SHARING EXPERIENCE IN ENGINEERING DESIGN EDUCATION: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND FUTURE PLANS

The organisation Sharing Experience in Engineering Design (SEED) was formed in 1979 as an informal forum for engineering design teachers to meet and to share their experience. In 2002 the organisation has terminated its activities and the members have agreed to help in the formation of a new Design Education Special Interest Group (DESIG) of the Design Society. This paper presents a history of the activities and achievements of SEED, and suggests how its work will be continued in the DESIG. Over nearly quarter of a century SEED has pursued four main activities. The first has been the holding of an annual seminar/conference on engineering design education topics. Each event has been on a specified theme, such as creativity, assessment, quality and qualification, computer-aided learning and so on, and many have involved extensive discussion by delegates, recorded in the proceedings of the event, on the topic of the conference. The second activity has been the recommendation of a standard curriculum for engineering design and an integrated series of preparation material monographs on engineering design teaching, directly related to topics identified in the curriculum. The third activity has been publication of a comprehensive set of Design Procedural Guides to support engineering students in design project work. These guides cover a range of topics including power transmission, mechanical positioning and control, structures and other subjects. Finally, SEED has published an extensive collection of tried and tested engineering design projects. The DESIG shares SEED’s aim of providing a forum for the identification, sharing and dissemination of best practice in engineering design education. In order to achieve this aim, the DESIG will carry out such activities as organising Design Education conferences and workshops, promoting working groups to develop key engineering design education issues, promoting special design education issues of journals and maintaining a engineering design education resource web site. The paper reviews the main continuing challenges in engineering design education as we enter the 21st century, and in particular sets out a draft agenda for the initial development of the DESIG.