An assignment project based approach for engineering education

The paper introduces a new education method named assignment project to the engineering curriculum with the aim of improving students´ mastery of course materials and practical problem solving skills. Many innovative education methods with the same objective have been created and implemented, such as final year projects and project-based courses. However, they have shortcomings that need to be solved by other methods. The proposed education method makes up for the gap, which is a five-step process yielding various assignment projects for a number of engineering courses. Based on a partially designed real-world engineering system, students use their knowledge and skill in the course to fulfil the design in these projects. A case study on solar vehicle is given to illustrate the method step by step. The method is thus verified to be an effective auxiliary tool in the engineering education.