ENG1001: Engineering design: lighter, faster, stronger

Project 1 18%, Project 2 18%, Materials Tensile Report 4%, Materials Selection Report 4%, Worksheets 10%, Online quizzes 6% and final exam 40% (hurdle)

This was a great unit. Worksheets were handed out at lectures and the lecturers would go through some of the worksheet in the two hours. Anything unfinished was to be completed before next week's practical and checked then. I found this to be a really great way to learn and use the 2 hours. The worksheet provided a medium for us to apply what we learnt straight away. In order to do this there were pre-lectures that went through the content of the lecture.

The group projects were fun and very practical.
The exam was quite hard to study for as half of the provided practice exams and questions were not in the course, although this might have changed as the unit has been running for more than one semester now. I found the exam to be quite challenging and a lot harder than the questions provided in the weekly worksheets.

There were a range of different lecturers for the different areas of engineering we went through. For civil engineering we were lectured by Lizi Sironic and Bill Wong, for materials John Forsythe and for mechanical Kris Ryan.

I did this unit the first time it was running. I was provided exams from the old structures and dynamic 1st year units. The mechanical lecturer also compiled relevant questions for us to do.

5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

There are some textbooks recommended but I never once looked at them as the pre-lecture videos were very good.

1 x 2hr workshop, 1 x 3hr practical and 30 minutes to 1 hour of pre-lecture videos per week

S1 2015

87

Project 1- 18%: This project was my favourite of the two, and was a challenge to work in groups of four to build an 85 cm long bridge that could hold a weight of up to 950g, that was constructed entirely out of spaghetti.Marks were awarded for speed of construction (the fastest team getting full marks in this category, and everyone else being assigned marks based on the ratio of their construction time to the fastest), and the failure load to weight ratio of the bridge (again, marks being given as a ratio like with the construction time), making this project more of a competition. We also had to write a detailed report about our design process, and provide calculations demonstrating where, and at what load the bridge will fail. Marks were distributed so that it is possible to still pass the project on the report section alone (just in case your bridge sucked).

Project 2- 18%: This project was similar to the first, except our task was to modify a meccano style trebuchet so it would consistently knock over a stack of cups from a distance of 4, 8, and a mystery distance in between, again, with marks being awarded based on the ratio between the best team's score, and yours. Like before, documentation and testing data had to be provided, and marks were distributed so that it is possible to pass the project on the documentation alone (just in case your trebuchet sucked)

Tensile test report- 4%: This was a report addressing 6 questions in regards to aluminium sample testing, mainly focussing on basic materials science principals, and the impact of different treatments on the samples. I found it to be pretty dry.

Materials selection report- 4%: This was a report that focussed on selecting the ideal material and dimensions for a bridge of set length that would have to be able to carry a given range of loads, focussing not only on the properties of the potential materials, but also on the cost, ease of manufacture, durability, and environmental impact.

It is worth noting that the above four assessments are all completed in the same group of four, and individual marks for each assessment are scaled by a factor of 0.5-1.1 based on evaluations of you fro by the other group members.

Worksheets- 10%: These were given out and worked through at each lecture, and had to be stamped off by a tutor by the practical the following week. They got progressively more complex as each portion of the unit went on, but were quite straightforward if you did the readings and watched the videos.

Moodle Quizzes- 6%: These were short quizzes given each week that simply made sure we had watched and understood the pre-lecture videos. They were not hard at all.

Exam- 40% (hurdle): Nearly identical to the practice exam. Each of the components (Civil, Materials & Mechanical) were worth the same number of marks. Was similar to the difficulty of the final question from each of the worksheets. If you did the work, it was pretty easy.

This was a brand new unit this year, and is essentially the sister unit to ENG1002. It combined the old ENG1020 (Civil), ENG1040 (mechanical), and ENG1050 (materials) into one nice package. The unit was very clearly divided into two halves, the first being civil/materials (7 weeks), and mechanical (5 weeks), with each of the two portions operating completely independently of each other in regards to the content, projects, lecturers, and tutors.

The unit has a very different content delivery system to others, in that 25-40 minutes of videos are uploaded to youtube each week, and they are how you learn the content for the subject (you can watch them here if you're keen). Then there are optional readings, and a 0.5% quiz on moodle (you get 3 attempts) to make sure you understand everything. What would traditionally be a lecture in this subject is a 'workshop', essentially, you have 2 hours to do the worksheet with tutors walking around the theatre helping you out.

The Practicals were exactly that. 3 hours a week you could get questions answered by the tutors, and work on your project with your group while completing a set of tasks related to the project.

The main reason the units were redesigned was to make the first level in eng more practical and hands on, and they definitely succeeded with that. Overall, the unit was very well run & planned out. You could easily have completed the unit without physics or specialist maths, as the maths was simply plugging values into a given formula, and there was absolutely no assumed knowledge of physics.
Overall, a great unit. It does a good job of introducing the basics of 3 major engineering disciplines, and does a good job of showing how different engineering disciplines work together in the real world. A word of advice would be to not do ENG1001 and ENG1002 in the same semester, as they are quite intense units, and require more contact hours, study & extra group meetings than the other units.

Civil: Lizi Sironic and Bill Wong
Materials: John Forsythe
Mechanical: Kris Ryan

There were two past exams available, one with worked solutions, and one with answers only.

5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics- Hibbeler
Engineering Mechanics: Statics- Hibbeler
Mechanics of materials- Hibbeler

I wouldn't recommend buying any of the textbooks though, because you get all the information you would ever need through the 'youtube lectures', and online readings.

1x 2h lecture, 1x 3h practical

S1 2015

HD