Towards Design-Centric Engineering Education:Capstone Course Reform in a Chinese University

摘要

The need for creative engineering to address the multi-faceted problems facing the world today has never been so great. The challenge for educators everywhere is to nurture world-class solution developers, despite local constraints in available resources or organization, by leveraging native strength and opportunities. At the Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology (XAUAT) in China, proposed reforms towards a design-centric learning environment featuring multi-disciplinary student teams for open-ended design projects from current public needs draw upon the existing academic specialties of this institution, and apply new ways of approaching education to enhance the existing Chinese undergraduate engineering curriculum. A design process is proposed that approaches those in professional firms, adjusted to maximize student acquisition of interpersonal (teamwork, conflict management, and negotiation), communication (written, oral, and graphical), and project management and design skills. The example institution's academic strength and industry connections suggest a number of possible projects, of which a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is chosen as a representative example allowing the detailed working out of a schedule of student deliverables (in this case, a feasibility study and a preliminary design) and a description of the learning process, starting with initial lectures and field trips, continuing through the discipline-by-discipline development of the project design, and culminating in reports and drawings evaluated on ability to satisfy the needs of the client by both faculty and experts from industry.