Enhancing Design Students’ Comfort and Versatility in the Shop: A Project-Based Approach.

“Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering Design I” is a sophomore-level class, required of Civil and Environmental Engineering (C EE) majors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The main objective of this class is to teach students how to work effectively in design teams on open-ended problems and how to design, prototype an d fabricate functional devices (experimental apparatus, demonstration /teaching tools, observational equipment, etc.) relevant to CEE topics. When the current version of the class was introduced in the fall of 2007, the instructors found that many students were unfamiliar with, and to some extent afraid of, shop equipment and power tools. In addition, many of them were unaware of a large number of relevant tools, techniques and materials, limiting the possible variety and sophistication of their final design/fabrication projects and likely requiring that a large amount of individualized instruction be given during the design/fabrication process, stretching class resources thin and slowing the students’ work. In response to these concerns, instructors developed an introductory fabrication exercise, to be completed by all students in the class—a project specifically designed to increase the students’ comfort and ability in the shop and their familiari ty with materials and techniques, in order to broaden the scope of their final design projects. Over the years the introductory project has been adapted and altered; on the basis of survey data, direct observation and re ports from instructors of other classes, the authors believe this now to be an extremely effective and useful exercise. In its current format, teams of students build Archimedes-screw devices out of wood, PVC, acrylic and other materials, and they test these devices using modern sensors and image-processing equipment. Participation in the introductory pr oject has demonstrably increased the students’ comfort in the shop and, perhaps more importantly, has progressively made students much more familiar with the tools, materials and techniques available to them. In response, their final class projects have shown increased s ophistication and utility. Moreover, instructors of the next class in the CEE design sequence report that students leave this class better prepared than they did in the past—so much so that those instructors have been able to e liminate introductory exercises of their own. We here share details of the project and its evolution, in the hope that other instructors of similar classes, facing similar challenges, will find it useful.