Teaching mechatronics design course for engineers

A mechatronics graduate program was started in September 2001 at the American University of Sharjab with the objective of helping working engineers meet the challenges posed by emerging technologies. The program strives at providing industry with a new generation of engineers having interdisciplinary skills necessary to deal with state of the art technology in designing, maintaining, selecting, and procuring modern engineering systems. This paper details framework of mechatronics design course (MTR 590). The course is a project-based course foundation course in the mechatronics graduate program. This paper gives the detail of the course objectives, typical projects, and course assessments. There are many challenges in teaching a design course to working engineers. Some of these challenges are encountered by selecting full time students to be project team leaders. The mechatronics design course coverage, and laboratory facilities are discussed.