An assignment project based approach for engineering education

The paper introduces a new education method named assignment project to the engineering curriculum with the aim of improving students' mastery of course materials and practical problem solving skills. Many innovative education methods with the same objective have been created and implemented, such as final year projects and project-based courses. However, they have shortcomings that need to be solved by other methods. The proposed education method makes up for the gap, which is a five-step process yielding various assignment projects for a number of engineering courses. Based on a partially designed real-world engineering system, students use their knowledge and skill in the course to fulfil the design in these projects. A case study on solar vehicle is given to illustrate the method step by step. The method is thus verified to be an effective auxiliary tool in the engineering education.