Engineering Design Reading Club (RC15)

Note: Students wishing to take this course for credit should email the module leader before the course starts to be added to the participant list.

Leader: Nathan Crilly (nc266@cam.ac.uk)

Timing: Lent Term 2019. Wednesday's 10:00-12:00

Location: Sir Arthur Marshall Room, EDC Ashby Lab, Inglis Building, CUED

Participants: Bo Kang (bk410@cam.ac.uk), Nick Boddy (nrb48@cam.ac.uk), Eugenia O’Kelly (eo339@cam.ac.uk)

Structure: Eight two-hour sessions

Mode of Assessment: Coursework

AIMS

The Engineering Design Reading Club (RC15) facilitates discussion on a broad range of topics relevant to design research. Specificially, the course aims to:

introduce a range of contemporary and classic literature broadly related to Engineering Design,
promote a range of conceptual stances and methodological approaches broadly related to Engineering Design,
encourage and support critical reflection about the design process, design research and research communication,
provide experience of synthesising arguments based on the literature and debating different points of view.

FORMAT

The course is made up of a series of discussions centred on the assigned reading. Graduate students taking this course for credit towards their first year requirements should notify the module leader in advance of the first session and are required to actively participate in all of the reading club sessions. Their attendance and contribution will be noted each time.

Selected papers are listed on this page (scroll down) and finalised at least one week before the associated session. Students are required to read the texts fully before the session, and might be called on to (1) summarise all or parts of the texts, (2) comment on the conceptual, and methodological aspects of the text, (3) make connections to other literature, and (4) describe the text's relevance to current trends in research, industry and education. Simply attending the session is not sufficient to gain credit. The texts cover a broad range of approaches and students might find that they cannot fully understand each text depending on their particular background (e.g. they might lack the necessary philosophical, methodological or mathematical knowledge for some texts). However, students should still engage with each text as fully as possible, noting sections that they don't understand or have questions about.  

Individual facilitators have recommended the papers and will be on hand to guide the discussion. Sessions typically start with each participant offering brief comments on the paper. Discussions often centre on the specifics of each text but also relate more broadly to issues of research design, research conduct, data presentation, graphing, writing, etc. Making connections across the texts from different sessions is also encouraged.

ASSESSMENT

Assessment of each student's performance on the course will be based on two elements:

(1) The student's contribution to the session. Attendance at all sessions is expected and faciliators will report to the module leader with comments on the contributions made to the discussion. If students have a legitimate reason to miss a session then they are required to produce a well-written 1000 word document addressing points 1-4 above. This should be emailed to the session facillitator (copying the module leader) within one week of the session that was missed.

(2) The student's reflection on the sessions and the course overall. Each students must write a 100 word reflection at the end of each session and send it by email to the module leader before the next session (with message header: "RC15 reflection"). Your reflection should briefly describe (i) what you learnt from the session (e.g. from the literature, method, findings, writing, group discussion, disagreements, etc.) and (ii) how that might relate to your own research (e.g. how it might be planned, conducted, communicated, etc.). At the end of the course, students must write a 1000 word essay on what they learnt from the course and send it by email to the module leader before the end of the Lent term (with message header: "RC15 essay"). This esssay should synthesise what you learnt from the course that is most relevant to your own research. It is perfectly acceptable to reuse some or all of the previous reflection documents for this.