Designing A Sequence Of Design Courses To Improve Student Performance And Retention At A Minority Institution

This paper describes the process of creating a sequence of design courses in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at California State University, Northridge. The overarching goals of the course sequence are to address and improve student performance and retention challenges unique to minority institutions by using the Conceive-DesignImplement-Operate (CDIO) framework as the context for engineering education. This framework facilitated a systems engineering design process by benchmarking and formulating the skills, knowledge, and attitudes desired by stakeholders (industry, faculty, students) as requirements for the design, engaging freshman students early and continuously in the program with continuity in the courses and relaxation of prerequisites, establishing mutually supporting contents and proficiency in skill levels among the courses, integrating the teaching of personal and interpersonal skills into the design projects, using active and experiential learning techniques, and planning for the laboratory infrastructure to support the design projects. The outcome of the curriculum design process is a sequence of design courses that meets the requirements and provides the basis for spearheading an NSF-funded project to generalize the framework to include other minority institutions in California.