2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Work-in-Progress paper presents an innovative framework that assists faculty in developing a new project or improving on a current project for an engineering or technology course.
Engineering education has evolved over the last few decades to include more and more design content and projects within the engineering curriculum. Unfortunately, instructors have indicated several barriers that keep them from integrating projects into their courses. These barriers often include lack of resources from administration, too much prep time, and too much class time.
This paper presents a novel framework called the Project Development Canvas (PDC), which is a detailed structure that assists the user in creating a project for a course. These projects are intended to be utilized by the students in the course to further their understanding of difficult course concepts. The PDC includes multiple stages that outline the logistics for developing the project and supporting its implementation in the course. The layout of the PDC framework is based on the Business Model Canvas (BMC); an industry-wide visual tool used by companies to develop their initial business plan. Each stage, or block, of the PDC framework is pre-populated with details for that stage of the development process. The PDC is meant to be a “roadmap” that guides the user through these various stages of the project development process. This framework not only assists in the creation of the course project but also details what is required to implement it in the course.
The intent of this framework is to provide a means that not only gives willing faculty a guided method on how to develop a project for a course but also helps them overcome their perceived barriers. This tool is meant to foster professional learning and growth of the engineering instructors and, by extension, improve the education of the engineering students. Furthermore, with the success of this learning tool among early adopters, the hope is that the use of projects in the classroom will spread throughout the engineering education community, encouraging more instructors to use this framework.
The preferred presentation style for this WIP paper is a poster session.