Virtual disk drive design game with links to math, physics and dissection activities

The Multimedia Virtual Disk Drive Design Studio is an engineering design case study using interactive multimedia courseware for undergraduate engineering and science students. The purpose is to introduce students to the world of mechatronics and multidisciplinary design in the form of a disk drive. Students play the role of a project engineer for the ACME disk drive Company and are asked to mine out the necessary information from a multimedia archive in order to build a new disk drive model. Students can build on three different kinds of learning styles: (1) literature search and abstract theory, (2) consultations from experts, and (3) design studio. Students are asked to launch their new disk drives in a certain time frame, simulating the idea of time-to-market. They, must also keep track of the development and production costs. This interactive disk drive case study is ideally complemented by hands-on mechanical dissection of actual disk drives. The Western Digital Corporation provided the mathematical model for performance calculations and IBM Almaden Research contributed in the form of technical literature and expert opinions. The courseware has been used and evaluated in multidisciplinary Freshman Design, Materials, and Product Development courses as well as in K-12 pre-engineering courses. This paper summarizes key design, implementation, student testing, and instructional issues.