A FIRST-YEAR DESIGN PROJECT SOFTWARE TOOL TO EMPHASIZE PROBLEM SOLVING WITH COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IN THE DESIGN PROCESS

The Engineering Education Innovation Center (EEIC) has offered, through its Fundamentals for Engineering, Fundamentals for Engineering for Scholars, and Fundamentals for Engineering for Honors course sequences, several hands-on laboratory experiences for first year engineering students that culminate in a quarter-long design-build project. The course sequences retain the traditional material covered-engineering orientation, engineering graphics, and engineering problem solving with computer programming while offering several design-build project topics. One important objective for the first-year design projects, commonly called cornerstone projects, is to provide a team-based experience that includes all aspects of engineering design and development. This objective also includes successfully providing students with awareness of, and experience with, the iterative nature of design throughout the design cycle. The sequences are one of the most innovative and successful of their kind, and have received national attention. In order to assess this objective, a recent study was conducted using student team-based surveys on a weekly basis throughout the design for each cornerstone project offered in EEIC. Based from the lessons-learned from the student team-based survey, this paper addresses bridging the gap between the traditional material, specifically problem solving with computer programming, and the Advanced Energy Vehicle (AEV) cornerstone project with the use of Matlab's graphical user interface design environment (GUIDE). The paper provides a detailed discussion of the AEV project; project layout and deliverables; reasons and motivations for developing a design project software tool for the students to develop and use based from the survey data and classroom observations; and the integration and teaching strategy for implementing the tool within the design process.