System Engineering Education for All Engineers - A Capstone Design Approach

摘要

A hands-on educational approach for teaching undergraduate aircraft design students about Systems Engineering (SE) has been developed which we believe is applicable to other engineering disciplines. The impetus for the initiative is our conclusion that (1) fundamental understanding of the principles of SE and their practical application is important for all engineers and (2) SE can be taught as a principle of design without displacing other course content. Our educational concept has been tested for transition by Texas A&M University (TAMU) where aerospace colleagues substantially increased SE content in their well-established design course with minimum displacement of other course content. We believe, therefore, our course concept is ready for transition to other interested universities and engineering disciplines. However, we recognize there are other approaches as well as issues that should be researched. Included are SE knowledge requirements across engineering disciplines, learning effectiveness of various instructional techniques including capstone vs. other design courses, instructor knowledge requirements as well as traditional discipline SE education issues and methods. Therefore, we recommend a broader implementation strategy to include engineering discipline tailoring and educational research as discussed in our summary and conclusions.