Helping Undergraduate Students of any Engineering Discipline Develop a Systems Perspective

Abstract

The complexity of problems that engineers are being asked to solve is increasing rapidly. Effective solutions often require the integration of mechanical, electrical, computer software, chemical, and/or biological components. In order to manage this complexity, it is becoming important for all engineering students to learn how to approach the solutions to these problems using a systems perspective (Baldwin 2014). In order to better motivate this approach to students the authors are introducing it within courses of their own engineering discipline. The authors are adapting traditional systems engineering concepts to create a framework of system models that can be introduced into courses of any engineering discipline at any level. Through the process of learning how to create these models, students gain an understanding of what is meant by a systems perspective and how this perspective can help them to solve problems. This paper discusses which systems models were incorporated into undergraduate curriculum and how each model is broken‐down into pieces that are easier for undergraduates to understand and faculty to teach.

Challenging Architects in Education: the Smart Environments Integration Project

“…Looking at papers presented in the IS2016 education track, most of the papers relate to educating and developing on the job, for instance (Jauregui, Pyster et al 2016, that respectively discuss educational background and resulting systems engineering positions; the development of a competency model and the implementation thereof in a curriculum. Undergraduate teaching is explicitly addressed by (Simoni, Andrijcic et al 2016), where the systems perspective for undergraduate students is developed, and for instance (Muller and Bonnema 2013) that deals with an undergraduate systems engineering course.…”

Development of a Design Canvas with Application to First-Year and Capstone Design Courses

“…Beyond these consideration, Simoni et al (2016) recently presented a systems engineering approach for undergraduate design education. Their approach applies established systems modeling frameworks in an effort to develop a design framework that has been used successfully in first year to capstone design courses.…”

Development of Enhanced Value, Feature, and Stakeholder Views for a Model-Based Design Approach

“…A systems engineering approach for undergraduate design education has been applied in first year to capstone design courses to help students with designing systems (Simoni, et al, 2016). The advantages of the approach are that one set of models or views is applicable to a wide variety of design problems making the common approach easier for students to learn and faculty to teach and assess.…”

“…These views included a stakeholder feature model, interactions model, functional architecture, technical requirements, and physical architecture (Simoni et al, 2016). The purpose of having multiple views is to ensure complete representation of the necessary aspects (behavior, value, and design) of the system (Schindel, 2011).…”

“…The purpose of having multiple views is to ensure complete representation of the necessary aspects (behavior, value, and design) of the system (Schindel, 2011). Figure 1 shows a Functional Architecture diagram and Figure 2 shows a Stakeholder/ Feature view from a collection of views for a TV remote control (Simoni et al, 2016). The functional architecture view shows interactions with external systems or actors and also the internal functions that support the input/output behavior of the system.…”