DESIGN PROJECTS IN UNDERGRADUATE COURSES- APPROACH AND EXPERIENCES

Professional engineers do not only require technical knowledge but also the ability to apply it successfully to design problems in the "real world". Thus both requirements of industry as customer and upcoming demands of accreditors for study courses in the Bologna process challenge the education of design engineers at university to "prepare graduates for the practice of engineering at a professional level". The necessarily required soft skills can be acquired by solving realistic design problems in order to cope with for example holistic technical tasks as well as work organisation or conflicts in design teams. Project-based learning is a model to implement practice-oriented education in undergraduate courses. This paper describes theoretical background, planning and implementation of design projects, their allocation in the bachelor program of mechanical engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Ulm, experiences and consequences drawn for future projects.