A Design-Oriented Engineering Course Involving Interactions With Stakeholders

Contribution: A novel project-based learning (PBL) approach applicable to diverse design-oriented engineering courses. This article reports the application results during six academic years (2012/13 to 2017/18) for electronic instrumentation (EI) course for third-year Industrial Electronic and Automation Engineering majors. Background: Engineering education should prepare students to specify, design, and validate systems interacting with stakeholders in complex professional scenarios. Intended Outcomes: The general aim of the course was to train students in the specification, design, and validation of real-world instrumentation systems, promoting the development of expertise and deep understanding of fundamental concepts and techniques. Application Design: The students, working in teams, were tasked with the specification, design, and development of different instrumentation projects. They had to exchange information about their projects with other teams and discuss design decisions, thus creating a multiple-case experience. In addition, each team acted as a provider of a different team and as a client of another team, in a circular client-provider relationship. This student-centered learning process was supported and complemented with guided teaching of fundamental concepts, principles, and techniques and with continuous evaluation, complemented with rigorous individual exams. The project activities, lectures, and problem-solving classes were coordinated to optimize the process of developing the students' understanding and expertise. Findings: Based on the academic results and the feedback from the students obtained along the years through two different anonymous surveys, it is concluded that most of the students achieved the expected learning outcomes, i.e., learning to design EI systems and dealing with stakeholders. Analyzed results proved that students were very satisfied with the methodology.