Designing Course 2 assignments to emphasize practical engineering applications

Abstract

MIT's educational philosophy, mens et manus, stresses the importance of providing students with both a conceptual and practical understanding of engineering. This thesis explored the development of design guidelines for creating assignments for introductory Course 2 classes that better emphasize the practical side of this educational mission. These design guidelines were identified by redesigning one case study 2.004 laboratory assignment, the tall building vibration lab. From student feedback on this case study assignment, the successful features of this redesigned assignment could be identified and used as guiding principles for the design of future assignments. Student reviews of the case study assignment indicated that the most promising feature of this assignment was the fact that it was structured as an interactive story set in a specific engineering project context. This feature may be used as an initial guiding design principle for the creation of other Course 2 assignments. More work must be done to test and develop these design guidelines further and to understand how to create assignments that teach practical applications of engineering while still allowing students to efficiently complete their graded work.