Curriculum for design: engineering undergraduate courses

This is one of the SEED Curriculum for Design: Preparation Material for Design Teaching reports. These reports provide an integrated series of preparation material for design teaching. SEED (Sharing Experience in Engineering Design) is an organisation of teachers of design in tertiary education.

During the SEED ’83 Design Seminar, held at Southampton University, delegates proposed, unanimously supported and set up a Working Party to make recommendations on the content of a curriculum for engineering design in undergraduate courses. Although the importance of design was being increasingly acknowledged nationally, it was realised that definitive guidelines in regard to a recognised core curriculum for design teaching were conspicuous by their absence. The delegates to the SEED ’83 seminar considered it essential to respond to this challenge and meet the need. The Working Party subsequently submitted two reports which were discussed in detail.and accepted respectively by the SEED ’84 Seminar held at Lanchester (Coventry) Polytechnic and the SEED ’85 Seminar held at Liverpool Polytechnic. A synopsis of the first report (1) is given in this document in the ‘Introduction‘, whilst the second report is included in its entirety together with suggestions arising from the SEED ’85 Seminar.

Design is central to engineering and hence the majority of engineering graduates are likely to have contact with it during their subsequent careers, whilst others will become professional designers. Consequently, and because of its importance to the economy, a well founded ‘appreciation’ of design is essential for all engineering undergraduates and is the theme of this paper. This view is reflected in the more recent demands by the Engineering Council for the mandatory inclusion of both ‘Engineering Applications’ (2) and ‘Design Studies’ (3) for accreditation of engineering undergraduate courses. This development has brought in its train increased demands for design teaching. Whilst every encouragement must be given to such developments, a cautionary note must be sounded in that damage will be done to the understanding and practice of design unless it is taught in a balanced and comprehensive way.

The proposals in this report represent the views of a large percentage of those who teach design at tertiary level, the majority being Chartered Engineers, many of whom continue to practice as consultants. They therefore see the proposals as being directly relevant both to teaching and practice and not the untried exhortations of non-practitioners. Furthermore, the proposed curriculum is itself designed to provide a sound basis for many of the needs of EA2 and of the Engineering Council’s request for design studies.

This report includes the following sections:

• Preface
• Working Party Members
• Introduction
• View of Design
• Requirements for a Design Curriculum
• Definition of Terms
• Proposed Teaching Strategy
• Teaching and Practice
• Time Requirements
• Current Reports
• Concluding Comments
• References
• Appendix A – Description Of The Design Activity Model
• Appendix B – Definition Of Topics

[Description and screenshot taken from the SEED Curriculum for Engineering Design page for this report. (c) The Design Society used under the terms of their (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.]

Link: http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/teachers/curriculum/cur_f_d/currhome.html
Author: SEED Working Party
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Rights: Copyright 2011 The Design Society - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. See http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/teachers/curriculum/about.html