Remodelling an engineering design subject to enhance students’ learning outcomes

This paper presents details of remodelling of an engineering design subject to enhance students’ learning outcome. The subject is offered for second year mechanical engineering undergraduates in the first semester of the academic year. The basic objective of the subject is to introduce the engineering design practice and to build up the essential skills to carry out open-ended engineering design projects systematically. Before remodelling, the subject had been taught and assessed mainly with the use of techniques normally used for knowledge building subjects. Students were given only limited opportunities to actively engage with the content, peers and the facilitator in-class. Considering the reserved nature of Hong Kong students, the subject was remodelled by incorporating carefully selected active learning methods. The scaffolded knowledge integration framework for instructional design is extensively used for this subject remodelling exercise. The remodelled subject was delivered and the learning outcome achievements were assessed using pre and post survey questionnaires, focus group discussion and individual student’s performance records. The assessment results indicate that the new approach of subject delivery and assessment methods are more effective in achieving intended learning outcomes and well accepted by the students.