NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Main Menu Session 2325 Cumulative Knowledge and the Teaching of Engineering Design Processes Sven G. Bilén, Richard F. Devon, and Gül E. Okudan Engineering Design and Graphics Division The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802 1. Introduction The engineering design process, whether implicitly or explicitly employed, is central to the practice of engineering. Because of this, and because of pressures from the economy and ABET, engineering programs have made an increasing commitment to teaching design and the question “What is design?” is being addressed more and more successfully. One can now see a partial consensus around a new set of ideas that are closely related to the process of product design and development employed by industry. This allows us to employ a pedagogical construct that is standard in other areas of the engineering curriculum: cumulative knowledge. Our students follow curricular paths that are full of necessary prerequisites, but generally not with respect to the design curriculum. We need to identify a cumulative learning process in design from the first course to the first job. The ABET definition of engineering design is “the process of devising a system, component, or process to meet desired needs.”1 The design-related requirements that ABET places on U.S. engineering programs for accreditation state that a curriculum must include most of the following features: · development of student creativity; · use of open-ended problems; · development and use of modern design theory and methodology; · formulation of design problem statements and specifications; · consideration of alternative solutions; · feasibility considerations; · production processes; · concurrent engineering design; and · detailed system descriptions. When providing design projects, ABET also indicates that the design experience should: · include a variety of realistic constraints, such as economic factors, safety, reliability, aesthetics, ethics, and social impact; Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society from Engineering Education Main Menu

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Session 2625 The Pedagogy of Design Richard Devon, Denise Dorricott The Pennsylvania State University Abstract Contemporary society is characterized by an unprecedented rate of change. Such a high rate of change means that the development and application of knowledge under (new) problematic situations is what we do the most. A broad, and current, conception of engineering design includes methods for applying knowledge that are of great relevance for a range of human activities far wider than that usually covered by engineering design. It is suggested that pedagogy is one of those activities that can benefit greatly by being informed by design methods. Thus, we can prepare all students for a changing world by teaching them the norms and methods of design through a pedagogy which embraces those norms and methods. The theoretical and research support for such a pedagogy is also presented. Social Change Technology is one of the forces that drives social change, and it seems to be doing so at an increasing rate. It led to the transition from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy to a service economy. Now, with massive corporate re-engineering laying off hundreds of thousand of white collar workers, a new order may be emerging.1 This time it is information technology that is the driving force. Changing one’s job more often is only part of the modern scene. Restructuring the organizations where people work is another. In a survey of 12,000 managers in 6 countries, Kanter found that 36-71% of the mangers said that there had been a major restructuring in the last two years.2 The figure for the United States was 59%. And many of the managers in the United States responded affirmatively to questions whether there had been a reduction in employment (31%), or an internal expansion (26%), or a merger, divestiture, or acquisition (35%).3 Regardless of whether we keep our jobs and or experience restructuring, our job descriptions change continuously. Information technology is the main reason for this as the half life of much of the software our work is embedded in seems to have a half life of barely a year. Global forces also are immensely influential in changing our lives. Global economic competition has led to many changes in the nature of work.4 The end of the Cold War and global penetration and integration of national economies have triggered many highly informed commentaries on the “twilight of sovereignty” thesis that nation states are rapidly losing their influence on people’s lives.5 Information technology is a key here, too, with the quantity of global messages and data flows increasing by many orders of magnitude over the last few decades.6 These changes, and many others relating to politics and social differentiation, create problematic situations wherein people need to get together to define the problems and to develop options for dealing with them - although they do not always react this way. Design, in the broad sense, then, is a profound constituent of our culture. Done well, it is of great value. And, if we want it to be done well, it should be taught and practiced in our educational institutions. 1996 ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings

Much of the world of engineering has been absorbed by, and is driven by, the global economy. An engineering leadership course has been adapted to capture some of this reality by incorporating globally distributed, virtual teams. The international economy, however, is permeated by a mix of cultures. This paper addresses how cultural influences occur in the global teams, and an experimental method to evaluate intercultural influences is presented. The method is a learning experience for the students and the resulting data are of analytical value to both students and faculty.Engineering undergraduate students at a university in US worked together with undergraduate students from Europe and the Middle East. These teams were tasked, within an academic semester, to develop conceptual engineering and business solutions for remote customers. Students collaborated with their partners in other countries and with remote customers only by way of electronic media during a semester at the US university. During this period, international student groups experienced the challenges of establishing effective working relationships over long distances and maintaining their teams' cohesion over the duration of the project. Team work can be improved if students learn to appreciate the ways in which the team members' cultural preferences will affect the team's decision-making and performance. An evaluation instrument was developed and it is being tested during the current semester. First, an initial evaluation stage was applied at the beginning of the semester, before students at three universities got to know each other and began their joint project work. At the end of semester, upon conclusion of the project work, students in all three locations will complete a final evaluation stage of the instrument. This pre and post assessment may help them understand how cultural interactions will have influenced team performance during the project, and to what extent they may have been affected through exposure to other worldviews and by responding to the demands of their projects.

How can we understand design in a global economy and prepare engineering students to play creative leadership roles? Further, what can we do through research to re-conceptualize design ideas, methods, and processes in creative ways that raises productivity and improves the lives of people throughout the world? The authors address these questions by discussing the Prestige Consortium that was established to advance global design education through the combined resources of seven universities in four countries.

We report our preliminary findings on the evaluation of Tablet PC technology use and its impact on learning across a variety of undergraduate and graduate classes from four technology and engineering disciplines at The Pennsylvania State University. Our assessment model is grounded in both "task-technology fit" and "social learning" theories, allowing us to evaluate the influence of Tablet PC technology characteristics, classroom task characteristics, and the role of social influence (e. g., classmates and team members) on the extent of Tablet PC use and its implications on students' learning. Preliminary results from one undergraduate engineering course and one graduate technology course show that about 65% of students in a design-oriented course found that Tablet PC use enhanced their learning experience while only 35% of students in a non-design-oriented course thought similarly. In both courses, nearly 50% of students found their classmates were helpful in their learning to use the Tablet PC. Preliminary regression results show that the level of task-technology fit seems to positively influence students' use of the Tablet PC and that social influence positively influences students' learning gain as the result of Tablet PC use.

Professionals who work in conceptual design spaces have very different communication needs than those who work in design spaces for detail design. In the conceptual design stage, people, ideas and technologies are typically mobile, fluid and distributedÐeven when relatively co-located. While our approach is exploratory, we hope that this endeavour can help organize a new family of techniques and ideas in the engineering design community. Some key concepts that we deploy are conceptual design, informal graphics, rapid graphical communication and optimal ignorance in the graphical communication process. We will illustrate what we mean by describing a few new methods such as feature-based sketching and edited/annotated photos. We will also discuss preliminary trials using new mobile technologies, such as digital ink pens since 2004, and our research plans for student design teams using Tablet PCs.

In this paper, we will draw upon a decade of experience of running global engineering programs in order to examine the nature of global design and how to teach it. We have run cross-national, bi-lingual design teams for eight years; industry tours in France for 5 years; established a global internship and cooperative education program; an international engineering certificate program; and helped establish a consortium for teaching global design of seven universities in four countries: Prestige. We have also twice taught a senior global design course, the second time with two industry executives - one of whom, Peter Olfs (a coauthor), is a retired executive from a German multinational, Siemens, and the other, Audrey Russo, is from Alcoa, a US multinational. Throughout this period we have been vexed by the question: what is global design? We have been looking at the way the practice of design is changing to embrace international and foreign standards, varied design cultures, distributed teams, the 24-hour clock, global markets, global supply chains, and cultural diversity with both its creative and its inhibitive effects. Because of the rapid and transformative nature of globalization, we believe that we have no choice about including an understanding of these processes in any global design course. Perhaps later, the global socio-technical systems will be better understood and more stable, and we can revert to a focus that is more solely technical. The question of what is global design raises complex issues, but we think we can show that understanding them is important to engineering education and that design education - particularly innovative design education - may be far more important than is generally understood. We will present our case by first examining the significance of design in the global economy and then discussing the role of the global economy in design.

Technology is human behavior that transforms society and transforms the environment. Design is the cornerstone of technology. It is how we solve our problems, fulfill our needs, shape our world, change the future, and create new problems. Front extraction to disposal in the life-cycle of a product, the design process is where we make the most important decisions; the decisions that determine most of the final product cost, and the decisions that determine most of the ethical costs and benefits. It is quintessentially an ethical process. Ethics is not an appendage to design but an integral part of it, and we advocate using the moral imagination to draw out the ethical implications of a design [1]. We will stress and develop the social ethics paradigm, because design is an iterative social process for making technical and social decisions that may itself be designed at each stage with different people at the table, different information flows, different normative relationships, different authority structures, and different social and environmental considerations in mind [2]. Despite the considerable recent growth in the literature and teaching of engineering ethics, it is constrained unnecessarily by focusing primarily on individual ethics using virtue, deontological, and consequentialist ethical theories. In contrast, the social ethics method requires an examination of the social arrangements for making decisions that is particularly relevant to the iterative, decision making, design process. Different social arrangements may be made for making any decision, each of which arrangement embodies different ethical considerations and implications. Dewey argued in much the same way for a scientific and experimental approach to ethics in general: 'What is needed is intelligent examination of the consequences that are actually effected by inherited institutions and customs, in order that there may be intelligent consideration of the ways in which they are to be intentionally modified in behalf of generation of different consequences.' [3]. The social ethics paradigm that we will unfold owes much to the pragmatist thought of John Dewey.

This paper is based on the premise that the design ideas and methods that cut across mostfields of engineering, herein called integrated design, have grown rapidly in the last two or three decades and that integrated design now has the status of cumulative knowledge. This is old news for many, but a rather limited approach to teaching design knowledge is still common in the United States and perhaps elsewhere. In many engineering departments in the United States, students are only required to have a motivational and experiential introductory design course that is followed several years later by an experiential and discipline-specific capstone course [1]. Some limitations of the capstone approach, such as too little and too late, have been noted [2]. In some departments, and for some students, another experiential design course may be taken as an elective. A few non-design courses have an experiential design project added following a design across the curriculum approach. However, design education may often be only 5-10% of the required engineering undergraduate curriculum. We identify several issues. First, experience alone is not enough, and we suggest the need for re-organizing the design curriculum to include more design knowledge. Second, 5-10% of the curriculum may not be enough time devoted to what 30% of the students will be doing upon graduation or adequate to cover what now constitutes design knowledge (unpublished alumni data from Penn State University and the University of Michigan). Third, design research and design education are not well connected, although some new subjects appear to run counter to this pattern. Working from a modified version of the categorization of design research by Finger and Dixon [3, 4], we attempt to sketch the universe of engineering design scholarship. We then discuss the content of about 15 leading design texts that we have examined as an indication of what design educators may be teaching. Further, we quantitatively review some disparate models of design education in Europe and the United States to help reveal the scope of what is possible. The authors are members of a new international consortium, Prestige, which is designed to prepare students to work in the global economy by developing learning opportunities in global product design such as: web resources; virtual, cross-national, design teams; and global internship experiences in projects and industries (http://cede.psu.edu/Prestige/). Activities such as creating web resources in design make the present paper a useful endeavor, as do the new design programs that are emerging at two partner institutions (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/Product-design/, http:// cede.psu.eduled/).

1 Jane D. Pollard, School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK, J.D.Pollard@leeds.ac.uk 2 Richard Devon, Engineering Design & Graphics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, duf@psu.edu 3 Alison McKay, School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK, A.McKay@leeds.ac.uk 4 Sven G. Bilén, Engineering Design & Electrical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, sbilen@psu.edu Abstract  There is a growing need for engineering graduates to have an appreciation for the issues that must be addressed when working on international collaborative projects. By combining this appreciation with the experience of working in virtual teams, students can develop skills that will enable them to perform effectively in such settings. This paper describes a collaborative effort involving an industrysponsored design project that was common to the introductory design course in mechanical engineering at University of Leeds and the introductory design course taken by almost all engineering students at Penn State University. Various forms of information technology were used for the collaboration and at least one hour of overlap was scheduled for team audio–visual conferencing each week. In this project the attitudes of the students to international virtual teams and the collaborative technologies were tested. The project reported here is part of an ongoing initiative between the two universities with the goal of establishing cost-effective mechanisms by which large numbers of students can experience and benefit from working as members of international teams.

A case is made for augmenting individual‐based engineering ethics with a social ethics of technology framework. A social ethics approach takes as problematic the mutable social arrangements for decision making in technology. The example of the design group is used. It is suggested that this expanded approach is more relevant to technology decision‐making, which is normally done collectively, than individual ethics alone. Recent changes in the social relations of industry are discussed as evidence that this expanded approach may be well received in the workplace.

A French and an American University collaborated in the Fall of 1997 to run a design project using teams of French and American Students.The project was carried out using many different forms of information technology, including A-V conferencing.The students in the winning team were given the airfare to visit each other.The main problems were scheduling meetings and access to labs.The next most important problems had to do with developing technological resources and technological compatibility and the options currently available are discussed.Cultural differences, while not large, were present and some aspects were measured before and after the project.The project itself, which was industry based, was entirely successful.Even more important were the institutional changes that took place in both institutions.This approach will be used in the future using a variety of engineering schools around the world.

With the globalization of the economy, it is becoming increasingly important for engineering and technology graduates to have international and cultural opportunities and experiences as part of their undergraduate curricula. This paper reports on the value of using a multi-faceted collaboration to generate relevant, diverse, and cost effective experiences for faculty and students. And, while many opportunities exist for engineering students, only a few are currently available for technology students and faculty. We have built a collaboration that provides opportunities for both. Further, we will even report on a project that was both international and between engineering and technology students. Over the past five years, a collaboration has developed between the Penn State School of Engineering Technology and Commonwealth Engineering (SETCE) and the Institut Universitaire Technologie (IUT) on the Béthune campus of the Université d’Artois in northern France. It now includes faculty exchanges, student exchanges, short term student industrial placements, joint conferences, seminars and, most recently, joint team projects . Many of these activities utilize videoconferencing and other electronic technologies, which are critical to the goal of having costeffective programs. The symbiotic relationships among the different facets of the collaboration have proven very beneficial as each new activity is supported and enriched by elements of the previous activities. Rationale for Internationalization of the Curricula: The world is changing in fundamental ways, and as educators we must be responsive to these changes. We are moving rapidly into a networked society, in which old and familiar institutions are losing their power, including the nation state itself . Furthermore, the economy is more and more based on information 3 nd services. Almost all the major corporations have now dispersed their operations around the world. The corporate organization is being flattened and powers dispersed. Employees at all levels are becoming more empowered. Relationships are increasingly functional and lateral rather than institutional and hierarchical, and they may involve employees located around the globe. In engineering, time to market is becoming the primary driving force and solutions to problems are

Establishing international collaborations between engineering education programs often entails a number of different activities, none of which are easy to establish or maintain. It is easy to lose sight of the goals. This paper suggests using student outcomes as a way of assessing and focusing these collaborations. The topic will be addressed using the experiences and data from a 5-year collaboration between the Universite d'Artois in France and Penn Sate University in the USA. Anecdotal data will be used from students who have engaged in collaborative design projects, in discussions of ethics, and who have had cross-national co-operative experiences. Key issues studied will be the positive role of cross-cultural differences, the preparatory role of such student experiences for working in the global economy, and the ability of information technology to internalize the in-house engineering curriculum. (Author) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Student Outcomes of International Collaborations Richard Devon and Wayne Hager School for Engineering Technology and Commonwealth Engineering Penn State University University Park, PA 16802, USA Abstract Jacques Lesenne and Dominique SaintiveJacques Lesenne and Dominique Saintive Institut Universitaire de Technologie

Two hundred eighty-three engineering students were given a mental rotation test at the beginning and end of their first-year engineering course, and again several years later, to assess the relationship between spatial visualization skill and retention in engineering. No relationship was found between mental rotation task scores and retention in engineering, or with any engineering major, or was a relationship found between retention and improvement in spatial visualization skills during the first-year course. However, results indicated that the first-year engineering course in design and graphics was able to reduce the gender gap in the mental rotation scores to negligible levels. Thus, the two results suggest that the gender gap in spatial visualization skills for this population is remedial and, in any case, has no effect on retention in engineering.