Flyable – Design of Fuselage for Two Seater Aircraft to be Flown by a Disabled Pilot: Learning Outcomes from Different Approaches to Lectures
Year: 2014
Editor: Erik Bohemia, Arthur Eger, Wouter Eggink, Ahmed Kovacevic, Brian Parkinson, Wessel Wits
Author: Frost, Katherine; Linda, Sara; Kovacevic, Ahmed; Rane, Sham
Series: E&PDE
Institution: City University London, UK
Section: Collaboration
Page(s): 346-352
ISBN: 978-1-904670-56-8
Abstract
EGPR (European Global Product Realisation) is an undergraduate project, which involves collaboration between 5 European universities and an industrial partner. The aim of the course is to develop students’ engineering design skills and to build confidence in being part of a team in different locations. Usually, engineering students are placed in international teams, which use videoconferencing tools to hold regular meetings and online storage facilities to share documents. Videoconferencing tools are also used to enable all students to attend lectures given by staff from the participating universities. At the end of each design phase reviews are held where each team presents and produces a report showing their main findings or deliverables. The design process and deliverables from the EGPR project held from February to June 2013 are explained in this report. Lectures delivered by staff through two EGPR projects have been evaluated. The first project involved only engineering students and lectures were task-based according to the design stage that the students were at. The second project involved both engineering and product design students, and the lecture content was initially more focused on developing team-building skills. It was decided to investigate how this difference in lecture content affected student satisfaction and their learning outcomes, as students who participated in both projects noticed a great difference between the two. A questionnaire was distributed among students who had taken either or both of the EGPR projects mentioned. Information gathered included an overall rating of the lectures; a choice of preferred lectures; and reasons for the certain lectures being preferred. The results of the questionnaire showed that overall satisfaction was much higher for the first project, as the lectures helped guide the students through the design process step-by-step. The lectures of the second project were found to be enjoyable and interesting to students, but they struggled to apply the material to their own situation.
Keywords: Engineering design process, international team, task-based, team-based, lecture content