文档介绍：DESIGNING A FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING COURSE
Karl A. Smith
Department of Civil Engineering
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Abstract
How to Model It: Building Models to Solve Engineering Problems is a first-quarter first year course that focuses on problem formulation, design and construction of models, and drawing conclusions from modeling results. Students work in small teams on several problems selected from various engineering contexts. They learn how to puter-based modeling tools, including spreadsheets and equation solvers. The entire course is problem-based, that is, the emphasis is on formulating and solving problems.
The bases for the design of How to Model It--engineering, engineering design, modeling, cooperative learning, teamwork, etc.--are described and related to the operation of the course. Examples of the slightly open-ended problems that are used to engage the students are described. Concepts and heuristics that students learn are discussed. Finally, the active learning approach to getting students to create, to design, and to think is described.
From
DESIGN EDUCATION IN METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS ENGINEERING:
Engineering Design in Courses and Curricula
Mark E. Schlesinger & Donald E. Mikkola (Eds.)
The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
1993
Introduction
Following a recent teaching assistant training session, one of the graduate students who had taken my course How to Model It: Building Models to Solve Engineering Problems came up and told me how much he enjoyed the course. He said my course was the only one in which he had gotten open-ended problems to formulate and solve in a cooperative group. Then he said "In your course was the only time a professor asked me 'What do you think?'" I was simultaneously gratified and horrified. This graduate student had just spent four years pleting an undergraduate engineering degree, and only in his first quarter did he get open-ended problems that he had to formulate and sol