Abstract:

At the culmination of the undergraduate engineering program, a senior design project is often the capstone course that is used to synthesize years of engineering theoretical education into a multi-disciplinary application. Education in application engineering is primarily taught with textbooks and lecture practices for undergraduate students; this method of learning is rarely seen in engineering firms. The objective of facilitating this senior design project was to simulate real-world application of engineering practices through the Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) model (Kolb, 1984).

As part of a foreign exchange program with three students visiting Colorado School of Mines from Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain, their senior design project involved working on electrical and mechanical energy analysis of a new-constructed laboratory and classroom building on the campus of Mines. Their project was led by a graduate student who is also a veteran engineer of 10 years and works as a building design engineer. The collaboration of industry and university was designed to imitate the students’ next steps as engineers and makes them valuable with training in real-world design. The students began with defining their interests in building engineering and worked with their engineering facilitator to start to narrow an area of further exploration. They were led through the building by the campus facilities staff and the practicing engineer. While in the building, they carried the engineering design floor plans to compare to the built environment. Next the students researched the area of interest pertaining to the building design and energy efficiency with the guidance of their facilitator in brief weekly or bi-weekly meetings. The students had building code books as their main resource; building code books are the guidelines in-place to ensure safe, functional buildings are being built. The students dove into their area of research and design, presenting progress and questions to their facilitator at the meetings. The students used the analysis results from each other to collaborate in the same manner that various disciplines of practicing engineers would in order to have a fully coordinated building design. The project was concluded with individual reports of the building analysis with the students gaining understanding of the design decisions that led to the building floor plans. The teacher did not have first-hand knowledge of the students’ prior coursework or performance. The facilitation meetings served to communicate where the students had gaps and needed additional resources for continuing the analysis.

By utilizing the experiential teaching model, the students led their own research with facilitation from a practicing engineer; the students experienced a learning environment that will translate to their next steps as engineers.

Keywords:

experiential learning, engineering education, building design, senior design, exchange students