The development, operation and evaluation of group design projects

This paper describes the development, operation and evaluation of a new format of group design project that has been adopted by the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Newcastle. In the academic year 2000/2001, 36 students were assigned to 9 projects. There were projects relating to machine design, machine development, design for manufacture, process design and the design, development and implementation of manufacturing software. This range of projects reflects the diversity of engineering design. Each project was multi-disciplinary with the each team member engaging in engineering and management tasks. Students were allocated to groups associated with their degree programme. The Degree Programme Directors fulfilled two roles: supervisor and "customer". It was the students' responsibility to elicit and agree the product specification that subsequently formed the basis of the assessment. The students were responsible for conducting a series of business meetings with the customer. These were supplemented by regular supervision meetings. The projects were supported by a series of lectures that covered design methodology, the specification process, working in teams, project planning and management, research and library skills, report writing and presentational skills. A framework for running team group projects that has proved to be effective, stimulating, fair and achievable is presented. Methods for assessing the project team, the individual students and the products designed are discussed. The effectiveness of this mode of teaching is then evaluated.