Back Presented at the 2000 Gulf-Southwest Section Conference

EGR 3380 Engineering Design I (Junior Design)

at Baylor University

Byron Newberry, Jim Farison

Baylor University

I. Introduction

As in many engineering undergraduate programs, Baylor University undergraduate engineering students are introduced to engineering design in a required first-semester course (EGR1301) and conclude with a required final-semester senior course (EGR 4390), with additional exposures of various types and amounts through required and elective courses involving specific technical areas. At Baylor University, the freshman and senior courses are taken in common by all engineering students.

Within this context, the focus of this paper is Baylor’s additional (common) design course (EGR 3380) required of all first-semester junior engineering students. The 2000-01 Baylor University Catalog description of this course reads: EGR 3380 Engineering Design I (prerequisite: upper division admission). Introduction to the engineering design process via team-based projects encompassing the design, construction and testing of an engineering device or system. Projects will emphasize oral, written and graphical engineering communication skills and topics related to engineering professionalism.

This junior design course was introduced at Baylor in 1992. Although the content has evolved over the years, it has been required of all engineering students throughout its 8-year history. In teams of three to five students (depending on the specific semester), electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students and mechanical engineering (ME) students proceed through the major design stages from problem specification to final compliance test, with a different project each semester.

Admittedly, as first-semester juniors the students do not have a strong technical base for engineering analysis and design. Indeed, they begin the semester having completed only Statics and Circuits (and, for the ME’s, Dynamics). However, the emphasis in junior design is on the design process: RFP, brainstorming, conceptual design, conceptual plans and specifications, subsystem design and test, engineering drawings, integration tests, design iteration, final design plans and specifications, prototype construction, compliance test, and final report. A major goal is to prepare students to enter the senior design course with experience in design and project management, allowing them to function more smoothly in the senior design course while concentrating on the more rigorous technical design and analysis that will be required in that course.

The following sections describe the course, including typical junior design projects, design process implementation and assessment tools, use of oral, written and graphical communication skills, professionalism topics and other features of the course, together with representative student course evaluations and faculty observations.

II. Context

The Department of Engineering at Baylor University currently offers a B.S.E. degree with majors in electrical and computer engineering (ECE) and mechanical engineering (ME), and all students of both majors take EGR 3380 in common. The course is team taught by two, and sometimes three, engineering faculty members, with at least one faculty member from each of the two majors. (This same staffing arrangement also applies to the senior engineering design course.)

III. Design Projects

Because the beginning juniors do not yet have broad backgrounds in specific technical subject areas, projects which allow students to exercise their ingenuity and creativity without having to rely on extensive analysis are typically chosen. Each project requires that teams of students complete the entire cycle of the design process beginning with a statement of need and continuing on through the construction, testing and evaluation of a functional prototype. In a typical semester, each student must complete two design projects: a three-to-four week mini-project (Phase 1) at the beginning of the semester followed by a larger project (Phase 2) that consumes most of the remainder of the term. Depending on the semester, the Phase 1 project may or may not be related to, or be a sub-set of, the Phase 2 project.

The most significant difference between the two phases, besides the time allotted, is that the documentation and reporting requirements for the Phase 1 project are minor compared to the Phase 2 project. In Phase 1, on the first day of class, teams are given a statement of need and are advised of a date three-to-four weeks in the future – compliance test day – on which they must demonstrate a working prototype to satisfy the statement of need. In the interval, each team is typically only required to have one formal meeting with the faculty, during which they submit and discuss sketches of their concept, and discuss their plans for implementation. Class sessions during Phase 1 are divided between formalized discussions of concepts related to the design process and informal sessions during which teams can meet, discuss their plans, and seek help from the faculty.

The students perform the majority of the construction on their projects using tools available to them in the engineering laboratories, although they do have some access to the department machinist for parts they are unable to buy or make themselves. The students purchase the materials they need at their own expense. There is no textbook required for the course, so they operate under the guideline that each individual student may spend an amount on materials during the course not to exceed the cost of an average engineering textbook.

The majority of students enter the junior design course with little or no experience using tools, little knowledge of materials, limited construction and assembly skills, and limited intuition about what types of things tend to work or not work, or can or cannot be done, both mechanically and electrically. The Phase 1 project grew out of a desire to ramp-up their skills and knowledge in these areas rather quickly in preparation for the more involved Phase 2 project. In this way, they approach Phase 2 with more confidence in their own capabilities, and with an ability to include more realistic detail in their planning during the conceptual and preliminary design stages.

For semesters in which it is unrelated to the Phase 2 project, the Phase 1 project is typically devised to model some manufacturing or materials handling process, but usually in an informal way. For example, during the spring semester of 2000, the Phase 1 project specified the design and construction of a device which will, upon a start signal, remove a golf ball from a tee centered upon a table top, transport the ball off the table, underneath the table, and up the other side of the table, and deposit it in a cup sitting a distance of one foot from the location of the tee. In addition, the ball must be delivered to the cup at a time of 10 (± 1) seconds from when it begins its travel. In solving this problem, some teams employ strictly mechanical means of transporting the ball and achieving the specified time delay. Other teams achieve the proper timing by employing electronic timers to control actuators – typically dc motors. Team size for this type of project is 3-4 people, with ECE and ME students mixed. A Phase 1 device from the fall semester of 1998 (the project was similar to the golf ball transportation described here for spring of 2000) is seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Phase 1 device from fall semester 1998

Phase 2 projects typically run for a duration of 9 weeks. In addition to the design problem being of greater complexity, the documentation and reporting requirements are much more substantial than for Phase 1. Several times in the past few years, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) national student design competition has been selected to be the fall semester Phase 2 junior design project. Student design teams have then been able to enter their devices in the regional competition in the spring. This was the case in the fall semester of 1999. The ASME competition project for the 1999-2000 school year is to design a device which will transport, fill, and cap a 1 liter plastic bottle – a problem which is modeled after a soft drink bottling process. The fall 1999 semester is an example of the case for which the Phase 1 project was a subset of the Phase 2 project. In Phase 1, each design team was responsible for developing a device to perform only one of the major functions of the overall bottling device: transporting, filling, or capping the bottle. Phase 1 projects were assigned by the faculty with each of the three functions assigned to multiple teams.

In the spring semester of 2000, the Phase 1 project is only loosely coupled with the Phase 2 project. In Phase 2, design teams must design and construct an electronic scale with which they can measure the weight of a golf ball and display the result on a digital (LCD) indicator. The Phase 1 devices for transporting the golf balls (described above) will be modified to deliver the balls to the scale. Class sessions during Phase 2 are either utilized informally for teams to plan, work, or meet with faculty, or used formally for lectures and discussions on subjects useful to the teams to further their designs, such as useful just-in-time technical subjects, computer applications, or laboratory instrumentation and methods.

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IV. Teams

Team size for the scale of projects used in Phase 1 and Phase 2 is 3-5 students. Students are assigned to teams by the faculty, insuring a balance of ECE and ME students on each team. Team assignments are changed between Phase 1 and Phase 2. Early in the semester, the faculty conduct lectures and discussions on teamwork skills, team organization, and project management. Each design team is free to adopt an organizational model with which it is comfortable. At the end of Phase 1, at the midpoint of Phase 2, and at the end of Phase 2, peer evaluations are conducted in which each student evaluates each of his or her teammates with respect to several categories in the areas of engineering skills, contribution to the team, and professional conduct. Results of these evaluations are fed back, anonymously, to the students to foster their own personal growth. The results are also used in evaluating possible deviations of individual project grades from team project grades for cases where individuals have been identified as having made significantly higher or lower contributions than expected.

V. Design Project Management

As described earlier, Phase 1 documentation and reporting requirements are minimal. Phase 2 projects, however, require weekly submittals and oral progress reports from each design team, in response to fixed milestones imposed by the faculty. These reports are typically delivered during the 3-hour laboratory session that is scheduled for the course. During those sessions, each team is scheduled for a 20-30 minute time slot in which they meet privately with the faculty. Each week, one team member is responsibility for giving a 4-6 minute formal report, dressed professionally and using visual aids – typically overhead transparencies. In that report, the speaker gives a synopsis of the current week’s submittal, describes the team’s plans for meeting future milestones, and relates any significant problems that have occurred or changes that have been made. For the remainder of the 20-30 minute time slot, the team and the faculty discuss these topics in further detail. The responsibility for speaking rotates each week so that by the end of the project, each team member has had experience with oral presentation.

The team submittals that are provided to the faculty each week by the teams vary from week to week depending on the stage of the design process. The initial submittal is a set of conceptual plans and specifications that include schematic drawings of the overall system, indicating major

Week	MONDAY		WEDNESDAY: CLASS		THURSDAY: LAB		FRIDAY
			Syllabus, Lab Safety Handout	25-Aug	Team 1 Assignments	26-Aug	Overview of Design Process	27-Aug
1			Design Notebook Guidelines		Brainstorming Session		Sketching
			Phase I RFP
	Lab Access, Tool Use, Lab Safety	30-Aug		1-Sep	Conceptual Plans & Specifications	2-Sep	Career Plan Briefing Discussion	3-Sep
2	Machine shop - Mr. Threlkeld		Open Consulting				Resumes
	Design Notebook, Daily Diary
	Effective Oral Presentations	6-Sep		8-Sep	Formal Career Plan Briefings	9-Sep	Compliance Test Discussion	10-Sep
3			Open Consulting		Resume		Career Plan Briefing Post-Analysis
	Daily Diary
	Phase I summary document	13-Sep		15-Sep	Phase 1 Compliance Test	16-Sep	Phase I Peer Evaluations & Review	17-Sep
4	Technical Writing		Open Consulting				Register at CSC
	Daily Diary
	Phase II Team Assignments	20-Sep	Teamwork Discussion	22-Sep	Brainstorming Session	23-Sep	Design Process - Conceptual Design	24-Sep
5	Phase II RFP, Phase 1 Summary		Technology Discussion				Conceptual Plans & Specifications
	Phase I summary document, Daily Diary						TurboCAD
	TurboCAD	27-Sep	TurboCAD	29-Sep	Progress Report - Conceptual Plans &	30-Sep	Design Process - Preliminary Design	1-Oct
6					Specifications		Subsystem Test
	Daily Diary						TurboCAD Exercise
		4-Oct		6-Oct	Subsystem Test	7-Oct	Preliminary Design I Plans & Specifications	8-Oct
7	Open Consulting		Open Consulting				Device Drwgs.
	Daily Diary
		11-Oct		13-Oct	Progress Report - Preliminary Design I	14-Oct	Subsystem Test	15-Oct
8	Open Consulting		Open Consulting		Plans & Specifications
	Daily Diary
	Midterm Course Evaluation	18-Oct		20-Oct	Subsystem Test	21-Oct	Preliminary Design II Plans & Specifications	22-Oct
9	Mid-project Peer Evaluation		Open Consulting				Subsystem Drwgs.
	Daily Diary
		25-Oct		27-Oct	Progress Report - Preliminary Design II	28-Oct	Integration Test	29-Oct
10	Open Consulting		Open Consulting		Plans & Specifications
	Daily Diary
	TurboCAD Isometric Drwg.	1-Nov		3-Nov	Integration Test	4-Nov	Final Design Plans & Specifications	5-Nov
11			Open Consulting				Device Isometric
	Daily Diary
		8-Nov		10-Nov	Progress Report - Final Design	11-Nov	Compliance Test Discussion	12-Nov
12	Open Consulting		Open Consulting		Plans & Specifications
	Daily Diary
		15-Nov		17-Nov	Phase 2 Compliance Test	18-Nov	Final Report	19-Nov
13	Open Consulting		Open Consulting		Poster
	Daily Diary
	Engineering Professionalism	22-Nov		24-Nov		25-Nov		26-Nov
14			THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY		THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY		THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
	Daily Diary
	Engineering Professionalism	29-Nov	Engineering Professionalism	1-Dec	Final Report	2-Dec	Peer Review	3-Dec
15							Course Evaluation
	Daily Diary
	Engineering Professionalism	6-Dec	Engineering Professionalism Exam	8-Dec		9-Dec	Legend
16							Submittals/Reports in Italics
	Daily Diary		Executive Summary, Design Notebooks				Lecture topics in normal type

Figure 2. Junior Design Semester Schedule (Fall 99)

subsystems and components and illustrating the principle of operation of the device. These drawings are accompanied by a narrative report that describes the operating principles and motivation for the proposed concept. Later submittals include increasingly detailed sets of computer-drafted drawings that illustrate subsystem assemblies with bills of materials, and detailed drawings of individual parts that must be fabricated. Electrical schematics are also required for the electrical/electronic subsystems. There is often a submittal required which documents any analytical, computational, or experimental analyses that have been performed. On some weeks, the required submittal may be a hardware prototype of some major subsystem or component of the device. At the end of the project, the submittals are a functional device to be tested for compliance with the statement of need, followed by a final written report with a complete set of drawings, parts and materials lists, analyses, and narrative description of the device. A typical semester schedule for junior design (Fall 99) is given in Figure 2.

Teams receive a grade each week on their submittals/progress report, and these weekly grades are averaged to obtain the overall team project grade. One intended consequence of this is that each step of the process is weighted equally, which means that the final hardware prototype tested on compliance test day is counted the same as any of the previous submittals – the emphasis is deliberately placed on the design process and not just the result. Overall, team projects constitute 60 % of a student’s final grade in the course – 20 % from Phase 1 and 40 % from Phase 2. The complete grade breakdown, including all graded elements of the course, is given in Table 1.

ITEM	WEIGHT
Oral/Written Communication	20 %
Design Notebook	10 %
Engineering Professionalism Assignment/Exam	10 %
Phase 1 Project – Team Grade	20 %
Phase 2 Project – Team Grade	40 %

Table 1. Grade Breakdown for EGR 3380 – Engineering Design I (Junior Design)

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VI. Emphasis on Communication

Of a student’s final grade for the course, 30 % is dependent upon oral and written communication and documentation. Of that, 20 % is in the form of a communication grade which is determined from oral presentations and written narratives, and 10 % is in the form of a design notebook grade which is derived from an archive of information the student must maintain.

As described above, in the course of the weekly team progress reports in Phase 2, each student has opportunities for oral presentation experience. These presentations reflect on the team grade for that week’s submittal. Also the individual receives from the faculty a detailed evaluation of the quality of his or her presentation, and a communication grade is recorded for that individual.

In addition to these project progress reports, early in the semester a lab session is used for what are called career plan briefings. Each student must give a 2-3 minute oral presentation on his or her educational background, employment experiences to date, and career goals and objectives. As with the oral progress reports, each student receives both a communication grade and detailed feedback about the presentation. The students are also required, in conjunction with this career plan briefing, to generate and submit a résumé, for which the faculty provide editorial advice. The results are then uploaded into the University’s Career Services Center database, allowing the students’ information to become available to potential employers for summer internships and, later on, permanent jobs.

The teams also submit various written reports from week to week which are evaluated with respect to the team project grade, but as team submittals, these do not guarantee that each team member gains writing experience. Therefore, several other means are employed to insure that each student receives experience with writing and with various forms of written documentation. These writing experiences are encompassed within a design notebook. Each student is required to maintain over the course of the semester a notebook (3 ring binder) in which he or she archives all documents pertaining to the course. The sections required within the notebook are executive summaries, daily diaries, submittals, design notes, and class notes.

The executive summaries are individually written narrative summaries of the Phase 1 and Phase 2 projects. In these, a student reflects on the course of the project, on what was learned, on how well the team functioned, and on what the student felt were his or her main contributions. These summaries are evaluated by the faculty for both quality of content and writing style, and the students are assigned communication grades for each.

Throughout the course of the semester, each student is required to maintain a daily diary of activity related to the course. On each Monday class session the faculty collect the previous week’s entries, scan them for completeness, and record their submittal. The diaries are then returned to the students who place them in their design notebooks. The diaries include information about teams meetings, trips to stores to procure materials, laboratory work sessions, time spent working or thinking individually, and reflections on progress. The diaries are required to contain daily and weekly estimates of time spent outside of class working on the projects.

The submittals section of the design notebook contains copies of all written documentation submitted by the team in response to specific assignments made by the faculty. The design notes section contains all documents generated by the team during the course of a project other than submittals. These include brainstorming ideas, minutes of team meetings, sketches, or calculations. The class notes section contains all notes taken by the student in lectures and all documents handed out by the faculty.

At the end of the semester, the faculty collect the design notebooks, review them for completeness, and assign a design notebook grade which constitutes 10 % of the final grade for the course. For cases in which there are internal problems within a team, or for which a student is rated poorly on peer evaluations, the faculty use information in the design notebooks – particularly the daily diaries – to help clarify the situation.

VII. Professional Topics

The Phase 2 project typically concludes two weeks before the end of the semester. In these remaining two weeks, the class addresses several important topics related to engineering professionalism and the engineering workplace. These may include professional registration, continuing education, professional societies and organizations, engineering ethics, discrimination and harassment, and the environmental and societal impact of engineering. The exact topics and the manner in which they are covered vary by semester. In some semesters, the faculty conduct lectures and discussions on various of these topics. In other semesters, small teams of students have been required to research one of these topics and give a presentation on it to the class. In either case, 10 % of the student’s final grade stems from the material covered during this part of the course.

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VIII. Student Assessment

Students are asked to fill out a course assessment questionnaire at midterm and at the end of the junior design course. These are in addition to the standard course evaluation that the university conducts for all courses. While the university form focuses mainly on the quality of instruction, the course questionnaires administered by the faculty concentrate on the structure of the course and the design projects. The midterm evaluation allows the faculty to make corrections if there are concerns the students have – typically related to such items as scheduling, grading, access to tools and laboratories, or areas requiring more just-in-time instruction. The end-of-term evaluation provides feedback on student perceptions of learning outcomes, appropriateness and scope of projects, and recommendations for changes.

In particular, students are asked to describe important learning outcomes, both technical and non-technical. Items most often cited as important technical outcomes include realizing the difficulties associated with the detailed design and troubleshooting of mechanical and electrical systems, experience with manufacturing processes and the use of tools, proficiency at computer aided drafting, and learning the details of the specific technologies needed for particular project.

Items most often cited as important non-technical learning outcomes include learning to work with and depend upon other people, learning to communicate both in formal ways and also within a team, learning time management skills, making decisions in the absence of complete information and making tradeoffs, and the importance of doing a good job of conceptual design.

The end-of-term survey also asks students to assess, on a 1-5 scale (5 highest), how large a contribution the junior design course has had in furthering their knowledge and abilities in the areas addressed by the A thru K criteria of ABET 2000. Of those criteria, the ones consistently receiving average scores between 4 and 5 are

Ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as analyze and interpret data

Ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs

Ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams

Ability to communicate effectively

Ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice

Ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems

In addition to feedback on the course obtained during and at the end of the course, there is a mechanism in place to obtain feedback at the end of a student’s educational experience. On exit surveys given to graduating engineering seniors, the junior design course is frequently cited in response to either the item, “List two engineering courses you feel were most useful for your engineering education,” or “Describe one or two of your best experiences in the Department.” While the course is challenging and time consuming, students tend to view it as a seminal experience in their overall educational process.

IX. Discussion

No systematic method has been employed to assess in a quantitative way the impact the junior design course has on Baylor engineering students and graduates. However, there are several heuristically deduced benefits that the faculty have discovered through the accumulated experience of 8 years of offering the course. These can be divided into three main categories: technical and professional (covered here), and motivational (discussed in next section).

The students, most for the first time in their lives, get the experience of carrying an idea through from concept to physical reality. In the process of doing this, they obtain experience with manufacturing techniques and practices, learn about materials selection, learn applications of various machine and electronic components, learn troubleshooting skills, and they apply their previously gained knowledge of computer aided drafting to the creation of complete working drawings for their designs. These are all areas in which their technical/engineering skills are advanced.

Perhaps a greater benefit of the course lies in the development of the students’ skills in many non-technical or professional areas. Of all the courses in the Baylor engineering curricula, this course provides the greatest concentration of opportunities to develop communications skills of all types, and blends and distributes the various types of communication in a holistic fashion by embedding them in the weekly milestones for the design projects. Speaking, journaling, technical writing, and archiving are all ongoing activities for the students during the semester.

Other professional areas emphasized in the course, in addition to the professional topics covered formally, are: teamwork skills, including leadership, conflict resolution, and critical evaluation of peer performance; project management skills, including adherence to deadlines and milestones, materials procurement, time management, and decision making such as concept selection and time-cost-quality tradeoffs.

X. Closing Observations

While development of the technical and professional skills discussed so far are the main programmatic objectives of the course, and are aspects of an engineering education emphasized in the ABET 2000 criteria, the faculty that have been associated with this course over the long term believe that perhaps the most significant benefit of the course has less to do with topical educational outcomes, and more to do with the motivation, retention, and morale of the students. Students typically take the junior design course in the first semester of their junior year, having just completed a lower division battery of math, science, basic engineering science, and university core courses. The junior design course provides, at a critical juncture in the student’s course of study, an opportunity to obtain a comprehensive experience of “being” an engineer.

The course has become a “rite of passage” among engineering students – those in the sophomore year looking forward to it with a mix of expectation and apprehension, and those in the latter part of the junior year looking back with satisfaction and accomplishment. Students typically invest an amount of time in the course (as many as 15-20 hours per week outside of class) that is higher than average for other courses carrying the same credit, often working together late into the night when deadlines are near. This time invested, spent mainly working with teammates, seems to create a communal bond among the juniors, who at the outset of the semester may only have been casual acquaintances, if acquainted at all. After the junior design experience, students appear to consider themselves as part of a community of engineers, rather than as students at the university majoring in engineering. If a feeling of belonging to a community – particularly one so closely associated with one’s chosen career path – is beneficial to a student’s academic performance, then the junior design course provides a medium through which to firmly establish that sense of belonging at the midpoint of the engineering educational experience.

Acknowledgements

The following additional current and former Baylor University faculty members have taught EGR 3380 Engineering Design I at Baylor University, and have made significant contributions to the development of the course: Dr. Robert Doty, Dr. James Warren, Dr. James Bargainer, Dr. Giles Willis, Dr. Steve Williams, Dr. Don Farris.

BYRON NEWBERRY

Byron Newberry is Associate Professor of Engineering at Baylor University. He joined Baylor in 1994, after serving as Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Cincinnati (1989-1994) and Research Associate at the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation, Iowa State University (1985-1988). His B.S. is in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Alabama, and his M.S. in Aerospace Engineering and Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics are from Iowa State University. He is a member of ASEE and ASME, and serves as the faculty advisor for the Baylor student section of ASME. At Baylor, he teaches basic engineering science courses, design, engineering materials, and machine design. In past summers he has directed a summer camp program in engineering and computer science for middle school girls.

JIM FARISON

Jim Farison is Professor of Engineering and chair of the Department of Engineering at Baylor University. He joined Baylor in August 1998, after serving in Electrical Engineering (1964-96) and Bioengineering (1996-98) at the University of Toledo, including a period as Dean of Engineering (1970-80). His BSEE is from the University of Toledo, and MSEE and Ph.D. are from Stanford University. He is a registered P.E. (Ohio), a senior member of IEEE, ISA and SWE, and a member of ASEE (campus representative), ASME, SPIE, SME/MVA and NSPE/PEE. At Baylor, he is teaching in signals and systems areas and in design, and is engaged in an image processing project with medical and remote sensing applications.

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