Abstract:

Design is essential for developing the skills needed to perform as an engineer. Indeed, it is more than a single and unidirectional action it is a complex set of actions systematically interlinked through methodologies that lead to the solution of a problem through the application or development of technology.

Engineering design is a key element throughout a student's education. It helps them develop the knowledge and abilities they need to tackle problems in a structured way. That is why it must be present in the curricula independent of the education level.

A program by propaedeutic cycles of the Technological Faculty of the Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas (UDFJC) consists of two educational stages, the first leads to the degree of technologist, and the second, sequential and complementary, leads to the title of engineer. In that kind of education, there is the triple condition of defining the needed learning outcomes for the technologist, the preparation for the next level of training, and the learning outcomes of the professional level, identifying and designing differentiated scopes under conditions of sequentiality and complementarity between levels.

Specifically, for the area of Engineering Design in the programs of Industrial Mechanics Technology and Mechanical Engineering of the UDFJC, the curricular construction defined the differences between the levels of training based on the degree of complexity of the problems to be solved and the solutions obtained, however, when faced with the need to propose learning outcomes for both the program and the course, this definition was not sufficiently clear either for the development and evaluation of the courses or for the assessment of the overall result.

Therefore, based on the analysis of the bibliography related to the engineering design process, the syllabus of the academic spaces, and the results of the students in the classroom projects and theses, it was proposed an alternative taxonomic structure to correlate the stages of the engineering design process with the different types of technological products obtained from it.

The proposed taxonomy identifies the technologist's scope in terms of problem-solving using design methodology, and the required in-depth expectations of the engineer. A mapping matrix relates the academic areas involved with the learning outcomes and establishes the need for content distribution and methodological and didactical strategies that promote systemic thinking, creativity, and decision-making supported by computational and analytical tools. As a result, new curricula are being discussed, and a tool was developed to monitor learning outcomes and help to evaluate the proposal.

Keywords:

Engineering design, Learning outcomes in design, education on propaedeutical cycles, mechanical engineering, curricula design.