Introducing fundamental technical concepts in a freshman design course

Freshman design courses are typically hampered by the fact that freshmen, even in their second semester, have had very little in the way of engineering course work. In the past, this situation has made it impractical for the instructors teaching Introduction to Engineering Design to require students to perform any meaningful calculations associated with their designs. In the Spring Semester of 2002, the course content was modified to include the introduction of fundamental technical concepts. The intent of these seminars was to provide students with engineering tools and quantitative methods for analyzing their designs prior to construction. This paper presents detailed information on the specification of one of the design projects, the design kit contents for this project, and the learning objectives from the technical seminars. Finally, a brief discussion of the impact of the technical seminars on the course is provided.