Teaching Topics and Projects

Selected Teaching Topics and Projects

ED100 - Introduction to Design and Communication (KAIST)
Developer, Director, and Design Lecturer: 2008 - 2011.

ED100, also known as the KAIST Freshman Design Course (FDC), is a 3 unit project-based cornerstone design course. It was first offered as a pilot course with 29 students in the fall 2007 semester and has been required for all freshmen regardless of major since Spring 2008. The course is offered twice per year with an average enrollment of 400 - 600 students. The FDC has approximately 23 sections per semester, each with a different theme. Projects are not limited to engineering topics and faculty project advisers can come from any department at KAIST. Students in ED100 go through all of the basic steps of the conceptual design process (problem definition; background and stakeholder research; needs identification; design specification definition; concept generation; and concept refinement and testing) while learning about formal design theories such as Axiomatic Design and TRIZ. Final projects are presented in a week-long poster fair that is open to the public. Since the Spring 2008 semester, I have taught Freshman Design to 3,656 students who have worked on projects offered by 102 faculty members (17% of KAIST's tenure track faculty) from 18 different departments. Those students have produced 1 granted patent, 19 patent applications, 2 international journal papers, 8 international conference papers, 3 international and 9 domestic talks, and 1 domestic design exhibition as a result of their work in the course.

See the FDC in action. Watch the movie!

For more information, send me email or refer to my FDC-related publications.

CE590 - Design of Unique, Complex Systems (KAIST)
Developer and Instructor: Summer 2008 and Spring 2009.

CE590 is a 3 unit graduate level elective in the KAIST Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. This course introduces engineering design theory and methodology with a focus on the design of one-of-a-kind systems for civil, environmental, urban, aerospace, and mechanical engineering applications. Topics covered include an introduction to the field of design, classes of design objects, and common design theories and methodolgies. Axiomatic design, TRIZ, and Complexity Theory are covered in depth. The social, economic and environmental aspects of project planning, defining the customer and customer needs, developing project specifications, and common brain storming techniques for concept generation are discussed. The role of analysis and prototyping for unique, complex systems, sustainability, uncertainty, complexity, flexibility, and life cycle are also included.

Introduction to ANSYS and Finite Element Analysis (MIT)
Developer and Co-Instructor: 2004 - 2007.

Introduction to ANSYS and Finite Element Analysis was a 40 hour not-for-credit graduate level seminar offered each January from 2004 - 2007. Students in the course learned to create and import solid models, write and run input files, setup and solve problems in multiple physical domains and post process the results. The course took a practical approach to FE modeling and focused on preparing students to perform FE analyses as a part of their research. A total of 71 students from a dozen departments participated in the course over the four years that it was offered.

An extended version of this course was offered at KAIST as CE715: Special Topics in Structural Analysis: Engineering Analysis (a 3 unit, graduate elective) during the summer of 2008.

The original website for this course can be found at here.

Discover Mechanical Engineering (MIT)
Developer and Director: 2000 - 2002. Consultant: 2003 - 2004.

Discover Mechanical Engineering is a five day freshman seminar intended to be a fun and educational introduction to the field of mechanical engineering. The program was first offered as a freshman activity during the 2nd week of IAP, 2002 and has been offered as a pre-orientation program in August every year since. During DME thirty-two freshmen build radio-controlled, soccer-playing robots that are used in a double elimination soccer tournament at the Boston Museum of Science on the last day of the program. The program also includes on- and off-campus field trips, guest speakers and social events.

Everything for DME was created specifically for the program. The primary development period for Discover Mechanical Engineering occurred from January 2001 to January 2002. The robots, affectionately referred to as SoccerBots, were designed from scratch to maximize engineering opportunities while minimizing the time, the machine tools and the materials required to finish the project. An instruction manual for SoccerBot Assembly was written as well as information packets for students during the program. A large soccer arena was designed and constructed for the SoccerBot Contest on the final day of the program. Local companies and alumni were contacted to host or attend field trips and activities. Departmental faculty were contacted to host research laboratory tours and to attend meals with the students. The result was a program that has been among the most successful of the pre-orientation programs at MIT and is widely credited with substantially increasing enrollment in the department.

See DME 2002 in action. Watch the movie !

For more information, refer to the DME website or the DME journal article.

Discover Engineering (MIT)
Developer and Director: 2000 - 2002.

Discover Engineering was a two-year student initiative funded primarily by a $120,000 grant from the d'Arbeloff Fund for Educational Innovation at MIT. The goal of the program was to develop a series of immersive freshman seminars aimed at providing an introduction to the engineering disciplines and at improving the quality of the freshman year at MIT. Each seminar had five main components: a hands-on project where the students built a device related to the sponsoring department; a competition or activity involving the device; daily breakfast and lunch with department faculty, staff, alumni, graduate students and upperclassmen; tours of departmental research labs and brief research presentations; and excursions to related off-campus institutions.

The first year of the project focused on the development of the Discover Mechanical Engineering (DME) program, which ran for the first time in January, 2002. The second year of the project focused on the improvement of DME, the development of the Discover Civil and Environmental Engineering (DCEE), outeach efforts to other departments like Material Science and Nuclear Engineering, and the implementation of Discover Engineering (DE) to provide support and resources for and to encourage cooperation between the various Discover Engineering programs.

Discover Mechanical Engineering and Discover Civil and Environmental Engineering have been offered every summer since August 2002. In 2001, the Nuclear Engineering and Material Science departments were approached and given a set of DE documentation. Discover Nuclear Engineering and Discover Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences were both founded in 2002 independently and have been offered every summer since August 2002. By the end of 2002, it was clear that the creation of similar programs had gained momentum and many of the same resources were being offered by the Academic Resource Center so the Discover Engineering program was declared a success and discontinued.

Two additional academic based pre-orientation programs have been created since the dissolution of DE: Discover Biology (2005) and Discover History in Boston (2005).

More information about DE is available upon request.

Last updated on 11/7/11