3.082 - Objectives and Outcomes

Instructional Objective 1: Develop understanding and experience in materials engineering design.
Outcomes:

  1. Work in a student team to design a prototype structure or device employing advanced engineering materials.
  2. Develop a project management scheme for the materials processing and assembly of the prototype.
  3. Explain and justify the design to laboratory instructors and other student teams.
  4. Use electronic and conventional means to survey literature and patents relevant to the design, and use these in optimizing the design.
  5. Develop a business plan and financial analysis to explore putting the design into commercial production.
  6. Develop expertise in computer-aided drafting methods, and generate engineering drawings that can be displayed on the web and in poster format.
Instructional Objective 2: Develop practical understanding and hands-on experience in methods of materials processing.
Outcomes:

  1. Carry out familiarization trials of processing methods relevant to the team's design, such as lost-wax casting for structural metallic components and sintering of electrically active ceramics for sensors.
  2. Develop safety plans for the processes involved in the team project along with the documentation required by OSHA and other cognizant authorities.
  3. Locate, purchase, and qualify materials needed in the project.
  4. Purchase or fabricate tooling and other hardware needed for the materials' processing.
  5. Develop sufficient expertise in machine-shop operations to fabricate needed tooling and perform component finishing operations.
  6. Fabricate components needed in the design, and subject them to appropriate quality assurance testing.
Instructional Objective 3: Review and solidify academic topics by reducing them to practice in the design project. These topics will include both those taught in the DMSE lecture curriculum, and others that must be developed through self-study for the project's needs.
Outcomes:

  1. Complete appropriate stress analysis, circuit logic, and thermodynamic studies relevant to the design and its expected performance.
  2. Complete appropriate theoretical analyses of the fluid flow, heat transfer, chemical reactions and other phenomena controlling the processing of the components.
  3. Develop sufficient expertise in statistical analysis and software to generate parametric design experiments as appropriate, and to analyze results of performance tests.
Instructional Objective 4: Improve techniques in communication of technical subjects.
Outcomes:

  1. Develop web-based documentation to explain and promote the project's goals, underlying engineering principles, processing methods, analytical techniques, progress and final results.
  2. Prepare a hallway display-case presentation of the project's salient aspects.
  3. Participate in weekly oral presentations of the project's progress, using appropriate and effective speaking techniques and visual aids.
Instructional Objective 5: Develop effective teamwork, and highlight the problems that can arise in team efforts.
Outcomes:

  1. Listen to all team members' ideas during design process and experiment planning.
  2. Identify team work problems and address them with team members or instructor.
  3. Create plan to share work with team members.
  4. Demonstrate ability to implement plan for sharing work with team members.
  5. Be able to contribute clear and concise design ideas during class discussions.
  6. Create clear and concise oral presentations of preliminary and final designs.
  7. Demonstrate ability to incorporate peer and instructor feedback in order to improve design and fabricated items.
roylance@mit.edu