Using design kits to test the problem-solving abilities of engineering students

Abstract

Problem Solving; Application of Scientific and Engineering Knowledge; as well as Engineering Design, are core attributes the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) requires in engineering graduates. The author investigated these three skills in two classes of second year students at the Botswana International University of Science & Technology (BIUST) in the 2019/2020 and the 2020/2021 academic years. Two different practical engineering problems were given to the participants. The 2019/2020 class designed a sanitizer dispenser, while the 2020/2021 designed a vehicle and trailer locking system. In both cases, participants were given problems to solve and corresponding toolkits of components to use. The toolkits were, essentially, illustrated scrambled lists of components, which, if correctly put together would achieve the solutions to the posed problems. The participants were first asked to generate functional steps to be achieved by the designs. Secondly, the participants were asked to use the generated functional steps to arrange the given components in meaningful ways to achieve the functionalities stipulated in design problems. The works of the participants were evaluated against moderated functional and design models generated by the module instructor. The time limit in both investigations was 90 min. The results show poor performance by the participants who did not only fail to deliver meaningfully functional models in both cases but also produced below average schematic designs. This paper presents the two investigations as follows. The vehicle/trailer project of the 2020/2021 class is presented in the main body of this paper as a representative case study given that both investigations used similar approaches and delivered comparable performance levels. The 2019/2020 sanitizer dispenser project, whose results were slightly lower than the former, is presented as an addendum.