argument for including project-based learning in engineering courses, and also provides an argument for having our students experience the complete design, build, and test stages of a design project. However, there can be a danger in including all aspects of design development in project-based learning assignments. Students tend to concentrate more on the build and test issues and ignore some of the critical aspects of the design work. This can lead to our students becoming backyard inventors and tinkerers rather than mechanical engineers. This paper describes an effort to address two issues using project-based learning in mechanical design courses. First, it makes an argument for and describes the details of using project-based learning. It explains through examples how project-based learning can be an effective way to better connect good students to mechanical engineering and produce high quality mechanical engineers ready to solve mechanical design problems. Second, it discusses the issue of insuring that the project-based learning projects are achieving the desired outcome— good design engineers not tinkerers. Assessment is provided in the form of student feedback and individual student project evaluation as judged by faculty and industry representatives. A historical perspective of using project-based learning in two different mechanical design courses is used to provide evidence as to some of the pitfalls that can arise.