Using The “Wow” Factor To Actively Engage Engineering Students

It is a widely recognized trend today that students spend less and less time on their studies. Surveys of American college students document this reduction in study time and many educators assert that the average student currently spends far less time studying than is optimal for the assimilation of engineering concepts. This is especially true at a military academy, where highly structured time schedules scatters study time through out the day, and where students face all of the same hi-tech distractions as their civilian counterparts. To compete for time in this new study-scape, the study of engineering concepts must be re-cast into exercises that entice students with interesting and even entertaining results. In this paper we describe several projects that have been incorporated into the ME curriculum at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) to keep students engaged in their studies and improve the acquisition of engineering concepts as well as design skills. In this paper the authors examine case-study projects used at VMI and, based on their experiences with these projects, conclude with a set of key characteristics that course projects should have to succeed as educational instruments.