Engineering design project: approaches and reflections

In this paper, the implementation and reflections of an industrial-oriented engineering design project were investigated. The proposed engineering design project is belonging to the module of Engineering Design, which is offered to the mechanical engineering students at 4th year level. In this project, the students were asked to undertake an engineering design project such to fulfill the requirements specified by the industrial client and approved by the academic supervisor. The assessment criterion of this project was split into three main phases; identifying the problem by submitting informative proposal, conducting a surgery session presentation and ended by submitting the Design for Excellence (DFX) report.
This research aimed to examine the influence of the engineering design project on achieving several learning outcomes throughout conducting surveys among the students to measure their responses and collecting the qualitative reflections of the academic and industrial supervisors. The obtained results from the conducted surveys showed that the engineering design project contributed to the personal gain of knowledge compared to some modules in which the Project Based learning (PBL) was not incorporated. Also the obtained results demonstrated the importance of this design project in attaining the learning from experience and developing self-learning and presentation skills. Moreover; the self- assessment survey emphasized the fact that the students are active part in the educational process.