Engineering Industrial Design Business Assessment of Engineering Reasoning in Student Journals About Polytechnique • Third-largest teaching and research establishment in Canada and first in Québec. • First in Canada for the scope of its engineering research. • 30,000 students graduated since 1873. • 1,000 graduates per year. • 27% of Quebec trained engineers are Polytechnique graduates. • 220 professors. • 50% of our graduates work for Small-Medium Enterprises. • Operating budget of $85 million Cdn. • Annual research budget of $60.5 million Cdn. 2 About our capstone projects • Projects done in collaboration with industrial customers • Students from three schools collaborate in a common project team – Polytechnique (engineering) – University def Montréal (industrial design) – HEC Montréal (business, marketing, management) • Large scale multidisciplinary teams (up to 20 students per team) • 8 month long projects (6000 to 8000 student hours) 3 Learning project structure and journals Integrated learning project description Year 1 Year 2 1 semester cornerstone project: 3 case studies and design exercises Set in a controlled design solution space in time and scope 1 semester cornerstone project, presented in the form of a design contest Work focussed on conceptual design and prototype building/testing Year 3 1 semester cornerstone project Individual assignment submitted by local companies or research laboratories Year 4 Capstone project covering 2 semesters with industrial partners Teams of 20 students from Ecole Polytechnique, the School of Industrial Design, and the School of Business and Management. Work focuses on Integrated Product Team functions. 4 Capstone project (2007) Project 333: Ecology-Economy-Experience Design: François-Olivier Dagneau, Louis Drouin Customer: ITAQ, Quest Enterprises 5 Capstone project (2008) Project AUA: Advanced Urban Bus Exterior: Marc-André Rémillard Interior: Maryse Pelletier Seating: Karine LeBon Customer: ITAQ, CDCQ 6 Capstone project CAMAQ (2008) Aerospace industry consortium for education Prototype manufacturing from CAD data 7 Project 1 (2009) Exterior-interior: Étienne Bérubé, Daniel Racine 8 Project 2 (2009) Exterior: Stéphane Carrier Interior: Paul Ta Seating: Catherine Lagacé Driver compartment: Cléo Poirier, Maude Blanchard 9 Journal assessment Text Graphics Graphics and text Engineering reasoning CONTENT Effective and personalized Engineer’s journal STRUCTURE Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Date and week number Time spent Page number External source references Meeting minutes 10 Journal samples First year student 11 Journal samples Fourth year student Date of journal entry Time spent 3D hand drawn dimensioned sketch Documented question to be adressed Supporting calculations 12 Journal samples Fourth year student Documented hypothesis 3D sketch and design decisions Design calculations and criteria check 13 Journal assessment Criteria Evaluation 1) How many types of information in logbook. 40/40 : 10-13 types 32/40 : 8 à 9 types 24/40 : 6 à 7 types 16/40 : 6 and less 40% 2) Engineering reasoning demonstration 30/30 : Excellent 20/30 : Good 10/30 : Must improve 30% 3) Individual task identification and completion Assigned tasks Completed work Documented progression Timesheet 30/30 : Excellent 20/30 : Good 10/30 : Must improve 30% Total Grade 100% 14 1- Content type Type Textual Class Hand written notes Meeting notes Contact details Hand calculations Tables and figures Completed forms Graphical Sketch Graphics and diagrams CAD drawings Graphical and textual External documents Annotated external documents Annotated CAD drawings Memorandums Description Personal notes taken during individual or collaborative work. Notes taken during a meeting. Names, phone numbers, e-mail, addresses. Simple or complex hand calculations used for evaluation of a situation. Hand drawn or printed. Copy of official document. Hand drawn, from pencil sketch to high quality rendering. Hand drawn Printed and inserted in the journal. Report sections, product information, pictures inserted in the journal. As above with manual notes added Manual add-ons to existing drawings Post-it notes, highlighted notes, memory aids 15 2- Critical thinking Personal problem framing and resolution abilities measured not solution quality. Solution quality measured in the team reports. Criteria Examples Clarity Can you elaborate further? Can you give me an example? Can you illustrate what you mean? Accuracy How can we check this? How can we find if this is true? How can we verify or test this? Precision Can you be more specific? Can you give me more details? Can you be more exact? Relevance How is this linked to the problem? How does this weigh on the question? How does this help us to solve our problem? Depth What factors make this a difficult problem? What are the complexities of this question? What are the difficulties we must address? Breadth Do we need to look at this from another perspective? Must we consider another point of view? Should we look at this in other ways? Logic Does this make sense together? Is your first paragraph coherent with the last one? Do your conclusions come from the presented evidence? Significance Is this the most important problem to consider? Is this the central idea to focus on? Which of these facts is the most important? Fairness Do I have a personal interest in this problem? Do I support other’s ideas too easily? Do I represent other’s viewpoints sympathetically? Concision Is your message complete? What can you take out without losing the meaning? Risk What is the present risk level? Is this risk level acceptable? What could you do to reduce it? 16 3- Project information • Personal meeting notes and actions to do present • Individual tasks assigned and clearly identified • Written elements to prove the student worked on his assigned tasks • Demonstration of progress over time towards completion of the tasks • Compilation of all personal hours spent on the project • Entries to the journal are marked with the date they were done on • Empty pages identified as intentionally left blank • No ripped out pages to insure integrity of the content timeline 17 Outcomes • • • • Students learn to document their personal work and questions on a daily basis in a centralized document (their project journal). Students share journal content at a moment notice during team meetings. Students find for themselves the value of documenting personal work when questioned on work done 6 months ago. Students use teacher feedback to adjust their journal writing. New recently revealed outcomes 3 year project fosters use of old student journals in team transitions. • Students use older journals to better understand project decisions in support of published milestone reports. • Students voluntarily leave their journals to the team who will continue their work after they have left the project. 18 Future developments • Journal tagging methodology testing in preparation of electronic journal format. (Collaboration with the University of Bath) 19 For information • Clement Fortin Director of mechanical engineering École Polytechnique clement.fortin@polymtl.ca 20