Development of a Scalable and Sustainable Infrastructure for Global, Collaborative Engineering Design Education

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Intellectual MeritIn this research, a scalable approach to enable students to acquire important attributes of global competence will be developed. The central idea behind the research is to bring together international student design teams which collaborate on design projects via Internet-based communication and design tools. At the same time, the teams will be used as a test bed to study and develop methods for collaborative design education. Thus the research has two main objectives: 1) to develop and refine a scalable framework andsupporting infrastructure that allows engineering students to learn and practice best-in-class methods for global engineering design, and 2) to provide an environment to study, develop, refine and validate methods and technologies for Internet-based collaborative, global engineering design education. These two objectives are synergistic and will be pursued simultaneously. The research will be conducted as a pilot program run for two years. During the first year, teams at Brigham Young University will be matched with teams abroad on a design-and-build project. The project will be conducted within the context of a class. The main focus of the first year will be on understanding implementation issues, i.e., answering questions such as ?How should projects be selected?,? and ?How can technology be used to support effective collaboration?? For the second year, teams at four universities in the U.S. will be matched with teams abroad. The focus of the second year will be on evaluating how well this approach is able to develop key attributes of global competence.Broader ImpactsThe impact of the research could be far reaching and significant. The research is seen as a necessary first step towards the possible development of a national network of U.S. teams partnered with international teams. Although we are here proposing only a pilot program, we consider a main criterion of success to be whether the program is extensible to schools beyond those in the pilot. If successful, many students could thereby acquire and practice global engineering skills.