Browsing by Author "Shekar, A"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Building capability to teach humanitarian engineering: A reflection
    (Southern Cross University, 7/12/2016) Drain, AR; Goodyer, J; Shekar, A
    Massey University has been running the first year engineering design project Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Design Challenge for five years. In this time a number of faculty and curriculum changes have been made to ensure the project provides meaningful project-based-learning for students as well as providing realistic experience in humanitarian engineering. This article describes the challenges faced by teaching staff in facilitating this unique style of project-based-learning and successes, which have led to our teams winning multiple regional and international prizes.
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    Introduction to needs analysis for increasing first year engineering students’ ability in conceptual design
    (School of Engineering, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia, 6/12/2015) Shekar, A; Goodyer, J; Drain, AR; Iskander, P; Georgy, M; Oo, A; Patel, A; Hilditch, T; Chandran, S
    PURPOSE This study examines the influence of presenting a structured set of user-centred-design resources, in addition to taught content and presented by student mentors, on creating unique concepts for a EWB project. The study focuses on how needs analysis techniques were introduced to the students through student-student mentoring and puts emphasis on its application within their projects. This paper investigates whether the approach of additional design techniques being presented through student-student mentoring improves first year engineering students’ performance in the process of conceptual design (i.e. identifying the problem, design thinking and practices). It shows how this approach can potentially improve student engagement; provide a better understanding of the context to an engineering problem, and lead students into asking the right questions. The study was carried out in hope that it would enlighten the students to think in a more innovative and user-centred manner.
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    An introductory course with a humanitarian engineering context
    (University of Calgary, 18/06/2017) Shekar, A; Tunnicliffe, MC; Brennan, R; Edstrom, K; Hugo, R; Rosslof, J; Songer, R; Spooner, D
    The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Design Challenge is an excellent example of how universities from across the globe allow students to engage with humanitarian engineering. Massey University has been utilising the EWB Design Challenge as a framework to introduce engineering practice to first year students, and this has led to our teams winning multiple regional and international prizes. This article shares our experience of the design and teaching of this first year course and provides engineering educators with a successful example of how students learn about engineering practice in product, process, and system building, as well as their personal and interpersonal skills. We highlight how, by using a humanitarian engineering context, we embed CDIO thinking. Our case study illustrates how we project manage this process using Stage-Gate™; support students to conduct reflective practice by using logbooks; include practising engineers as consultants; and provide detailed assessment guidelines and rubric examples to guide students through the myriad challenges during engineering practice. This case study shows that the implementation of the EWB Design Challenge has been successful in providing a useful framework to introduce engineering practice. It is particularly effective in exposing students to a number of ethically driven social competencies required for the global engineer. It is hoped that by sharing our experience of operating this course that engineering faculty may take on-board some of our learning and assessment practices to improve the offering of an introductory design project at their institution