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Probst, A., Gerhard, D., Ramseder, N., Ebner, M. (2017) : Enhancements in Engineering Design
Education at Austrian HTL. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering
Design (ICED17), Vol. 9: Design Education, Vancouver, Canada, 21.-25.08.2017.
ICED17
1 INTRODUCTION
In 2007, a research partnership program between Austrian schools and universities called "Sparkling
Science" was founded by the Austrian federal ministry of Science, Research and Economy (Birke,
2013). The main objective has been to bring science and schools together, in particular, to increase
interest for STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The reason for this
project is because of huge demand for engineers both in Austria and in Europe. Through such projects,
students of Austrian schools are able to work together with scientists of universities or universities of
applied sciences on defined project tasks (Probst et al., 2016). Since 2007 the Austrian vocational
school HTL Linz LITEC has conducted three Sparkling Science projects with TU Wien, with two
projects focusing introducing product data management (PDM) to engineering design education and
the other project focusing on systems engineering.
2 TECHNICAL EDUCATION AT AUSTRIAN HTL
2.1 Technical Education at Austrian HTL
The technical Secondary Colleges of Engineering (called HTL) in Austria, a job-focused vocational
education of 10 semesters for students aged between 14 and 19, aim to convey entrepreneurial and
innovative thinking and acting based on solid business skills as well as legal competence. Thereby a
high level of technical and methodological competence for further studies and deeper general and
conceptual knowledge required for independent training as well as specialised knowledge and skills
necessary for professional life are provided. A key goal in education is to offer entrepreneurial and
innovative thinking and acting based on solid business skills as well as legal competence.
In order to meet the general educational goals, the engineering education covers the following fields:
• General education
• Theoretical training
• Practical training
Basic and job-orientated scientific knowledge and IT- competencies are taught, completed with A-
level exams and classified as short cycle tertiary education with ISCED-Level 5.
The necessary legal business skills as well as entrepreneurial competencies are conveyed for obtaining
a business licence.
Currently, more than 60,000 students attend a HTL, and about 8,000 young engineers leave HTL
every year (Zafoschnig and Pachatz, 2011). There are more than 20 specialization areas, e.g.
Mechanical Engineering, Mechatronics Engineering, Civil Engineering, Chemistry & Chemical
Engineering. For Mechanical Engineering Education at Austrian HTL, one of the main subjects is
engineering design, which is taught by using different CAD systems at a high skilled level,
comparable to industry requirements. One success factor is the fact that faculty members of HTL have
to work in industry for several years before becoming a member of staff. With new teachers having
worked in industry, there is a constant flow of current state of the art technology in daily lessons.
Curricula at Austrian HTL include educational and occupational standards which have been developed
together by HTL and Federal Ministry of education. The description of the educational standards is
based on the taxonomy of learning which consists of 6 levels and was developed by Benjamin Bloom
at the University of Chicago and then developed further by Anderson and Kratwohl (Zafoschnig and
Pachatz, 2011).
2.2 Didactics and Methods
Looking at a typical mechanical engineering design project at a HTL or university, the project is done
alone or in groups of two. In industry, working within interdisciplinary teams consisting of
engineering (mechanical, electrical and IT), purchasing, sales, is standard, especially in companies that
are working in high tech fields. Collaborative work has to be supported adequately with special tools,
e.g. PDM systems, which are commonly used in industry. Table 1 shows possible forms of
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engineering design education projects and how frequently they are used from the authors' experiences
in teaching, as well as the demand for collaboration tools such as PDM.
Table 1. Different forms of engineering design education
Engineering design
education form
Remarks
Frequency
PDM
needed
Project for one student
classical engineering design
education
frequent
no
Project for a student
group
solving tasks together
frequent
yes
Interdisciplinary project
project includes mechanical,
electrical and IT engineering tasks
seldom
yes
Project across schools
e.g. two HTL working on a project
seldom
yes
Project across institutions
nationwide
e.g. a HTL and a university working
on a project
seldom
yes
Project across institutions
internationally
e.g. several vocational schools,
universities working on a project
seldom
yes
It is noteworthy that the methodology of first two project types, which are frequently used in
engineering education, is not sufficient for the industry's needs. Another aspect is the type of typical
mechanical engineering design project, which is quite often a new design project. Figure 1 shows the
assignment of design types to the design phases according to VDI2210. Projects in industries such as
automotive or aerospace are very often variant design projects. Especially OEMs, which involve
working together with suppliers, use collaboration tools like PDM for technical data management.
Comparing this with current educational design projects, there seems to be a need for future research
activities. In the last two years of HTL education, a switch from conventional new engineering design
projects to interdisciplinary and variant design projects with input from industrial companies is
advantageous for both students and companies. Bitzer (Bitzer et al., 2008) stated that for technical
education at universities. Gerhard (Gerhard and Grafinger, 2009) describes a national wide project
across institutions called PDM-UP with five Austrian HTL and TU Wien acting as project lead, Zavbi
(Zavbi et al., 2009) describes the international project European Global Product Realization (E-GPR),
conducted with students and several universities.
Figure 1. Assignment of design types to the design phases (according to VDI-2210)
design type design phases industry
conceptual design
draft design
elaborated
design
frequency of
use
group definition
function de
-
termination
work out
principles
design
detailing
Completely new
design
seldom
customised
design
often
variant design
often
design with
defined
principles
often
PDM needed
no (yes) yes yes
Probst, A., Gerhard, D., Ramseder, N., Ebner, M. (2017) : Enhancements in Engineering Design
Education at Austrian HTL. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering
Design (ICED17), Vol. 9: Design Education, Vancouver, Canada, 21.-25.08.2017.
ICED17
3 CHANGING SITUATION IN ENGINEERING DESIGN
3.1 Changing demand of Industry
The influences of new technologies such as 3D printing, extensive information technology integration,
Internet of Things (IoT) development and other phenomenon of recent times lead to pervasive
computing capabilities (Ferscha, 2007) of products and systems. This imposes significant changes of
engineering design processes in the sense of "Smart Engineering" (Anderl et al., 2012). In essence, a
paradigm shift from discipline oriented to multi-disciplinary engineering based on computer integrated
methods and tools is required. Studies with industry representatives prove that knowledge beyond the
design theory in the strict sense become increasingly important for development and engineering
design work (Winter, 2012):
• Knowledge of manufacturing technology
• Knowledge of electrical engineering and mechatronics
• Computer science and programming skills
• Material science and material knowledge
In a wider sense in the context of "Industrie 4.0", autonomous capabilities and adaptability of products
lead to an increased complexity and the necessity that different states and behaviour of technical
systems as well as advanced logics and reasoning has to be modelled and verified in the engineering
design process. The more it is possible to create a coherence between the individual disciplines, the
better it is to master this complexity and its challenges, and to be able to verify and validate the real
behaviour of complex technical systems by means of different simulation applications on a
multidisciplinary level (Gerhard, 2016).
The major developments and technological advances in the recent past, particularly the ubiquitous
connectedness and accessibility to information have also influenced the way current and future
generations of engineering students learn and develop the required skills. In the past, the focus in
engineering design education was primarily put on deep and basic domain knowledge. Recently, a
significant shift to include more design thinking and professional practice elements can be observed.
Engineering design graduates have to be able to think critically, holistically analyze problems, and
communicate effectively in teams. To a large extent, students need to understand that their role in a
project team in industry will not end after design validation and verification. Design engineers are
often responsible for tasks included in the design transfer to subsequent phases such as manufacturing.
Therefore, an understanding of manufacturing operations allows engineers to modify designs to ensure
that the product can be produced for instance at reasonable cost (Goldberg, 2013).
Project-Based Learning and Problem-Based Learning (PBL) address some of these challenges and
requirements. PBL is a comprehensive approach to teaching and skill development that aims to engage
students in the investigation of authentic problems. Students participate in hands-on activities and
thereby become active learners, while lecturers provide guidance to students during their project work
instead of just lecturing (Smith et al., 2010). In Project-Based Learning, instructors become facilitators
to provide resources and guidance to students as they develop content knowledge and problem solving
skills (Perrenet et al., 2000).
3.2 Engineering design in 2025
In June 2016, the Federal Austrian Ministry of Education organized an expert talk with CAD -
companies (Dassault, PTC, Autodesk and Siemens) and several HTL teachers concerning the
questions "How will we develop products in 2025?" and what are the requirements on engineering
design education. Product development has changed over the past decade from technical drawing to
2D-CAD to fully 3D product modelling, using powerful calculation and analysis systems. With the
latest developments in IoT technologies, 3D printing etc., the next 10 years are likely to show major
developments as well. Despite individual strategies, all companies stated that PDM or product
lifecycle management (PLM) software will be the central platform for new techniques and tools in
engineering design. Administrating engineering design data like 3D models, drawings and calculations
is done currently by PDM systems. The future task of PDM systems will be administration of all kind
of technical data, for example service data information. For the management of service cases in the
future, it will be necessary to document all possible states of the products such as new condition,
repair mode, test mode, fault mode. To handle these different modes a system like systems engineering
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is required, which is linked to a PDM system in order to gain the advantages of a central worldwide
accessible data management.
3.3 Changing Demand in Engineering Design Education
Looking at necessary changes in engineering design education two major issues can be identified:
• Need for design education in interdisciplinary teams (Bitzer et al., 2014)
• Establish and teaching new techniques like PDM, systems engineering and 3D printing
Although PDM and PLM techniques are taught in lectures at technical universities and universities of
applied sciences, at Austrian HTLs theory and practical usage of PDM in students' engineering design
projects is not common. Only a few HTLs have taken part in the two PDM projects with TU Wien,
and these ones do use PDM software with selected students; however, there is no common
understanding of the advantages of using PDM software amongst the other HTLs. Despite using PDM
software, working in a team give the students the opportunity to develop their collaboration skills
(Probst, 2015).
Due to this, the main targets for introducing PDM into design lessons are:
• Creating an appropriate collaborative PDM environment for students
• Developing students' collaborative engineering competencies
• Preparing students for company's demand for collaborative engineering skills
• Train engineering design educators with PDM and PLM techniques
Techniques such as PDM or 3D printing can be taught and trained within the first three years of basic
education, establishing good knowledge on the methods needed for solving problem based tasks. In
the last two years of education this could be switched to interdisciplinary project based tasks.
Concerning 3D printing Schön and Ebner (Schön et al.) started a very interesting initiative the Maker
Days which teaches 3D printing at the young age of 10-14 years old (Ebner et al., 2016).
4 RESEARCH ACITVITIES CONCERNING ENGINEERING DESIGN
EDUCATION
Figure 2 gives an overview about continuing joint research activities of TU Wien together with
Austrian HTL within the Austrian Sparkling Science framework. Two surveys covering all three
projects that have been carried out; a survey about PDM activities at Austrian HTL is planned for
2017.
Figure 2. Overview about joint research activities TU Wien and Austrian HTL
2007
PDM-UP
SE
Project complexity
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
project name
BLUME survey 3 Sparkling
Science projects
survey
Systems Engineering
survey PDM in
engineering education
survey name
Probst, A., Gerhard, D., Ramseder, N., Ebner, M. (2017) : Enhancements in Engineering Design
Education at Austrian HTL. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering
Design (ICED17), Vol. 9: Design Education, Vancouver, Canada, 21.-25.08.2017.
ICED17
4.1 Introducing a PDM system to Engineering Design Education at HTL
Despite accumulating approximately 500 hours of design lessons within 5 years of education, every
student at an Austrian HTL has to write a diploma thesis in groups of two to five students. The
minimum workload of a diploma thesis at a HTL is about 180 hours per student, and has to be done in
the students’ spare time. In mechanical engineering education, a diploma thesis includes engineering
designs with lots of calculations, the building of 3D-models and manufacturing drawings (Reisinger et
al., 2015). This leads to the need to introduce PDM software in order to support students' work in
collaborating on mechanical engineering design lessons and design part of diploma thesis. Otherwise
students would run into typical problems like overwriting files, uncertain valid file version or unclear
project structure.
The first activities to support collaboration of engineering design education started in 2006, with the
aim of introducing PDM at Austrian HTLs. Since the complexity of PDM systems is quite high, as
Feldhusen (Feldhusen et al., 2007) references the effort to set up and maintain a PDM system for
universities, a research partner was found with TU Wien. Two research projects to setup and maintain
a PDM system were conducted. The first research project BLUME (Basis PDM Lern- und Projekt-
Umgebung für ganzheitliche Mechatronische Produktentwicklung in German; in English, the learning
and education environment for mechatronic product engineering) had following targets and outcomes
(Gerhard and Grafinger, 2009):
• Set up and maintaining a PDM/PLM Server: to provide PDM functionality for students and
educators.
• Develop and distribute templates for educational usage: to provide teachers and students with
suitable templates for classroom projects as well as company projects.
• Maintain collaboration mechanical engineering design in a Multi-CAD Environment: a real
product had to be designed through collaboration of students distributed in their own schools.
• Develop and distribute learning material like training videos or instruction manuals: to support
students to compensate the additional effort of learning PDM techniques.
In 2010, another research project was set up, known as PDM-UP (UP – Umweltgerechte
Produktentwicklung, in English the “Design for Environment – DfE”, also referred to as Ecodesign or
green design), which aimed to give students the possibility to work with additional functionalities
which take into account the environmental factors of their engineering designs, something which the
different CAD systems used by students cannot provide (Gerhard and Rahmani, 2012). Targets and
outcomes were:
• Analyse the environmental impact of the engineered products: to support students in learning
discovering the environmental impact of their designs, by using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
methodology, connected to the existing PDM system.
• Incorporate the existing environmental database Ecoinvent into the PDM system: to have access
to and be able to use environmental impact indicator values and life cycle inventory data, to
compare different designs and to analyse their effect on the environment.
• Collaboration of design projects amongst schools: a wireless drill was designed and virtually
assembled by groups of students collaborating with one another using the existing PDM system.
Students from different schools worked together, with each school having their own specific
design task.
4.2 Research activities to Systems Engineering method
Since mechanical engineering education in HTL has a particular focus on engineering design
combined with dimensioning the critical parts, the aim of the latest research project “Systems
Engineering” was to extend the designing knowledge for the early stages of the product development
process with systems engineering methods. This gives all project members the opportunity to deal
with increasing product complexity on a higher abstraction level in the early phases of product
development. Therefore, students and teachers get used to “Model Based Systems Engineering”
(MBSE) and the methodology. In order to allow practical MBSE experience, software partner PTC
provided a state-of-the-art modelling software tool, ATEGO. To give the project a practical aspect,
students and teachers learned to use ATEGO within two workshops and practice gained knowledge of
the development of a model of a 3D printer (Probst et al., 2016).
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4.3 Evaluating the projects of Sparkling Science Programs
In spring 2016 a survey for the past three research projects was carried out, whereby 68 people
participated in the survey, answering 18 questions overall. The main research question asked “Do the
projects conducted by the Sparkling Science program influence teaching practices in engineering
education at participating Austrian HTLs and the project members' perception of the program itself?”.
Survey groups were consisted of current and former students, HTL teachers and TU researchers, both
those that had and hadn't taken part in either one or more projects. Figure 3 gives an overview of the
influence of the Sparkling Science program.
Figure 3. Influences of the Sparkling Science Program
The importance of collaboration between TU Wien and Austrian HTL is valued as important by 52.3%
of the survey participants (30.8% found it very important), while the development of teaching content
within such projects was valued as important by 57.8% (for 7.8% it was very important).
Overall, the results from the survey, conducted in spring 2016, encourage the continued effort of
cooperation between HTLs and TU Wien (Probst et al., 2016).
For further research it seems absolutely necessary to evaluate the participants' knowledge of project
topics at the beginning, during and at the end of upcoming projects to get an idea about the change in
knowledge.
4.4 Research and survey about effectiveness of using PDM in engineering education
As PDM is standard in industry but not in engineering education, there seems to be a lack of scientific
research about effectiveness of using PDM systems in education. Therefore, within the academic year
2016/17 a research study was started to figure out how to enhance collaboration between students by
using this kind of software. The study consists of two parts addressing different target groups. The first
part of the study, called "HTL internal" will be done by approximately 100 students and their
corresponding teachers of several HTLs throughout Austria. The main task is a short collaborative
engineering design task by designing shafts and gear-wheels into a given gearbox by groups of up to
four students. During these tasks all students have to make notes concerning frequency of arising
problems such as overwriting files or interface problems, as well as the necessary time to solve these
problems. Additionally, their teachers are documenting the design task and the occurring problems
such as non-working computers. Finally, there will also be a measurement of the degree of
collaboration by evaluating the PDM database. The second part is a survey amongst HTL students,
teachers and industry stuff with collaborative and PDM background to find out about the importance
of PDM in collaborative engineering. Qualitative interviews are carried out to get a clear picture of
industry's demands of collaboration education. The research and survey results will be presented in an
upcoming paper and discussed with members of the Austrian national wide HTL working group for
mechanical engineering design (http://www.3d-cad.at) and may influence the next generation of HTL
curriculum.
Probst, A., Gerhard, D., Ramseder, N., Ebner, M. (2017) : Enhancements in Engineering Design
Education at Austrian HTL. In: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering
Design (ICED17), Vol. 9: Design Education, Vancouver, Canada, 21.-25.08.2017.
ICED17
5 CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK
In this paper, ways of enhancing of engineering design education at Austrian HTLs have been
presented. Thanks to the Sparkling Science program, students can use PDM for collaboration tasks in
their mechanical engineering design lessons. Despite having to learn how to work with complex PDM
software, the advantages for students are obvious. Based on the experiences made so far, the authors
of this paper are convinced that the quality of engineering design education will improve and be closer
to demands of the industry's needs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work presented in this paper has been funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and
Research within the Sparkling Science Program (http://www.sparklingscience.at).
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