Engineering education

Planning prototyping strategies for conceptual design purposes is a crucial activity, which needs a clear understanding of the potentialities of the different typologies of prototype. Therefore, to prepare future designers, it is very important to provide the required information in design-related academic courses. However, prototypes and prototyping activities are often taught in specific courses with a major emphasis on the underpinning technologies, but with limited attention on design implications, especially about the fuzzy-front-end of the design process. The work presented in this paper aims at investigating about how students perceive the usefulness of prototypes during conceptual design activities, in order to provide first indications about the gap to be filled. To this purpose, two classes of students participated to an experimental session, and were asked to perform a conceptual design task individually. Subsequently, they participated to an on-line survey developed to gather information about the perceived usefulness of prototypes, in relation to the performed conceptual design activity. Several findings have been obtained from this work, but maybe the most impacting one concerns the different consideration that the two samples of students had about the fidelity of prototypes. Indeed, differently from what recently highlighted in current literature, it emerged that engineering students preferred low-fidelity prototypes. However, other unexpected evidences have been found, which highlight that at least for the considered institution, students still lack a comprehensive understanding of the design-related potentialities of prototypes.

Keywords: Additive manufacturing , CAD , Design , Design education , Engineering education , Prototyping

The excessive exposure to noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people's daily activities. The Environment Action Programme of the European Union committed to decrease noise pollution, moving closer to levels recommended by the WHO by 2020. When considering the noise policy instruments, including the legislative, economic and communicative way, the policy applications mostly rely on legislative ones. Although, there is intensive control strategies based on legislations related to environmental noise and legal punishments (as economic way) to the facilities, the public noise complaints have been still increasing. Hence, it is required to increase the capability of staff on the use of communicative instruments of noise management. The Erasmus+ Noise Training Project (NTP) aimed to improve the skills and practices of staff working on environmental noise management (ENM), using innovative methods. Moreover, it improved the sharing of good practices on noise management in audits between European countries to provide the high acoustic quality of urban cities. In the present paper, the comparative analysis on ENM applications between project partner countries (Turkey, Italy and Spain) is described and the final version of the new curriculum focusing on environmental noise is illustrated, together with its transferability potential to additional EU Countries.

As a scientific consequence of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, several initiatives have taken place in order to monitor noise levels trends before and after the lock down phase in several Italian and European cities. In Monza (Italy), since June 2017, a new smart noise monitoring system consisting of 10 sensors developed in the frame of the LIFE MONZA project is continuously measuring acoustic data every second and transmitting them hourly to a dedicated server. The sensors are located both along a main street of the Libertà district characterised by high traffic flows and along secondary streets of the district; they are positioned on (preferably sensitive) buildings facades and on streetlamps. In the present paper results of a study concerning changes occurred in noise levels trends before and during the lock down phase for the smart sensors are presented, together with a comparison with noise levels collected by the same sensors in the equivalent months of the previous year. Some preliminary considerations regarding the reliability of the sensors themselves are also provided.

Keywords: LIFE MONZA , noise mapping , noise monitoring , smart network of sensors

The aim of this work is to study methods and criteria to objectively evaluate Geometrical Product Specification (GPS) and Geometrical Dimensioning and tolerances (GD&T) basic skills of engineering students. To do so, it is important to define who is the examiner, what is the topic of the exam, how to examine, when and why. In particular, for what concerns the topics, knowledge, competences, skills, concepts and abilities should be assessed. Basic knowledge is the easier topic to evaluate in an objective and reliable way, for example using closed-ended questions, but skills like creativity are difficult to measure. Following the principles of Bloom's taxonomy, a technical drawing evaluation grid has been developed and used by the authors. The grid has eight learning levels, and target knowledge, competences, and skills have been defined for each learning level, then specific tests to verify the target for each level have been studied and developed. In this paper some examples of application of the grid are described and some preliminary results and considerations are reported. In particular, using an objective closed-ended question test, which rigorously assesses the basic levels of the grid, “residual” students decrease in number, and the students increase in number, the test is cost-effective.

Keywords: Bloom's taxonomy , Engineering education , Engineering students evaluation , GPS/GD&T , Technical drawing

Since students attending basic engineering courses are numerous and show different background regarding high school, experience, skills and attitudes, it has become important for educators to assess the level of their prior knowledge. In Italy, in order to access university engineering courses (BS degree level), students usually must take an entrance test; it assesses their knowledge about basic subjects such as mathematics, physics and chemistry, as well as their logical and linguistic skills. However, this test does not refer to technical subjects, e.g., the technical drawing. The two university research units of Udine and Brescia collaborate in developing the Technical Drawing Test-Level 0 (TDT-L0), a test-based method to assess students' prior knowledge about basic engineering graphics topics like axonometric and orthographic projections, sectional views, basic dimensioning standards, etc. This paper describes the definition of the test contents - the selection of the questions to ask to the students - as well as the way to analyze the collected information and exploit the results to improve the learning and teaching experience of both students and educators. An adoption of the TDT-L0 at the University of Udine is reported as first validation.

Keywords: Engineering education , Prior knowledge assessment , Technical drawing , Test

The paper presents the original integration of ICT tools and e-learning platform into an infrastructure to support Project-based learning for a design class that is geographically distributed across different countries. 30 Mechanical Engineering students from 4 European countries tested the infrastructure prototype for the development of an innovative solution in the field of white goods. The results produced evidence about the suitability of the proposal together with strong and weak points of the infrastructure, that can support further development and adaptation into different contexts.

Keywords: collaborative design , design education , distributed design , e-learning , project-based learning

The paper discusses the outcomes of tailored ideation workshops (duration: 3 hours) for students of Design Engineering, not trained in design creativity dimensions and their assessment. 65 participants generated ideas to address a design problem, first individually and then in groups of 4/5 people. They were asked to cluster their ideas intuitively and then according to the structure of the genealogy tree. The reflections on the ideation experience (structured consistently with the Kolb cycle) helped them to easily consolidate their understanding of typical metrics of creativity (Novelty, Quality, Quantity and Variety). A survey questions them after four months from the workshop and the results show that the metrics are still clear, despite some controversial results appear for quantity. The investigation also shows that novelty has become the main driver to self-Assess the effectiveness of their creative ideation performance.

Keywords: Creativity Measurement , Experiential Learning , Genealogy tree , Ideation , Innovation

The research on the use of virtual reality (VR) in the design domain has been conducted in a fragmentary way so far, and some misalignments have emerged among scholars. In particular, the actual support of VR in early design phases and the diffusion of practices involving VR in creative design stages are argued. In the present paper, we reviewed VR applications in design and categorized each of the collected 86 sources into multiple classes. These range from supported design functions to employed VR technologies and the use of systems complementing VR. The identified design functions include not only design activities traditionally supported by VR, such as 3D modelling, virtual prototyping, and product evaluation, but also co-design and design education beyond the early design phases. The possibility to support early design phases by means of VR is mirrored by the attention on products that involve an emotional dimension beyond functional aspects, which are particularly focused on in virtual assemblies and prototypes. Relevant matches between VR technologies and specific design functions have been individuated, although a clear separation between VR devices and supported design tasks cannot be claimed.

Keywords: 3D modelling , Co-design , Early design phases , Engineering design , Industrial design , Product design , Product evaluation , Technological development , Virtual prototyping , Virtual reality

Mechanical and Management Engineering are some of the stakeholders involved in product development, with different competencies. They must share the responsibility for best solution identification to accordingly answer the customer needs and to authorize the production of products that can have success with a positive economic return. Higher education curricula should prepare such professionals, and this is the reason because courses of product design are proposed to such classes. Even the programmes of the corresponding courses are necessarily different the part related to concept generation is similar. The work aims is to identify analogies and differences between the classes of Mechanical Engineering and Management Engineering, both in the way of leading the generation of concepts and in how the concepts generated have eventually reached the goals of innovation. BrainWriting is a method that can allow students to be productive in concept generation and is based on the two steps of sketching and gallery. This ability must be conjointly employed with the functional study of the problem to be solved. These aspects must be learned by students to avoid fixation, the inconvenience to repeat indefinitely only what is already known. The design alternatives generated by teams of students will be assessed by teachers and experts in the field, following the method proposed by Shah. After such classification, further comparison between the two classes will be done to identify the aspects of the cultural imprinting of such future professionals.

Keywords: BrainWriting , comparison between different classes , creativity and innovation , creativity assessment , Product design education

The first phases of designing an industrial product are those in which creativity has the predominant weight in all the design process. Teaching to be creative is extremely complex and ambiguous, given the elusiveness of the mechanisms that guide it. In this work, the process of generating concepts has been observed during the laboratory of a dyad workgroup of master's degree students in mechanical engineering in a course of Product Design and Development. Starting from a standard session of the 635 method (Brainwriting) it has been observed how the concepts have evolved in a continuous Brainwriting developed in five steps, between feared and almost manifested moments of fixation and exhaustion, towards increasingly mature and conscious solutions, despite the inexperience of the team members. Some aspects have been highlighted on the rotation mechanism of the different Brainwriting sessions and how this has contributed to concepts development; therefore a framework of a three-step Brainwriting session is proposed, which takes inspiration from this experience and those performed of past years.

Keywords: 635 method , Brainwriting , Concept generation , Continuous Brainwriting

ANOVA is currently employed in association with the Robust Design in order to discover the parameters most influencing a particular performance of a device in the phase of development. Such relation has been studied for many times and literature is abundant. The peculiar nature of the Taguchi Method with the employment of orthogonal arrays introduces new elements in the investigation of the most influencing parameters. Considering that the plan of the experiment is organized on the base of level parameters combination orthogonal and balanced, ANOVA can be applied to each parameter individually and this gives new insight on the occurrence of noises in correspondence of some levels parameter. The paper analyses this kind of relation, reproducing an example from literature and discussing how ANOVA can be employed in such a study. Robust Design is an extraordinary method to be used in product development with the experiments simulated from CAE analyses. In this context, more conscious employment of such methodologies can aid in managing and organizing the study and experimentation on new products or processes. In another section a second example from the authors is re-proposed and some new insights are shown.

Keywords: ANOVA , Robust Design , Taguchi Method

Eco-design is the integration of environmental considerations within product design and development. Eco-design represents an important innovation driver for companies; however, well-known barriers limit the diffusion of this design paradigm in the industrial world. Amongst these, lack of eco-knowledge is correlated to the adopted eco-design teaching methods. Previous experience has highlighted that traditional teaching methods such as university lectures or refresher courses are not an effective means for disseminating eco-design knowledge in the industrial world. In this context, the present paper proposes a novel eco-design teaching method based on a transformative strategy for promoting eco-design and facilitating the learning process. This approach, tested in collaboration with an Italian manufacturing firm, is considered the first attempt to implement a repeatable eco-design teaching approach that can be scaled up in different industrial contexts. Several company departments, including management, marketing and commercial affairs, design and engineering, and a testing laboratory were involved in the training program. Technical results show that company employees were able to autonomously implement re-design solutions and improve the environmental performance of a coffee machine upon completion of the course. The quantitative evaluation of formative outcomes through assessment before and after the course highlights a significant increase in the awareness of personnel and knowledge relating to eco-design.

Keywords: Eco-design , Eco-knowledge , Life cycle assessment , Product portfolio , Teaching

New tools are needed to support CAD course reform efforts. These reforms aim to increase the development of strategic knowledge and modeling skills within CAD competency, and their implementation requires better structured and more frequent assessment and feedback. In particular, formative assessment and formative feedback are essential. Unfortunately, within CAD education, dedicated techniques and tools are not yet available to support the implementation of formative assessment, and, in particular, to assist learning goal and outcome-oriented assessment of CAD models produced by students. The aim of the current paper is two-fold. Firstly, it strives to present a novel approach for parametric feature-based solid model assessment in the educational context. This is based on deficiency analysis in relation to learning outcomes. Secondly, it reports on the implementation and application of a newly developed software tool module to enable and put into practice this novel CAD model assessment approach. The new module will be combined with a module for surface CAD model assessment to form an integrated semi-automatic software tool that is aimed at supporting assessment of both parametric feature-based solid models and surface models.

Keywords: Competency development , Formative feedback , Geometric CAD model usability , Reflection on performance and outcome , Strategic knowledge build-up

To address some of the shortcomings of the traditional approach to CAD education in relation to the increasingly complex and highly competitive global labor markets, while also taking advantage of recent developments in educational research and cognitive science related to how students learn, a novel approach to improving CAD education has been developed and implemented. The approach integrates negative knowledge and learning from errors as crucial elements in combination with traditional teaching methods (positive knowledge) and formative assessment/feedback. To examine different facets of teaching/learning-related phenomena aimed at providing grounds for improving learning outcomes achieved within a recently restructured MCAD course, empirical research was conducted. In this paper, the results of that empirical research are presented and discussed in regard to learning experience and self-evaluated competency development. The results and insight gained herein are based on student feedback from a set of over 700 questionnaires collected and analyzed using a multi-method approach.

Keywords: Competency development , Curriculum design , Integrated teaching method , Learning experience , Negative expertise , Strategic knowledge build-up

Due to its versatility, virtual technology is being widely employed in different domains, from industry to amusement. The possibility to adopt this technology in early product/service design is going to bring positive effects such as the reduction of costs associated with the production of physical prototypes and the generation of a more effective knowledge of users' feedback. This study proposes a preliminary methodology to evaluate users' engagement in interacting with a virtual environment that consists of the integration between a self-report method (the user engagement scale questionnaire) and a method based on facial expression recognition. Results reported in this paper show that the two methodologies generate different types of knowledge which can be used to fit users' needs and expectations. Even if focused on a specific case study, i.e., the evaluation of the engagement in a virtual learning environment, this paper aims to propose a methodology that can be applied to all kinds of virtual products.

Keywords: FER (facial expression recognition) , Product life cycle , Self-reports , Student engagement , Virtual learning environment

This paper presents a learning outcomes-based methodology to produce a summative assessment to use in any course at any educational level. It takes into consideration the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) to define the learning outcomes, Bloom's taxonomy to define the assessment questions and the QR code to help managing large class size. The methodology has been applied in a case study regarding the technical drawing course of the BSc Engineering programme at the Faculty of Engineering in Italy. In general, the implementation of the new assessment, during the two academic years of analysis, has shown good results in terms of reduction of failures (7% in the first year and 3.9% in the second year), improvement of the weighted average mark (4.6%), reduction of the minimum mark obtained (8.1%), increase of the maximum mark obtained (3.1%) and time reduction of 48% to upload marks to the electronic register.

Keywords: assessment questions , Bloom's taxonomy , engineering education , European Qualifications Framework (EQF) , technical drawing

The book was inadvertently published with an error in Chapter 50. The author's name has been changed from ‘Barbara Moty' to ‘Barbara Motyl'.

The key findings about the use of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) at University of Naples Federico II are shown. In particular, the Engineering Drawing course for Industrial Engineering students was the pilot to evaluate the benefits of new Web-Based Platforms and Environments in higher education. The combination of In-Class and On-Line lessons is defined “Blended Course” and can be attended by students both in traditional classrooms and On-Line. It was provided during the last four academic years allowing the use of new tools (e.g., multimedia contents, interactive files). Thanks to about 7000 students involved in this project, several data were gathered for statistics and analysis purposes. Therefore, the access to the MOOC was monitored and the correlation with the homework was examined. At the end of the course, the level of satisfaction of the students about the interaction with the new platform was evaluated. The analysis of the results provided useful hints for the updating of the course in order to improve skills and interactive experience.

Keywords: Distant learning , eLearning , Engineering design education , Interactive learning

We propose to use an industrial redundant manipulator (KUKA LBR iiwa robot) as a haptic device to provide high force feedback for an orthopedic surgeon while performing the reaming of the acetabula in a virtual environment. Real experiments have been performed to validate the virtual reality training framework. The results show that the system resulted to be intuitive and reliable from the users experience.

Keywords: medical robotics force feedback virtual reality training

The paper presents an experimental setup suited to a starting introduction of high school and undergraduate students to basic topics in vibrations, data acquisition and signal processing. The setup is portable, based on low-cost gear motor, sensors and control electronics, with 3D printed custom parts, and it has been used in different education contexts. Its specification, realization, features and usage are discussed in the paper.

Keywords: Engineering Education , High School , Mechanical Vibrations , Mechatronic Systems , Undergraduate Students