Hands-on design course brings out the best in engineering design students

Best exam ever in MecE 260 competition

Richard Cairney - 11 April 2017

(Edmonton) Dozens of engineering students literally put their design skills to the test Monday, guiding the remote control vehicles they'd built through a demanding obstacle course.

The live test was actually part of a final exam for the Mechanical Engineering 260 Design course and is the highlight of the semester. At the beginning of rat term students form teams, and each is given a package of materials and are told to design and build a vehicle that can complete a series of tasks.

Students learn not only design principles but also develop leadership and team-working skills, and time management skills.

"There's a lot of 'hidden work' in the course," said student Tatiana Place. "It was the most fun work, but even just making one little sub-assembly could take hours."

"There were days we' put in eight hours working not this," added teammate Lisa Long, "and by the end of the day it didn't look much different."

The course student vehicles had to complete was challenging, demanding design that took into account different widths of track with no room for error. Just getting through the entry gate was a challenge for some teams. Once through the gate, vehicles had to cross a teeter-totter, drive up a ramp and complete a 180-degree turn, then push a wooden block into a recessed hole the block would fit into, then scale a steep grade with a very thin area for wheels to fit on. At the top of the pitch vehicles would either fall into a basket of Styrofoam packing or, if the engineers could design for it, the vehicles could be made to support themselves against Plexiglas walls.

With so many challenges, it's easy to see how a team might lose focus.

One approach that proved to work well was to design the vehicle to complete challenges in the order they would be encountered-a team led by Marcus Shafer took advantage of this method. Teams would earn points the further they progressed.

The course, said Shafer, illuminated the importance of precise design, and helped develop problem-solving skills.

"Sometimes the solution to one problem would affect something else and then you'd have to make a team decision," said teammate Rohit Kavin.

Ultimately, says Shafer, the course will make the students better engineers.

"It shows you the bridge between what's on paper and what you get in real life," he said.