The Machine Component Design Manual Project and Other Tools for Teaching Mechanical Design

The difficulties in teaching and learning the design of machine components and the assessment of a students ability to do so are addressed in this paper.Teaching and learning machine design is hindered by the inexperience of students and an instructors' inability to motivate students to learn this sometimes ambiguous topic.Students are often intolerant of the ambiguity that shows up in the iterative nature of design, full of decisions, and conceptualization.The assessment of design ability is complicated by the traditional assessment tool; i.e., the examination, which usually requires a unique solution leaving little room for design decisions.In the following manuscript: the currently most-favored pedagogy for teaching design, project based learning (PBL), is reviewed and discussed; A novel project developed for a machine component design course in an effort to motivate students and provide practical experience is presented; And, several tools useful for the design of machine components and in-class assessment of a students ability to design a machine or machine component are presented.