First-year / senior year design data: Preliminary results from ongoing research on post-secondary design student activities

The College of Engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University requires its students to take a semester long engineering profession and project-based design course as first-year students and a capstone project-based design course over the span of two semesters as seniors. There is a desire to ascertain the actual and normalized time, process progression, and traffic patterns of engineering student design project teams navigating a design process and gauge these metrics across engineering majors and against faculty impressions and expectations, with an eventual goal of gauging against professional practice as well. Once student design activity application is analyzed with respect to faculty and professional expectations, pedagogical and curricular content adjustments can be made as necessary to align these project-based, experiential learning activities with perceived practice. The analysis of student progress compared to faculty and professional perspectives will provide an opportunity to dissect and reinforce the foundation of engineering design education at the University.