The competence to innovate is critical for engineering students, as work environments and society are constantly changing. However, innovation competence is often not (explicitly) part of teaching, and teachers struggle to teach students this competence. To address this problem, a course to train undergraduate engineering students' innovation…

Topology optimization (TO) has been a useful engineering tool over the last decades. The benefits of this optimization method are several, such as the material and cost savings, the design inspiration, and the robustness of the final products. In addition, there are educational benefits. TO is a combination of mathematics, design, statics, and the…

Contribution: Prior studies have shown that project-based learning (PBL) is an effective approach on engineering education. This study further identifies the impact of a design thinking (DT) integrated PBL approach on the college students' learning motivation and creativity. Background: A well-developed robot and its project often require…

Fostering 'experiential learning' in real-life situations is a critical task for engineering educators when creating constructively aligned learning activities. The paper proposes an approach to measure the students' perception of learning in Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate activities conducted outside the classroom. The approach is based on the…

Engineering programs need to prepare the next generation of engineering professionals for tackling sustainability challenges that impact the social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. This paper describes how the sustainable design concept was integrated into a freshman-level engineering gateway course that emphasized creative…

Contribution: This article illustrates how to design and implement a Design Thinking project in a biomedical instrumentation course as a bridge between education and industry. It also presents the effect of the project on student perceptions of their learning gains and their postgraduate preparedness. Background: Biomedical engineering continues…

In product design, there is often a disconnect between the engineers creating the product and the marketing team determining the best characteristics for the product. The research areas of "design for market systems" and "decision-based design" seek to bridge that disconnect through quantitative approaches that facilitate…

Threshold concept models offer a useful way of understanding aspects of design education. A threshold concept represents a gateway, or portal, to a more developed understanding and level of capability (Meyer, Land & Davies, 2008). Passing through a threshold can be transformative, irreversible, integrative and troublesome. Key transformations…

In this work, an industry-based and team-oriented education model was established based on a traditional mechanical engineering (ME) senior design class in order to better prepare future engineers and leaders so as to meet the increasing demand for high-quality engineering graduates. In the renovated curriculum, industry-sponsored projects became…

While many institutions express interest in integrating sustainability into their civil engineering curriculum, the engineering community lacks consensus on established methods for infusing sustainability into curriculum and verified approaches to assess engineers' sustainability knowledge. This paper presents the development of a sustainability…

There is an increasing interest in design and creative thinking processes in the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and health education disciplines. Many new degree programs are integrating design thinking into their syllabi, with the intention of bringing creative problem-solving methods to these disciplines. In reality,…

Consumer electronics are creating huge job markets for graduates with the programming back-ground, and more and more computer science departments are launching embedded software subjects to meet this demand. However, most students majoring computer science do not have the background in electronics, or even circuits. Due to this reason, how to…

Students are attracted to innovation and entrepreneurship. However, it is challenging for them to take courses in I&E due to their already busy curriculums. This paper describes the "New Venture Design Experience," a one-year interdisciplinary program that pairs core and elective courses between the colleges of Engineering and…

In this study, we sought to examine the influence of a 12-week design-based elective Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) course on pre-service chemistry teachers' content knowledge, STEM conceptions, and engineering and engineering design views. To attain the goals determined, we utilized five STEM activities starting with a…

This article discusses two multidisciplinary courses created at the Colorado School of Mines that were developed to integrate ethics into the first-year engineering curriculum: "Nature and Human Values" (NHV) and "Innovation and Discovery in Engineering, Arts, and Sciences" (IDEAS). In both NHV and IDEAS, our objectives are to…