National Award To Engineering Design, Graphics Course

3-5-97

University Park, Pa. -- Student involvement and teamwork have earned Penn State's Engineering Design and Graphics 100 course this year's Outstanding Practice Award from the Division of Instructional Development of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. The national award is given annually to honor exemplary instructional materials or systems.

ED&G100 is a design-driven course with emphasis placed on teamwork, strengthening communication skills -- graphical, oral, and written -- and developing efficiency using computer-aided analysis tools.

"Penn State's ED&G100 was chosen because it presented an outstanding use of technology within a complete course using superior design principles" says Rita Richey, AECT Award Committee Chair from the Division of Instructional Development. Two additional pluses of the project, according to Richey, are its innovative instructional strategy which is replicable on a broad scale, and the general affordability of the project, both of which make it a more appealing potential curriculum addition for the typical university.

"Student involvement and teamwork aspects of Penn State's project were especially noted during the evaluations, and awarding this course was seen as a way of highlighting student work. We hope to motivate them to higher levels of work because of the exposure that's resulting," explains Richey.

The course introduces students to an engineering approach to problem-solving, with strong references to basic science and math skills. Students also test and evaluate design ideas by building working prototypes. The design products are the total of at least thirty hours of in-class, group oriented work, one third of the course. Several of the design products are sponsored by industry.

The efforts of Dhushy Sathianathan, assistant professor of Engineering Design & Graphics at Penn State, Carol Dwyer, senior instructional designer in the Center for Academic Computing, and numerous other faculty involved with the class are indirectly honored by this recognition. Graduate assistant Marsha King also assists with the ED&G100 project.

Curriculum revisions to Penn State's ED&G100 helped make it worthy of this award, and have been funded since 1990 by the AT&T Foundation and the Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership (ECSEL). ECSEL is a combined effort to renew undergraduate engineering education and its infrastructure, and involves a coalition of seven schools and colleges of engineering: The City College of New York; Howard University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Morgan State University; University of Maryland; University of Washington; and Penn State. ECSEL partners are responding to a call for action by the National Science Foundation, which is funding the coalition at a level of $3 million per year. The project has also been supported by Penn State's Center for Academic Computing.

For more information about ED&G100, student projects, and course management and assessment resources, visit the project's World Wide Web site at http://www.ecsel.psu.edu/setce/EDG100/.

Editors: Carol Dwyer of the Center for Academic Computing may be reached by telephone at (814) 863-7765. Dr. Sathianathan, assistant professor of ED&G100, may be reached by telephone at (814) 865-2952.

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Contact: Brent Hurley, Engineering College Relations, (814) 863-2132