*The idea we describe here was originated by Prof. James F. Marchman III
The NSF Engineering School Coalition project is intended to improve engineering education. Virginia Tech is part of the SUCCEED Coalition. The AOE Department got involved in this project through an idea conceived by Jim Marchman. As described below, he wanted to improve student enthusiasm by having freshmen get involved in more realistic projects. Although industrial participation would be preferable, Virginia Tech's location makes this impractical. We do however encourage our students to participate in the University's Cooperative education Program, which includes both industrial experience for both Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Students. Thus, in Blacksburg, this meant having freshmen work with seniors on the senior's design project. This approach is called "vertically integrated design." The full description of results is available in papers by Marchman and Mason (1994a and 1994b).
The project is an attempt to accomplish several important design and educational goals by having freshmen and seniors work together on the conventional capstone design project, and is used in both Aerospace and Ocean, and Mechanical Engineering. By involving freshman in a meaningful engineering design experience through our senior-freshman integrated design program, we expect to increase their interest in engineering, provide motivation for the engineering science courses, and improve retention rates. A second goal is to prepare our students for the senior design course. Currently, many students are not prepared for the open-ended project approach, where they are required to establish design criteria and make engineering decisions. The senior design courses provide the best opportunity to have freshmen participate in this type of design, and in the Spring of 1993 selected freshmen joined the senior design teams in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech for the first time.
We have implemented the concept quite simply. In AE the senior design course is two semesters long. Teams are formed during the first semester. The freshmen take Introduction to Engineering each semester. During the first semester they are told about the vertically integrated program, where they can participate in a "senior" design team and use the work they do there as a replacement for the CAD project in the second semester of Introduction to Engineering. Interested freshmen volunteer and those selected work with a senior team in the second semester. The selection is based on interest in the specific major (AE or ME at present ) and a grade of "C" or better in the fall Introduction to Engineering course. In the senior course they are full participants in the final report and presentation. The specific objectives of our program include:
1. By participating with the seniors in the capstone design project the freshmen would gain an early appreciation of the value of the courses in their curriculum. Hopefully, this will enhance their appreciation for courses like statics, dynamics and even freshman engineering graphics, courses which are often viewed by students as drudgery to be endured rather than used, and will help them learn how subjects like aerodynamics, structures and flight mechanics are interrelated. Another nice by-product of participation would be an enhanced enthusiasm about engineering and about their choice of major.
2. The addition of freshmen to the senior design groups in mid-year, after the first semester of the senior design sequence, would force the seniors to take a fresh look at all aspects of their design problem in order to bring the freshmen up to speed and the freshmen may well bring new perspectives into the design process that could result in an improved design.
3. The freshmen could use the CAD drawings required for the design team project for their required freshman engineering CAD project and these drawings could contribute to the senior's final design report.
Logistics/implementation/project management:
Two unique policies that play a major role in the way this project is conducted at Virginia Tech. All entering first year engineering students are classified as General Engineering majors. These students do not move into their major until they have completed all required first year courses and earned a satisfactory grade point average. This means that any program seeking to combine freshmen and seniors must involve at least two departments, one of which is the Engineering Fundamentals Division which operates the General Engineering program. This simultaneously complicates the operation of this experiment and enhances it by making it possible to see if the program has any influence on the student's subsequent selection of major.
The other unique aspect of Virginia Tech's freshman program is the requirement that all students own a specified type of personal computer and a given software package. This provides something concrete that the freshmen can bring to the senior design teams, the most up-to-date personal computer and CAD package. The 1993-94 freshmen had either Cadkey 6 or Autocad 11 ( both were being evaluated in separate sections of the Introduction to Engineering class ). The seniors had earlier versions of Cadkey (probably either version 1.4 or 3.55 ).
In the first year of the project, freshman program participants were selected from a group of over 100 students who expressed interest during the fall term. Selection was completed before the end of the term, allowing those chosen to attend the end of semester design team progress report presentations in the aircraft design class. At the start of the second semester these freshmen were ready to go as they joined their respective teams. In the first year 29 freshmen were finally selected to participate in either the ME or AE senior design program.
The program's second year was meant to run in the same manner as it did in the previous year, with the exception that freshmen would now participate in both the AE aircraft design course and the spacecraft design course. The desire was to have from eight to ten freshmen participate in the aircraft design groups and four join the spacecraft teams. We made a change in the selection process, which, together with a terrible winter, changed the implementation and outcome in the second year. This is described below in the lessons learned section. Thus, the selection process for the second year resulted in delayed selection and may have combined with other problems to cause the project to run somewhat less smoothly than in the first year.
In both years, the AE and ME instructors gave the freshman student's Introduction to Engineering instructor advice on the grade they thought should be given for the freshman student's effort and achievements in the design class. The instructors were also invited to attend the final design presentations, and to listen to the freshman as part of the entire design team.
Lessons learned
1. It works:
In several instances senior design team members have commented on valuable contributions made by freshman team members toward their project. One of this year's spacecraft teams noted that a design change suggested by one of their two freshman members solved a major problem for them, saving many hours of work and greatly cutting the projected cost of their proposed system.
Another concern was over the effect of the inclusion of freshmen on the quality of the design teams' work and of their final reports. There has been no problem in this regard. Two of the aircraft design teams from the first and second years of the project were winners in the AIAA/General Dynamics Team Aircraft Design Competition. The first year, the first place team including three freshmen. There are plenty of jobs freshmen can handle on design projects (cockpit and landing gear layout, weight and balance, etc.)
Most of the freshman who have participated in this experiment have enthusiastically asked for more of the same. They want to repeat the experience as sophomores. This would not lead to a "vertically integrated design" approach within the curriculum since the design project worked on by the freshmen reached closure at the end of the academic year. There is also a limit to how many non- seniors one may accommodate in the capstone course, and it does not seem practical to have a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior integrated design project.
Lesson: Freshmen can contribute.
2. It doesn't always work:
In the second year, one team of seniors decided in advance that the inclusion of a freshman would ruin their "perfect" group. They worked toward that end and blamed their freshman for all of their problems. This has happened once out of the twelve teams we've done this with in AE to date. In most cases, however, the inclusion of a freshman did not change the interpersonal dynamics of an established team. This was seen in the spacecraft design teams where one group was, indeed, an almost perfect team in the way they worked together while the other group had many of the problems normally seen in student design teams. In neither case were the team dynamics altered for better or worse by the addition of freshmen.
It appears that with the continuation of the project in future years the problem seen in 1993-94 will become less likely to occur. Seniors will know well before they take the design course that no team will have over, say, eight seniors to allow for later addition of one or two freshmen. Then, there should be no reason for them to come into the course with plans to form the "perfect" ten senior team (ten is the limit for the AIAA design competition).
In the future, should a design team insist that they do not want a freshman in their group we will probably accede to their wishes. Even so, we will not allow their group to contain any more seniors than any of the other groups; i.e., it will not be the AIAA or other team size limit that keeps any freshman off of a team.
Lesson: Everything is not always perfect
2. Get the Freshman on board fast
The second year of the experiment got off to a rocky start because of the late selection of freshman participants. This resulted, in part, from the desire of the program coordinator in the Engineering Fundamentals program to wait until the first semester grades for the freshmen were available to avoid having to later drop those with a poor record from the list of possible participants. We also wanted to have the participant candidates' second semester class schedule in hand to allow selection of only those whose class arrangement would be compatible with the senior design class meetings. Further complicating an already delayed project start in the second year was an unusually severe winter in January through March of 1994, which resulted in the cancellation of several classes at the start of the second semester, and continuing problems for about 2/3 of the semester.
The result of the above delays was the need to try to integrate freshmen who had no previous knowledge of the design project topics into the established teams some three weeks into the semester, well after the teams had established their out-of-class meeting schedules. Such timing produced what was conceivably the worst possible start for the freshmen as they entered the design teams with absolutely no background on their past work and for the seniors as they were forced to alter established meeting schedules to accommodate freshman who had different class schedules as well as different after hours social lives. There was a slightly better situation in the spacecraft design class which had chosen to delay team progress oral reports until the start of the second semester in order to use them to brief the freshmen. The late second semester freshmen selection further delayed these presentations but they did seem to ease the transition for the freshmen.
the Key Lesson to date: Have the Freshmen on board from the very first day of class.