Promoting System Level Thinking in Undergraduate Engineering Courses
Abstract
The future of the Navy’s workforce depends on engineering graduates who can see beyond component issues to understand the system-level implications of their designs. The Navy’s mission depends on many highly complex systems, from submarines to surface vessels to teams of autonomous robots used for surveillance. However, most of today’s engineering graduates typically see little in the way of systems engineering education. This project will contribute to addressing this issue by promoting the development of systems thinking skills in a sophomore-level product development course for mechanical engineering students while using Navy-relevant systems to motivate the study. The goals of the project are twofold: 1) Increase undergraduate students’ skills in systems engineering, and 2) Increase undergraduate students’ awareness of Navy career opportunities. To achieve these goals, the research team will develop and implement a lecture introducing basic systems engineering concepts, four short case studies that target selected systems engineering skills, and a capstone design project to put the concepts learned into practice. Importantly, Navy-relevant examples will be used for the case studies to motivate the need for systems engineering skills and to introduce students to the breadth of Navy engineering challenges. Appropriate evaluation is necessary to measure the degree of success of the above efforts. In that regard, evaluation of this project will require new assessment instruments for both systems thinking skills and awareness of Navy career opportunities that are consistent with the scope of the educational activities that will be implemented. These new instruments will be developed and validated as part of this project.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 12, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141512419
Entities
People
- Karim Heinz Muci-kuchler
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
- United States Navy