An assessment of the students' attitudes toward engineering design and build projects

Engineering design and build projects aims at improving student ability to think and solve problem while enhancing soft skills like communication skills and teamwork. Assessing this outcome could be relatively complicated because in some instances students are being exposed to advanced engineering courses that will allow them to perform complex calculations while completing their project. It is therefore necessary to instill into students the motivation to study independently and integrate engineering concepts into practice. Solving the design problem becomes the main motivation behind self-learning that frame the context for advanced engineering courses. This happens as a result of the Problem-Based Learning approach which pushes students to acquire engineering knowledge they don't possess. This approach could raise several problem when assessing quantitatively student outcome achievement and the overall effectiveness of the course. This paper focuses on students' attitudes rather than skills. Design thinking affinities such as team work, problem solving and communication are assessed as part on an ongoing improvement plan. A survey has been developed to measure the course effectiveness. The paper aims at measuring student attitude toward engineering design. Though such instrument has been used in existing engineering education literature, the diversity of students' attitudes justify this study. The study reveals that problem-solving perception constitute the dimension that require interventions. External motivation are proposed in order to create good attitude.