AccessEngineering:
Giving Students the Tools for Real-World Success By Craig G. Downing, Ph.D., CMfgE
Associate Professor of Engineering Management, Rose-Hulman Faculty Advisory Board Member, AccessEngineering
AccessEngineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology: A Case Study Graduate education is a challenging venture. The process is even more challenging when your field of study requires information and knowledge from multiple engineering disciplines to be successful. As an Associate Professor of Engineering Management my charge is to provide undergraduate and graduate students with an educational experience that mimics the technical and leadership challenges they will face after graduation. While my educational training and industrial experience lends itself more to the operational aspects of an organization, many of my students’ backgrounds will differ greatly,
“…My charge is to provide undergraduate and graduate students with an educational experience that mimics the technical and leadership challenges they will face after graduation.”
and as such it is useful to have access to information that spans virtually all engineering disciplines—something that AccessEngineering provides. Given this, it is impossible to overestimate the value our students gain from having an electronic engineering reference tool like AccessEngineering. The database provides them information on the top ten classical engineering disciplines, as well as many of the related foundational and advanced mathematical courses. In addition, my students enjoy using the various learning aids delivered in formats, such as videos, interactive graphs, selfdirected instructional modules, and calculators, that reinforce course lectures and assist with daily homework assignments. However, given my primary focus which is graduate-level instruction, my students in particular have found AccessEngineering’s content and functionality particularly advantageous when working on class projects. An example project from Manufacturing Systems exemplifies the usefulness of the reference tool…
Class Projects: How AccessEngineering Guides Students Toward the Solution Students enrolled in Manufacturing Systems are given a term project that requires them to design a manufacturing facility to produce a product of their choosing. Many of the students will choose a product that harnesses the skills of their specific engineering discipline, but that is the easy part. Once they receive the facility design requirements and production capability, things get interesting. continued...
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Cont. Class Projects It is at this point students begin to recalibrate their expectations from the component level issues and begin to grapple with the interconnectedness of the enterprise. Successful completion of the project challenges students to assemble information from various aspects of facility design to present a comprehensive and viable venture proposal. This requires students to define specifications for site location, labor requirements, process design, product design, material handling, marketing strategy and future plans. In one case a team needed to perform a cost-benefit analysis between two joining approaches: welding versus fasteners. To fully understand the analysis the students were required to verify the load conditions, assembly implications, and material selection. While trying to accomplish this goal they gathered information from three handbooks (in Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Design for Manufacturing) and two videos (Tool Materials Introduction and Ferrous Tool Materials). Once they amassed the individual data points a new design emerged to consider the sum total of new information. While this project is academic in nature, students find that
“Students find that the resources of AccessEngineering exactly match those needed to be an effective engineer in practice.”
the resources of AccessEngineering exactly match those needed to be an effective engineer in practice. As the field of engineering continues to address the complex issues of the world it is essential that educators, students, and practitioners have the appropriate tools to prepare themselves in the best way possible to be valueadded contributors. AccessEngineering is a superb tool that offers volumes of resources that a student at any level—from entering freshman design to completing a doctoral dissertation—can use to improve their understanding of engineering in both theoretical and practical applications. The content is provided in various mediums to assist students in learning the information in a manner that best suits them. Filled with credible teaching and learning resources, AccessEngineering equips engineering educators and students with resources capable of positively transforming the learning experience. Let’s harness that power to the betterment of our discipline!
Craig G. Downing, Ph.D., CMfgE Department Head and Associate Professor of Engineering Management, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN, USA
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