Beyond industry : an expanded definition of authentic engineering design education

Authentic approaches to design education are typically defined as experiences centered on industry involvement. This industry connection is commonly either in the form of projects provided by industry partners or practicing engineers that serve as mentors to students. After exploring the goals and current practices of design education, this dissertation proposes an expanded definition of authentic design education: any design project with impact beyond the classroom environment that encourages the development of a student's self-identity as an engineer. To investigate the potential benefits afforded by an expanded definition of authentic design, a new design class was developed, taught, and evaluated across four years. The class, entitled Design for the Wilderness, was developed with a focus on projects that have impact beyond the classroom environment. Students were required to design and build products that they relied on while traveling in remote wilderness environments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Saulnier, Christopher R.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John G. Brisson.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122728

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122728