Assessment of level of difficulty in Engineering Design Process for 1st year undergraduate

This paper examines the level of difficulty faced by 1^st year students in implementing Engineering Design Process in a mini-project. The process consists of 8 components: Identify Problem, Research Problem, Development of Solution, Selecting Solution, Prototyping, Test and Evaluate, Communication and Redesign. The initial study investigates the response variations between gender and academic achievements. The study involves 138 students (104 males and 34 females) in Electric, Electronic and Mechatronic 1^st year Program working on a common fan project, supervised by 5 facilitators and 3 assistant researchers. The survey instrument used consists of Likert-scale questionnaire to rate the level of difficulty in the design project components. Study have confirmed that (a) there is absence of significant difference in how male and female student rated the difficulty level for all components, (b) Problem identification component shows significant difference between academic achievers.