ENGR 4412: Senior Engineering Design I Lecture 1 Syllabus

Weldon Wilson Dept of Engr & Physics http://www.physics.uco.edu/wwilson wwilson@uco.edu

ENGR 4412 SENIOR ENGINEERING DESIGN I Fall Semester 2010 R 1:00-3:50, Howell Hall 203
INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Weldon Wilson OFFICE: Howell Hall 221H URL: www.physics.uco.edu/wwilson PHONE: 974-5470 EMAIL: wwilson@uco.edu

COURSE SYNOPSIS: This is the first semester of the two-semester capstone design course for senior engineering physics and biomedical engineering majors. 1.The purpose of the course sequence is to integrate the principles of successful engineering design through implementation of a practical design project. 2.The course will emphasize team-based, engineering design projects. 3.The main objective of the course is for students to practice engineering design by completing a real-world design project. 4.A second objective is to return value to the client through the delivery of a completed product.
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PREREQUISITES: Written permission required and Senior standing. Students must follow this course in the Spring Semester with ENGR 4422 (Senior Engineering Design II). To be eligible to take this course sequence, a student must graduate in the 2011 calendar year after the sequence is started. OFFICE HOURS: MWRF 11:00-1:50; Other times by mutual arrangement. TEXTBOOK: Practical Engineering Design edited by Maja Bystrom and Bruce Eisenstein (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2005).
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Objectives
This class is the capstone design class. "Capstone" because it draws on all of your other courses. You will go through an open-ended design project experience similar to what you can expect on your job, following graduation. Consider your faculty project advisor to be your manager. They will approach you with the need for your team to develop a new product or process for them. This should be exciting experience. However, the situation may feel uncomfortable at first, as it will differ substantially from most of your previous formal classes. There is no solution in the back of the text book and not even your team advisor knows the optimal answer. They have contracted you to find it!
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 You may find it unnerving if you ask your advisor what to do next, and they reply, I don't know, you figure it out! Or you may ask your advisor if your calculations are correct, and they reply, I don't know, you tell me!" But that is life for a working scientist or engineer; no answer exists at the back of any text for an open-ended design problem. Your manager may not even have the technical expertise to validate your models. Nevertheless, you have to convince them that your work is correct. Learning effective project management, team work and group coordination is an important objective of the course. While you might be able to deliver a good product without considering how the project is managed or how to effectively use every team member, the team's output, and your grade, will be much better if good management principles are followed.

Objectives (Cont)

 You are likely taking this class during your last year as an undergraduate student. You are expected to apply all those modeling and analysis skills that you have developed in your prerequisite classes. For example, if your product involves some sort of structure, the methods you learned in Statics are likely relevant. You are expected to support your project with all appropriate analyses, and document them in your final report. This will help you to earn a high course grade. Your project advisor will probably not tell you what analysis to apply, but rather will expect you to determine when analysis is needed and what analysis to use. Nevertheless, your advisor will expect you to know what you are talking about. Look for opportunities to put your background classes to work for you. Your team might also assign some of your members to learn more about certain technical subjects to properly appraise your designs.

Objectives (Cont)

 The class meets as a whole only one day a week. The schedule for the class meeting is attached. The bulk of the course work, however, is spent working outside class in your project. The design projects are tackled by the class design teams and overseen by you project faculty advisors. The advisors may be a UCO professor or may be an engineer from the company sponsoring the project. The advisor should meet with the team at least once every two weeks. The role of the faculty advisor is to advise, not to lead. Your progress is tracked by weekly progress reports, technical reports, design notebooks, a project design presentation, the final project presentation and the final report. These items are described further later in this document.
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COURSE STRUCTURE (Cont)

PROJECT TEAM FORMATION: Project descriptions are passed out at the first class meeting. Teams of 3 to 5 students select one of the projects. You are free to form your own teams subject to approval by the course instructor. Teams should be formed and the instructor notified of the team members as soon as possible and no later than the second class meeting. PROJECT SELECTION: After you have formed a team, you will need to select a project. Project descriptions are passed out at the first class meeting, but you may propose a project of your own choosing provided you can find a faculty member will to serve as the faculty sponsor and advisor for the project. You may also find that some faculty have possible senior design project ideas that are not on the list of possible projects. BME students must work on a biomedical engineering project. All students who have not selected a team and/or a project will be assigned to a team.

COURSE STRUCTURE (Cont)

PROJECT TEAM FORMATION: Project descriptions are passed out at the first class meeting. Teams of 3 to 5 students select one of the projects. You are free to form your own teams subject to approval by the course instructor. Teams should be formed and the instructor notified of the team members as soon as possible and no later than the second class meeting. PROJECT SELECTION: After you have formed a team, you will need to select a project. Project descriptions are passed out at the first class meeting, but you may propose a project of your own choosing provided you can find a faculty member will to serve as the faculty sponsor and advisor for the project. You may also find that some faculty have possible senior design project ideas that are not on the list of possible projects. BME students must work on a biomedical engineering project. All students who have not selected a team and/or a project will be assigned to a team.

COURSE STRUCTURE (Cont)

PROJECT TASKS: You will organize project work using a Work Breakdown Structure. From this you will create tasks. Every task will have its own deliverable, due date and responsible person. Task deliverables are often either a report (brief technical report, brief Powerpoint Slides, set of CAD drawings) or a physical prototype. More information on how to organize project tasks will be given as the course develops. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: You will likely be creating new inventions during this course. All projects require signing an intellectual property stating that any intellectual property you create is assigned to the company client. Although the IP will belong to the client, you will still be a named inventor on any provision or full patent applications. The agreement is typical when contracting to do work for companies because these are real projects with potential commercial value.
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COURSE STRUCTURE (Cont)

DELIVERABLE: A project deliverable is required from all teams by the end of the course sequence. TECHNICAL REPORTS: Brief technical reports will be the natural outcome of many team tasks. Reports can be in the form of PowerPoint slides or a technical document. Copies of these reports should be given to your Faculty Advisor for yoru project and also retained by your project team in a safe place for referral. Technical reports are valuable both because they summarize the output of a project task and because they are material that can be inserted into the nal report. Every team member is expected to author at least two technical reports during ENGR 4412. More information on technical reports will be provided in lecture.
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COURSE STRUCTURE (Cont)

Every student is required to keep a senior design project notebook for recording all of their work. Learning to document the evolution of your design in a notebook now will serve you well when you are out in the real world working as an engineer. Notebooks must be sewn-bound (no spiral notebooks) with consecutively numbered pages (you may have to add the page number yourself) and may have pages that are blank, ruled or with grids, your choice. Record in your notebook anything and everything associated with your project - ideas, thoughts, sketches, computer programs, derivations, graphs, data, website URLs, printouts - dated and thoroughly documented, just in case you decide to pursue patents based on your work. Patent litigation is sometimes decided based on documentation in design notebooks. Your notebook will be evaluated by your instructor once or twice each term. Specifics on what type of notebook you need and what you should put in it will be provided as the course develops.

NOTEBOOKS

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FE PRACTICE EXAMS: You will have six FE Practice Exams on the dates specied in the class schedule. These exams will consist of approximately 20 multiple choice question of the kind you can expect to see on the FE exam. The exams will be over the following areas: 1. Math / Programming 2. Statics / Dynamics 3. Thermodynamics / Fluids 4. Electric Circuits / Electromagnetic Fields 5. Engineering Econ / Engineering Ethics 6. Strength of Materials / Materials Science SEMINAR: We will have three departmental research seminars on the dates indicated in the attached schedule. You are required to attend and submit a brief report on each.
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Grades
Your final grade will depend on both individual and design team performance. This means your grade depends not only on how well you do as an individual, but also on how well your team members do. Grading is based on performance, not on effort. The criteria for assessment of the team are: 10% - Professionalism 10% - Course Coordinator assessment of overall design 15% - Advisor assessment of overall design 20% - Quality of Project Proposal 20% - Quality of Project Design Presentation 25% - Quality of Project Design Report 100% Your team will get a letter grade based on the project results and the team project deliverables.
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The criteria for assessment of individuals within the team are:

10% - Professionalism 10% - Notebook/Weekly Reports 10% - Research Seminar Reports 10% - Peer assessment of your performance by other members of your team 15% - FE Practice Exams 20% - Course Coordinator assessment of contribution 25% - Faculty Advisor assessment of contribution 100%

Grades (cont)

Your personal grade will start with the team grade, but may go up or down from the team grade based on your contribution to the project and your individual deliverables. For example, if your team receives a B, your grade will likely be anywhere between a C and an A. For another example, if your team receives a C for the project grade, it is extremely unlikely that you will get anything above a B for your own grade no matter how good your individual performance was. So what you should conclude from the grading policy is that it's to your benefit to make sure you have a high performing team. Truly abysmal individual performance (essentially you do nothing at all) will rate a D or F, no matter what the team grade.

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Grades (cont) Each student will be different. Some will excel by doing excellent analysis, some by building
an awesome prototype, some by writing reports, and some by taking on effective team leadership roles. The bottom line is, did you contribute, did you apply your engineering skills, and did you stretch yourself during the semester. It is a sobering thought to imagine that you might have received a B if evaluated only on your own work, but were dragged down to a C because one of your team members was not pulling their weight. The opposite can also happen where you soar up to an A because you are a member of a particularly powerful team. Although this method of performance evaluation may sound unusual, in fact it is exactly what happens in the real world. Your team would do well to conduct periodic internal reviews of the team's performance and to help those members that for any reason are lagging behind. Your advisor can help in this process or you can contact the Course Coordinator. Although there may be minor grading variations across groups, we make every effort to maintain an appropriate level of consistency. It is not productive to compare your grade to that of someone in another group because each project has different objectives, deliverables and team dynamics. The best thing you can do to ensure a good grade for yourself is to put in the hours (from day 1), to work as part of the team so that the sum is greater than the parts, and to make use of all that you have learned from your extensive training at UCO.

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COURSE MILESTONES
PROJECT DESIGN PROPOSALS: The project proposals are an initial check to make sure that each group understands the problems to be solved and has made a concrete plan to develop a system that has the potential to solve every aspect of the design problem. This plan needs to be as complete as it can be when it is submitted and must include a time line for the remainder of the project. It is understood that these are initial proposals, that designs necessarily evolve and changes are frequently made, therefore teams are not held to the specifics of their design proposals.
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PROJECT DESIGN PRESENTATION: These presentations should tell the story of the design project. The mid-year progress report is to tell the story from the first day of class to the presentation date, describing what was considered and explored and what needs to be done in the next several weeks to win the competition. Since you are competing with the other groups, you need not reveal any secret or wonderfully clever ideas that you might have, but the presentation must be of substance. The final design presentation must be complete and contain details of each subsystem and component of your design as well as a complete cost analysis. The overall emphasis of both of these presentations is to have your audience understand what you did, why you did it and how your device works. You are to avoid equations, photographs of electronic circuits and listings of computer programs. Explain your design through drawings, photos, demonstrations, video clips, block diagrams and flowcharts. The presentations must be prepared according to specified guidelines and format; the opening slide should contain the names and photos of all group members.
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COURSE MILESTONES (CONT)

COURSE MILESTONES (CONT)

PROJECT DESIGN REPORT: The final report and presentation this semester should have a description and demonstration of your design prototype. In addition to the format and guidelines specied by your instructor, the following will be included in the final written reports. The main evaluation criteria will be: Modelling, analysis and hardware/software development Use of all applicable engineering standards Systems approach, design considerations and backup solutions Oral and written presentations, and actual system demonstrations Creativity and uniqueness from design concept to implementation Project progress, consistency and completion

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Each student group will select a different team leader each month with each member of the group serving at least once as the project manager. The project manager will be the main contact for the group, will present the weekly progress reports, function as liaison between the team and the faculty advisor, and be responsible for the internal communications within the group. The project manager rotation must be identified to the course instructor in the project proposal. Responsibilities of the project manager include: insuring that deadlines are met, insuring that the team is prepared for the weekly advisor meetings, responsible for assembling and giving weekly team report, responsible for competing and submitting all purchase requisitions, responsible for logistics and confirmations associated with weekly team meetings, weekly advisor meetings, and all reports and presentations. This includes room and presentation equipment reservations.

PROJECT MANAGERS/TEAM LEADERS

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PROFESSIONALISM
You are expected to treat this course as an engineering job with the course coordinator as your boss/manager. In addition, you will be required to satisfy one the following: 1.Show evidence that you have joined the professional engineering society that is appropriate for your degree, or 2.Write a report on the professional engineering society appropriate for your degree that details how to become a member, the specific benefits that organization offers, etc. In addition, you will be required to satisfy one the following: 1.Show evidence that you have registered to take the FE exam, or 2.Write a report on the FE that details how to become a signup to take the exam in Oklahoma, the specific areas that are tested on the exam, the format of the FE exams, etc.

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ATTENDANCE POLICY: Attendance is required. Treat the weekly class meeting as a job with the course instructor as you boss. If you are going to be unavoidably late or miss a class, like any employer your instructor will expect a telephone call or email explaining the details. You are expected to be available to work on your project every Thursday from 1:00 -3:50 PM. You do not necessarily have to meet with your team for that entire time, but you want to be available to your team if necessary. You may work on independent sub-tasks such as researching concepts in the library, running models in the computer lab or prototyping in the Student Shop.
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TIME COMMITMENT: While this is a two-credit course, it meets three hours each week. The expected time commitment is approximately 3 hours outside class for each hour in class. So you should expect to devote at least 12 hours per week to this course. The group meeting time on Thursday afternoon qualifies as a portion of this time. The course does not have an imposed structure like most. How you invest your hours will depend on your project. Be cautious about letting time slip away early in the semester because the design show seems far away. You are urged to police your time to make sure you are dedicating yourself at an appropriate level for this course.
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CELL PHONES: Unless you have received prior permission from your instructor, all computers and communications devices must be turned o and put away during lecture sessions. This includes cell phones, pagers, laptop computers, palm plots, etc. COURSE WEB PAGE: I will be placing various forms, lecture notes and other materials on our course web page at
www.physics.uco.edu/wwilson/courses/sr engr design.html

You should check it often for announcements and other course related information.
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Approx Schedule ENGR 4412

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