UT Course "Engineer Your World" is Serious Science (By Patti McLain, Physics Instructor)

Students are being exposed to the fields and practice of engineering, the need for collaboration and classroom norms, and the need for thorough and comprehensive documentation. The students are currently exploring the “Discover Engineering: Pinhole Camera” unit. This unit guides students through a “discovery” of the engineering design process as they create a pinhole camera that meets both quantitative design specifications and qualitative requirements for usability by people with limited dexterity in their hands and wrists. Rather than give students the design process and walk them through steps that have been named for them, students walk through the unnamed steps, pausing after each step to give a name what they have just done. This unit also requires that students, as a first step in the course-long exploration of engineering fields and professions, research an engineering discipline for which “universal design” is a consideration. Defined as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design".