In this economy of high demand for fast advancement of technology, engineering students are being tasked to learn and develop skill-sets that are readily called for in industry. This paper presents the development of a new course which was designed to equip students with the basic skills to design and build a working industrial machine through an active and experiential approach using CDIO.
In the first year of its programme, students were introduced to Engineering through a project that required them to design and fabricate model racing cars. Building on the knowledge and skills learnt in the first year, a new course, Design and Build 1, was developed through the integration of two existing courses, Engineering Design (ED) and Computer-Aided Design (CAD). This new course is to provide second year students an opportunity to design and build a working industrial machine. The course was taught in 15 weeks through the weekly 6 hour block a day lesson. The curriculum was redesigned to include the various stages of machine design such as conceptualization of ideas into drawing, designing, building and commissioning of the intended machine.