Semester-long, team design projects are supposed to fun but can appear daunting to beginning engineering students, especially if they don’t know anyone else in the class. This paper discusses how the “daunting” aspect of early design projects has been addressed in a sophomore design course in a BSME program. The issue is addressed from three viewpoints: student diversity, project formulation, and support from the other activities in the class. A sample project is discussed in detail. A survey at the end of the semester indicted that the students enjoyed the class (averaging over 4.5 on the usual five-point Likert scale for four statements about the course), learned (averaging 4.18 supporting improved abilities related to seven ABET criterion 3 issues) and also strongly supported a series of statements about other learning issues.

Volume Subject Area:
Mechanical Engineering Education
Keywords:
Design, Diversity, Education, Teams
Topics:
Design, Students, Teams
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