Computer Aided Design and Project Management

At Eastern Washington University (EWU), we teach a class titled Computer-Aided Design and Project Management to a combination of Mechanical Engineering Technology (MET) and other Technology students. This course is not what is usually associated with the term CAD, but rather an introduction to project management and spreadsheets as an Engineering design tool. The class has a very strong hands-on component using Microsoft Excel and MS Project. The students are then required to use both tools in their later courses, particularly in their laboratory courses and planning/tracking of the Capstone Design course. These students also take a Technical Writing course from the English Department to prepare them for report writing. We use several assignments of increasing difficulty to expose the students to Excel as a design tool and Project to organize and track a project. The quarter culminates with small teams of students using both tools to design, plan, and track a virtual project of their choice such as starting a small company, building a structure, or installing equipment in a plant. The teams must submit a report and make a semi-formal presentation to the class and instructor. As part of our continuous improvement effort, we assess nine course objectives. We will present a statistical analysis of how well both the students and instructor believe the objectives were met. The analysis includes for several instructors, several years, and both MET students who must take two quarters of calculus and Technology students who take pre-calculus. We also teach an accelerated version of the course titled "laboratory analysis and reports" that also incorporates a large technical writing component to our ME students and we will include anecdotal data from that course.