| Increasingly, undergraduate engineering programs in North America are criticized for the inequitable weight given to science curriculum over design curriculum in engineering, and for the perceived lack of integration between engineering science and engineering design. The effects are alleged to be engineering graduates with poor design understanding and competencies. A Department of Biosystems Engineering at one Canadian university facilitates design education through a course model named Biosystems Engineering Design Trilogy (DT). The DT consists of three courses in second, third, and fourth year of the curriculum with integrated content and instruction. This study consisted of a qualitative research process that critically examined the perceptions of students, instructors, an administrator, and industry cooperators regarding engineering design education in the DT model. Research questions were developed to discover participants' concepts of engineering design; critical goals, teaching and learning strategies in design education; and reflections on the DT structure. One-on-one and focus group interviews provided a comprehensive data set describing the experience of design education from multiple perspectives. The findings yielded many commonalities between participants' conceptions of design education and a literature-based conceptual framework developed to support the study. The results also illuminated instances where perceptions of students and industry cooperators did not correspond to the intentions of instructors and the program, respectively. Implications of these findings included the importance of transparency and integration in teaching, collaboration between instructors, communication between instructors and students and between the university and industry cooperators, awareness of the unique nature of the DT model within the undergraduate engineering curriculum, and institutional considerations that affect the success of teaching and learning endeavours. |
