Engineering Design For Human Needs: Expanding The Scope Of Engineering Senior Design
The culminating design experience in engineering curricula is usually intended to provide a framework within which the emerging engineer can draw upon an acquired base of knowledge in his or her discipline to solve an open ended problem in that discipline or in a multidisciplinary context requiring contributions from that discipline. In this paper, we show how the culminating design experience can be framed so as to expand the scope of its contribution in the education of engineering students. We describe a pedagogical framework within which educational outcomes associated with multidisciplinary activity, legal, ethical, and professional responsibilities, and the impact of engineering solutions on society can be emphasized. Drawing upon student experiences in design of systems for use by persons with developmental or cognitive disabilities, for persons studying human skeletal structures, and for persons with certain neurological dysfunction, this paper also identifies and illustrates ways of leading students to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a broader social context.