Workshop: Encouraging information-rich engineering design

Students frequently spend too little time understanding the problem in their design projects and jump to solutions without considering alternatives. This leads to inefficient use of time and suboptimal results in the final design. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, students need to explore and understand the work of others applied to similar situations, using strong information gathering, application, and evaluation skills. Ultimately, these reinforce core skills needed for students to be lifelong learners, i.e., determining where they have gaps in knowledge and determining how to fill those gaps efficiently and effectively. This workshop will provide a conceptual model and examples of activities that will help instructors keep students problem-focused, allowing them to generate and weigh alternatives, and ultimately settle on a solution that is most promising to meet their stakeholders´ needs. Participants will take away techniques they can apply to their own engineering design courses. This workshop aligns with FIE´s focus on turning Research into Practice.