Author:

Keywords:

engineering education, problem solving and design

Abstract:

The Faculty of Engineering Science of the KU Leuven has more than 10 years of experience in preparing their students for professional practice through a learning pathway called “Problem Solving and Design”. This pathway consists of four courses, spread over the three years of the Bachelor program, in which students collaborate in small project teams on reallife engineering problems. Recent insights in the learning pathway have led to defining three Design Pyramids. The central Pyramid shows the different steps of the design process: information gathering, problem definition, generation of ideas, modelling, schematically representing diagrams, calculating and experimenting, evaluation and decision making, and practical realization. This large pyramid rests on two smaller pyramids, which are indispensable in the whole of problem solving and design. The left one is about communication and cooperation in a team, the right one is about planning and project management. The paper elaborates on these Design Pyramids, and reports on (1) the student as an active learner while engaged in the real-life engineering project work; (2) the learning outcomes of the pathway and the competences preparing students for professional practice together with the quality assurance of the learning pathway; (3) the progress in the learning pathway, showing how the different modules in the three years of Bachelor build up, how they fit in our curriculum design, and how students are learning different competences all along the path and (4) the evaluation methods used, grading criteria and feedback sheets.