Innovative Curriculum to Enhance the Learning Experience of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Students

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated engineering enrichment program for the electrical and mechanical engineering students at polytechnic level. This program promotes design thinking and problem based learning and it is spread into three years of engineering education. The entire program is founded upon design-and-build type of projects where students get to practice engineering design process with increasing complexity in each semester. It is implemented in a studio environment equipped with necessary technical tools such as prototyping machines, 3D printers, soldering stations and so on. At the beginning, forty students enrolled to the program; it is now expanded to accommodate eighty students. A detailed description of the program and its structure are presented together with our evaluation of results and observations.