Teaching an Undergraduate Manufacturing Course using a Design-based Teaching Approach

Abstract

Introduction to Manufacturing Processes is one of the core courses in most mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, and industrial engineering programs. The current course curriculum and teaching style mainly depend on the lectures for the manufacturing processes that are aligned and synchronized with the laboratory work (project) to gain the required knowledge and skills. According to students’ feedback for this course as well as similar courses offered at other universities, the course is time intensive, involves no critical thinking, requires limited class participation, and is not well connected with real-world manufacturing problems. The approach implemented in this work is based on using students’ micro-lectures (seminars) and design-based projects to deal with different manufacturing topics from an engineering design point of view using passive/active/constructive learning approach rather than using the traditional lecture style. Each student needs to work individually or in a group to collect information about selected manufacturing processes using online and offline resources (passive learning). Each study group shares their resources with other groups before the lecture and during the lecture through a 20-30 minutes seminar. The students need to be ready to discuss and exchange their ideas about the selected topic with other classmates (active learning). Also, a manufacturing design-based projects for a real engineering product or part, with a challenging set of questions, is assigned to each student to improve students scientific/engineering knowledge and critical thinking beyond the classroom experience (constructive learning). In this work, learning modules related to the casting process and the product assembly processes and tolerances analysis topics are presented. The learning outcomes from the application of the design-based teaching approach are reflected through the students successful completion of the project activities, in addition to gaining a lifelong learning and communication skills through micro-lectures preparing and presentations. Besides, the students learned how to use a computer-aided design (CAD) package to engage in advanced design-manufacturing analysis which is valued in industry. Introduction and Background Instructors are always trying to find a passionate way to teach their courses to support student’s success efficiently and effectively. Also, the continuous increase in the needs for new technical and nontechnical skills in the modern work environment represents another pressure factor on the universities to update student s learning outcomes to meet the demand of the contemporary industry and business to up-to-date qualified workers. Thus, teaching style needs to be updated continuously to reflect the direct and indirect changes in the learning and work environment. In general, during the past decades, education became more focused on hands-on project-based teaching approaches, used more interactive, open-ended problems, and required more feedback about the problem-solving process which is proven to be more effective and can lead to increased student learning [1]. Several teaching approaches were implemented to improve student’s leaning outcomes by integrating active/passive learning and real life projects. For example, Graham et al. [2] used the Paul-Elder framework of critical thinking to define and operationalize critical thinking for the Electrical and Computer Engineering program students. Students are taught explicitly about critical thinking followed by explicit critical thinking exercises in the introduction to engineering course to prepare students to embrace more elaborate, discipline-specific, critical thinking required of them in future courses. At sophomore, junior, and senior levels, courses were selected for critical thinking, and professional ethics emphasizes. The students were encouraged to use critical thinking skills to analyze requirements and constraints which would apply for advanced real-world problems. Significant improvement in critical thinking skills of students have been achieved through this sequence. An integrated thinking approach is adopted by Katz [3] to bridge the educational gap between analytical and design thinking for mechanical engineering students. The suggested approach is implemented by reforming science engineering courses by stressing the physical interpretation of mathematical derivations to analyses and design simple mechanical devices; then modifying project-based design courses to emphasize the analysis part of the creative design process. A positive feedback from the students suggests that integrated thinking might be successfully applied in many areas of ME education to create continues education patterns in ME education. A multi levels sequential design project is used by Ansaf and Jaksic [4] to increase students learning outcomes in design analysis and critical thinking. The students implemented required design modifications of a product in a systematic time-based procedure using traditional and nontraditional design tools (finite element analysis). The results show an improvement in student engagement in the course topics and in critical thinking. Okojie [5] claims that “in a highly competitive manufacturing industry, the total cost of design and manufacturing can be reduced and hence increase the competitiveness of the products if computers can integrate the whole working procedures. Computer-aided integration has, therefore, become an inevitable trend. Many industries have achieved a great deal of success between non-integrated and integrated systems.” Egelhoff et al. [6] described “a structured problem-solving approach which uses the students understanding of free-body-diagrams, shear and moment equations, and energy methods. With the development of note-taking handouts supplied to the students, the structured analysis is led by the instructor using Castigliano s theory of internal energy. The problem formulation is kept general until the last step. The numerical integration can be performed in software of the students choice.”; Egelhoff et al. [6] “found that using this approach accomplishes a richer, deeper understanding of design among our students and increases their confidence as indicated by our preand post-activity assessment.” Wendel [1] used a flipped classroom teaching approach to teach an intermediate undergraduate manufacturing class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Wendel [1], the initial students survey indicated that this intermediate-level manufacturing class was not related to “the real world,” was not interesting, and was also time-intensive. The feedback from students showed the class to mostly promote informative learning as opposed to conceptbased learning and critical thinking. Implementing the flipped-classroom approach, pre-recorded videos were used to prepare the students for a lecture. Then students in pairs participated in challenges during the class time related to the lecture topic. The results showed increases in student participation during lecture time. Also, the students noted their preference for advanced scientific content in class. In this work we address improving the teaching approach of an introduction to manufacturing processes course for mechatronics and industrial engineering students at our university. In general, manufacturing processes is a cornerstone foundation course in many engineering programs. The traditional objective of this course is to engage students with principles and concepts of traditional and nontraditional manufacturing. The suggested teaching approach is developed to include several learning components that can help create an active/passive/constructive learning environment for the students. Student’s micro-lectures are used to improve lifelong learning skills and create an interactive teaching environment with the instructor and other students. Also, a design-based project is used to strengthen constructive concept-based learning and critical thinking for the students. Assessments and survey results are used to evaluate the performance of the suggested teaching approach.