MADE: A Multidisciplinary Computational Framework for Aerospace Engineering Education

Contribution: A multidisciplinary computational framework to support undergraduate engineering education is introduced. It is posed as an open-source tool that students can use to understand and apply computational methods commonly required in engineering problems. Background: This framework development is motivated by past experiences of teaching courses as segregated disciplines within an aerospace engineering curriculum. Reviewing pedagogical approaches shows that current university practices do not adequately emphasize or demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary relationships. This framework is also motivated by the apparent need for engineering graduates to study these relationships by learning computational engineering via programming, in which proficiency is becoming increasingly important for their future careers. Intended Outcomes: 1) To effectively teach multidisciplinary engineering concepts to students via the integration of cross-disciplinary content from various courses and 2) To improve computational and programming literacy among undergraduate students in engineering studies. Application Design: A multidisciplinary design optimization approach is adopted to develop a framework called Multidisciplinary Aircraft Design Education (MADE), which provides functionalities for studying engineering disciplines within a computational programming environment. MADE makes the related course contents more accessible and intuitive to students by using reactive computational notebooks in lectures, tutorials, and assignments. Findings: MADE is assessed based on the learning outcomes and feedback from undergraduate students of two courses within an aerospace engineering curriculum. These assessments indicate an improved understanding of multidisciplinary concepts and their applications via computational programming, as reflected in the positive responses from the students.