doi:10.3850/978-981-08-7156-7_P057

ABSTRACT

Faculty of engineering, Niigata University has been executing a start-up engineering education program mainly for the first year students to educate his or her ability to solve engineering problems. The first year students are divided into teams and tackle tasks that they expect they will easily accomplish. But, the expected results are hardly obtained. They try to seek the gap between the results and their knowledge learned. They analyze the phenomena and improve the approach for the second trial. They evaluate the results of second trial and the effectiveness of the approach. That is, the project requires two cycles of so-called PDCA cycle for students to solve engineering problems. The start-up engineering project is one of the compulsory subjects and seven departments give the students several tasks based on their technicality. The students shear the knowledge, ideas among them and learn how to use knowledge to solve the problems. Their reports and questionnaire survey proved that this project is highly effective to improve his or her ability to solve engineering problems and gives them strong motivation to learn engineering. That is, the project is effective as a starting point of continuing engineering education not only in their undergraduate days but in the future career as an engineer. The article shows some tasks and the outcomes of the project carried out seven departments; mechanical and production engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, information engineering, biocybernetics, chemistry and chemical engineering, civil engineering and architecture, and material science and engineering.

Keywords: Engineering design, First year education, Start-up project.

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