RELALATING TOY EVALUATION TO ENGINEERING FUNDAMENTALS IN A FRESHMAN ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSE

Toys can be used as a powerful yet less intimidating means for teaching engineering design elements and allows for students the opportunity to directly apply their knowledge to a hands-on project early on in their academic careers.In a freshman engineering design course, small groups of students used toys as a vehicle to learn fundamental engineering principles in studying complex toy design.The gender neutral toys allowed students the ability to setup and execute experiments for mechanistic evaluation with emphasis placed on generating, testing and implementing technical solutions to the toy design.Topics such as manufacturing, safety, cost analysis, materials selection, and marketing were directed from lecture portion of the class and applied to the toy analysis.From the observations and mechanistic evaluation of the toys, students were capable to design and fabricate a working prototype to a technical challenge.This paper describes a case study project demonstrating the process of relating toy evaluation to engineering fundamentals and reports feedback from faculty and students.Observations are also offered on the manner in which traditional age and adult students approached and executed the toy analysis project.