Abstract:

Collaborative work in different engineering fields is essential for the developing of new competitive products. In fact, multidisciplinary teams work together to innovate and create new products and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software is used as a tool to achieve their goals in design. CAE software allows engineers to simulate virtual tests in different scenarios (mechanical, systems engineering, fluid, etc.). Over the past 40 years the companies developing CAE software did not consider the interaction between different engineering fields in their products. This means that engineering working in different field had difficulties to interact between them because CAE software did not have specific interaction tools. However, this approach has changed substantially in the last decade and new CAE software developments consider a crucial issue the interaction between different engineering disciplines. Indeed, instead of using different software applications for different engineering fields the integration of all engineering disciplines in the same virtual CAE platform start to be known as the Industry of the Future (IoF). In this way new CAE software begging to be collaborative platforms where the engineers can share and exchange all the information about their designs (e.g. tests, models, results, etc.) in different engineering disciplines. Under this scenario, engineering faculties have to change their way of work with students and introduce collaborative teaching activities using CAE platforms. That means that teaching engineering disciplines cannot be considered in isolation and interaction should be included in engineering degrees. This fact allows the use of collaborative CAE platforms and fosters interaction between students working in different disciplines. This paper presents the work carry out with students using a collaborative CAE tool in their End of Degree Work. End of Degree Work is selected as the ideal frame for this activity because is the easiest environment where different disciplines can come together working with instructors from different engineering fields. The early use of these techniques not only prepares the student in the use of new technology but also increase the sense of belonging to a team working together which is a skill strongly demanded by the industry. The paper describes the implementation of the tasks and assessment of these efforts and the difficulties found by the instructors and students.

Keywords:

Collaborative learning, Computer Aided Engineering, Innovation engineering, creativity.