Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Engineering Technologies, Safety, and Construction

Publication Date

6-23-2013

Abstract

Our research question focused on how previous student experience, like a job internship, affects an ability to demonstrate engineering design skills. Principal student experience focused on prior industrial experience (e.g. internships), but also included annual project participation (e.g. ASME Design Challenge Teams). The scope of this effort included the creation and application of a design activity, resulting in documents that were evaluated with a metric. The activity focused on the effect of material selection and analysis with regard to ‘design performance’. Creating these activities, and using them to assess design skills is the novel aspect of this effort. Two classes (one in MET - Mechanical Engineering Technology, and one in EET -Electronics Engineering Technology) performed the design activity. The ET professors facilitated the activity during a normal class period. After the activity, the professors independently evaluated the team documents using a design metric (e.g. RADD – Requirements, Analysis, Documentation, Drawings). A correlation was found between previous internship experience and an increased ability to design and document this skill. This correlation appeared in both MET and EET disciplines. There were consistent results between the faculty members, using the RADD metric. A conclusion from this work is that participation in internships as an undergraduate positively contributes to students' design abilities.

Comments

This paper was originally presented at the 120th ASEE Conference & Exposition, which took place in Atlanta, GA on June 23-26, 2013. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Journal

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Rights

© 2013 American Society for Engineering Education.

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