Project-Based Engineering Design Courses and Computer Literacy

The current generation of college students grew up with personal computers, the Internet, and other digital "gadgets".Despite their confidence, typical students in sophomore and senior level engineering design courses utilize only the basic features of software tools, such as word processing, graph generation, information sharing, and information search, in their projects.Our goal was to introduce skills and the extended features of these tools in various courses to make students more productive.These skills were originally introduced in capstone design courses.Some skills are now introduced in a sophomore level engineering design course and a freshman course.This paper introduces the issues and our approaches.