CAD Working Group

Members

1.  Garrett Kelley (Chair; Skagit Valley College; garrett.kelley@skagit.edu)

2.  Matthew Weaver (Skagit Valley College; matt.weaver@skagit.edu) 

3.  Charles Pringle (Central Washington University; charles.pringle@cwu.edu) 

4.  Aman Gill (Centralia College; aman.gill@centralia.edu) 

5.  Jesse Kysar (Clark College; ???)

6.  Jason Durfee (Eastern Washington University; jdurfee@ewu.edu) 

7.  Benjamin Parrish (Eastern Washington University; bparrish3@ewu.edu) 

8.  Renuka Prabhakar (Everett College; rprabhakar@everettcc.edu) 

9.  Joseph Graber (Everett College; jgraber@everettcc.edu) 

10.  Albert Engel (South Seattle College; Albert.Engel@seattlecolleges.edu) 

11.  Alison Armstrong (Shoreline Community College; aarmstrong3@shoreline.edu) 

12.  Nandita Biswas (Washington State University; nandita@wsu.edu) 

13.  Chloe Boland (Whatcom Community College; CBoland@whatcom.edu) 

14.  Rajkumar Raj (Yakima Valley College; rraj@yvcc.edu) 

Purpose

The development of industry-relevant learning outcomes for ENGR& 114 that:

1.  Prepare students for upper-division course work at four-year institutions

2.  Are directly transferrable to four-year institutions

3.  Set reasonable expectations and provide clarity to newly emergent or evolving engineering programs

Benefits

The following is a (non-comprehensive) list of potential benefits:

1.  Standardized course outcomes accelerate engineering and workforce program development at colleges in areas with a demand for engineering programs; improves state-wide accessibility/flexibility for students from different educational (e.g., transfer, workforce) and regional (e.g., rural) backgrounds

2.  Standardized course outcomes set clear, agreed-upon expectations for the knowledge that students should have when completing the course/program; improves the transfer process between institutions and industry-preparedness

3.  Focus on universal concepts/techniques as opposed to software-specific knowledge has the following benefits:

• Accelerates program development and growth (e.g., ENGR 216 development)

• Improves interdepartmental collaboration (e.g., transfer-workforce knowledge alignment)

• Cost and management reduction:

  • Equitable; improves accessibility for students that do not have the means to purchase software/computers

  • Eases issues regarding Information Technology (IT) management, resource allocation, training, budgetary constraints, etc.

Primary Concerns; Potential Solutions

1.  Learning outcomes should be independent of the chosen CAD-software. However, this could result in a lack of preparedness transferring skills between different institutions (e.g., Onshape-to-SolidWorks transferability); upper-division course work preparedness (e.g., ENGR& 114 [taught in Onshape, Fusion, Inventor, etc.] to ENGR 216 (e.g., SolidWorks, CATIA)

   • Solution 1: A “low-credit”, self-paced course that prepares students within the institution’s required CAD environment

   • Solution 2: Additionally, students could demonstrate preparedness by enrolling in a certificate/training program offered by the institution’s CAD software supplier 

2.  While "standardization" of learning outcomes would be ideal, inflexibility of the wording of learning outcomes could lead to misalignment between each institution's “Curriculum Committees” when revising ENGR& 114 learning outcomes. Furthermore, this could result in excess work at institutions with well-established programs.

   • Solution 1: Flexibility in wording of the learning outcomes

3.  Many of the courses offered within a "typical" engineering program are inaccessible to first-year students due to high mathematics requirements. This raises the barrier for entry and likely contributes to decreased enrollment and retention rates.

   • Solution 1: Flexibility in the prerequisite requirements

4.  ENGR& 114 is traditionally taught from a mechanical engineering perspective. Given that this course is included in the education plans of many students that may not be declaring mechanical engineering as a major (i.e., in the "Civil/Mechanical/Etc. MRP"), are we sure that those students are being adequately prepared for upper-division course work in those disciplines?

   • Solution 1: Confer with the other disciplines; this may be handled by "other" engineering colleges at universities accepting this course as an elective

   • Solution 2: Include a module that highlights the differing perspectives of each of the disciplines

Action Items/Issue Owners/Etc.

To be determined...

CAD Working Group - Repository Google Folder