Advanced aeronatics design: Project based engineering education at WPI

outside the classroom on rea1·world, multi-disciplinary One element of WPI's project-based curriculum is its problems requiring realistic solutions. Students nonnally interdisciplinary Advanced Aeronautics Design Program. conduct MQPs as a major portion of their activity Students participating in the program are involved in the throughout the senior year. They work in teams, often design, construction, and flight testing of non-traditional with liaisons from off-eampus organizations, to aircraft such as an ultralight solar-powered vehicle, synthesize their classroom experience into the design and microwave-powered long endurance aircraft, or a flying testing of an idea or product in the environment of real oblique wing. The WPI project philosophy and character world constraints. are described and illustrated using examples from the AAD program. A second nine credit project, the Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP), is designed to make the students aware of I. INTRODUCTION the importance of technology and its impact on society. Like the MQP, it encourages team fonnation and Improving the design component in undergraduate coordination and external sponsorship of real-WOrld engineering education has been an immediate and topics. The IQP however, is distinctly different from the pressing concern for educators, professional societies, MQP in investigating an interdisciplinary topic industrial employers and agencies concerned with involving both technology and the analysis of how that national productivity and competitiveness. WPI technology affects societal systems and values. Students addressed this need when its faculty revised the entire typically devote a significant portion of their junior year engineering curriculum and implemented a radically new to their lQPs. project-based program called the WPI PLAN which has been widely heralded as revolutionary in its scope and execution. The PLAN provides what the 1982-1983 New