To the optimist, the glass is half full
To the pessimist, the glass is half empty
To the engineer, the glass is twice as large as it needs to be
Praxis I is an introduction to engineering design processes and theory. The course focuses on communication, teamwork, research (a lot of it), and prototyping – all crucial and connected parts of engineering design. An overarching theme is developing an engineering identity – something that unites all parts of the course and that you can carry and develop throughout your career. .
At the start of the course, you will learn about design theory which is based on the concept of engineers formally and rigorously documenting and supporting their designs. “Supporting your design” means finding research that supports your decisions and testing your design to ensure it will perform correctly. Documentation involves tracking materials, ideas, and information that went into developing your design. Along the way, you will learn to communicate your design process and products to wide audience.
You will learn all about, and apply, the Frame, Diverge, Converge, and Represent (FDCR) engineering design process that is at the foundation of Praxis I and II. First, you’ll find and frame an engineering opportunity by talking to and observing stakeholders around you. Then, you’ll develop ideas for tackling the opportunity and begin to challenge and test these ideas. This process will culminate in developing a report and several prototypes of your solution.
Professors
Professor Roger Carrick
Professor Roger Carrick is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Division of Engineering Science and the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering. Professor Carrick has a background in mechanical engineering. He completed both his undergraduate and masters education at the University of Waterloo. Before joining the Praxis team, he served as the Designer-in-Residence in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at York University, where he helped set up the Engineering Design curriculum. Through this role, he enjoyed teaching and completed his PhD there. His research interests include project-based learning, knowledge integration through design, and integrating CAD training in engineering curriculum.
Professor Jennifer Lofgreen
Professor Jennifer Lofgreen, who goes by Jenny, completed her PhD in Chemistry at U of T, while working on writing instruction for chemistry students and TAs. In fact, she used to be a TA herself for this course! She spent the past eight years in Sweden teaching academic writing for PhD students. During her time there, she started a second PhD focusing on integrating science philoshophies into engineering education. She focuses on the communication half of Praxis I – which is all about arguments and building strong claims!
Interview
“There is a lot of theoretical understanding around engineering design and engineering communication, and learning that theoretically doesn’t really help you understand how to make use of it. You actually have to spend a lot of time practicing, iterating, running through stuff, trying things out, not quite succeeding, doing it again […] We move back and forth between a theoretical perspective and a hands-on practical application.”
Course Highlights
- Brainstorming many different ideas, and then prototyping and testing them. Dollar stores are your friend!
- Learning to make strong arguments and support them with evidence (your own testing or from other sources).
- Exploring the campus and asking students about their lived experience (as non-awkwardly as you can: make it a challenge). Then, finding a group within U of T, and trying to improve the lives of a group of students on campus, using your newly learned Engineering Design abilities!
- Writing your first report! In Engineering, communication is as important as design. No single engineer can be responsible for a product, from the planning and design, to manufacturing and distribution. Therefore, it is good practice to formally communicate ideas and information in a written manner.
- Developing and building an amazing invention that improves the lives of many people!
Week in the Life of a Praxis I Student
Praxis I is a versatile course that changes significantly from week-to-week. Here is a rough approximation of how a week will look for a Praxis I student.
Classes
There are typically three lectures a week for Praxis I. You will learn about engineering design concepts in lecture and participate in design and thinking activities. You’ll find that the lectures are very well-integrated with the tutorials. They will often discuss some notable results from tutorial activities and connect them to different engineering design concepts. Additionally, some lectures will focus on engineering design tools that will be useful in the tutorial sections immediately after the lecture.
Praxis studios occupy the same section in your schedule as tutorials. In a small class led by a couple TAs, you will be guided through engineering design activities, project help, and more. This is where most of your project-specific work and instruction will happen. You’ll find that the concepts discussed in studios were introduced in the lectures. This makes studios an excellent time to apply these concepts and get a deeper understanding of how they all work together.
Your timetable contains a two-hour practical block during which you can meet with your team and work on your project. While the meeting time and duration is not mandatory, you should definitely schedule regular meeting times with your team. Since Praxis is a dynamic course, you may have no meetings on some weeks, and many hours of meetings on other weeks. The key is to find times that work for your entire team, and to not leave all your work until the last minute! We cannot emphasize enough the importance of regularly checking in with your team. Through regular team communication, you can keep track of deadlines and allocate work more effectively. Communicating with your team helps ensure that everyone is healthy and offers an opportunity to de-stress all together.
Assessments
There is typically a midterm and final exam in Praxis I. This will test you on the engineering design theories and concepts you have learned, as well as your ability to apply them. Based on our experience, understanding how the course concepts connect to each other can be a useful tool when studying. To find past exams and tests, visit the Praxis I page on courses.skule.ca.
Overall, the course project consists of identifying, framing, developing solutions, and verifying design concepts for an engineering opportunity within the U of T community. You will have several independent reports and team projects, reports, and presentations due throughout the semester. Look at the How to Succeed section below for some advice on completing these.
How to Succeed
Quick Tips & Equations
- The Toulmin model for arguments (feel free to argue in Praxis! It’s not rude, it’s constructive).
- Learning to make an engineering argument is one of the most important fundamentals in Praxis (and engineering in general), whether you are backing up your claims with a lot of evidence or admitting you have not done enough work to know the full answer to a question.
- C.R.A.A.P. Test for source credibility (very useful, though you wouldn’t think so based on the name).
- You will likely do tons of research in your engineering career and this test serves as a checkpoint to make sure the sources you are getting information from are reliable.
- C = Currency
- R = Relevance
- A = Authority
- A = Accuracy
- P = Purpose
- You can learn about existing designs, design decisions for creating better ones, and the STEM principles behind everything, with Google Patents, Google Scholar, and the U of T Engineering & Computer Science Library.
- Requirement strings outline what a solution to an engineering opportunity must (not) accomplish. They are built as such:
- Objective
- Metric
- Constraint
- Criteria
- Measurement matrices and Pugh charts organize the results from your design testing and can help you identify which design concepts are stronger than others in which specific areas (and can therefore allow them to be further improved).
More Details
Much of Praxis I is done in teams to which you’ll be assigned using an algorithm. This is a chance for you to get to know more of your peers and learn from diverse viewpoints. Try to learn each other’s habits and how everyone likes to operate, like who’s an early bird and who’s a night owl. Agree on simple rules: “If someone is late, they will buy Timbits for everyone,” or, “We will not just shoot down others’ ideas: we’ll give a reason we don’t agree and be open to debate.”
Many teams will wait a few days after an assignment is given to plan and allocate work. Upper-year students recommend planning early so everyone can do their individual portions as soon as possible. This gives plenty of time for group review and for the collaborative portions of the assignment. Waiting too long before planning will just push work off, leaving you with less time to review. If you find a particular teamwork strategy is not working, try something different. Above all, don’t forget to communicate!
Writing is a key part of professional communication, and you’ll be expected to write formally for Praxis I. The reports can be long, so don’t review them entirely in one go; you’ll find that fatigue impairs your reviewing and editing ability. Also, do not forget about your citations, which must be formatted with APA/IEEE guidelines, and include images/screenshots (extracts) of the information you took from the source. Citations always take longer than you expect, so do them as you go.
Having a good understanding of the course material goes a long way to quickly generating reports that are professional and well-supported using models and evidence. Additionally, engineering design builds upon itself, so if you don’t review core “simple” concepts early on, you will find it difficult to follow processes later in the course.
As with all other courses, ask questions! The teaching team will answer any of your questions about assignments, concepts discussed in lecture, engineering, communication, and much more. You will have about 5-10 minutes before and after the lecture to ask quick questions. You can also always email professors for more personal questions or attend their office hours.
You will receive holistic feedback from TAs, professors, and teammates during studio activities along with written feedback on assignments, and teamwork evaluations. Feedback is personalized and is all designed to help you become a better student engineer, so don’t neglect these resources.
Beyond First Year
- You’ll learn how to design creative solutions to design challenges! This skill will be useful in future design courses and in your engineering career.
- Completing an engineering design process for the first time is a great learning experience for most students. It’s very rewarding to find a problem, frame it, develop a concept solution and then prototype it through to functionality.
- As a future engineer, you will need to make engineering decisions based on strong arguments and credible, relevant evidence, and think with a sense of logic and rigor.
- The research and citations that you do for the course may seem tedious at first, but they’ll prepare you for future design projects and courses by introducing you to the research tools necessary for professional engineering.
If nothing else, this course will give you confidence in your problem-solving abilities. Overcoming the wide variety of challenges will be a source of confidence for you in your engineering design and problem-solving abilities. Additionally, the engineering design frameworks and techniques that you will learn in Praxis I will be the foundations in Praxis II, where you will focus on applying these skills to a larger scale project!