DESIGN WORKSHOP FOR ONTARIO ENGINEERING COMPETITION

The annual Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) challenges participants from Ontario engineering schools to identify solutions to challenges experienced by the engineering profession. The competition includes six competition categories: Junior Team Design, Senior Team Design, Parliamentary Debate, Engineering Communications, Consulting Engineering, and Innovative Design. OEC is the regional competition to qualify for the Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC), with the top two placing teams in each category qualifying to participate in the CEC. The University of Waterloo (UW) has held internal competitions to select the debate and technical speaking competitors for many years. The competitors for the innovative design are selected based on a brief proposal. Several years ago, the Engineering Society introduced the Waterloo Engineering Competition (WEC), held twice annually in the Spring and Fall, to select teams to compete in the Junior Team Design, Senior Team Design, and Consulting categories for OEC. In an attempt to provide more guidance to the WEC winners prior to their participation in OEC, the six winning teams were invited to participate in a design workshop. A discussion of the design workshop and student feedback for the past two years will be discussed. A comparative study between the two workshop offerings will be used for future improvements of the WEC and pre-OEC workshop.