Effective Teaching of Complex Manufacturing Topics to Undergraduate Engineers Utilizing a Novel, Broadly Based, Interactive Virtual Company

Abstract

This refereed paper for a prestigious international conference described further work (utilising the educational intervention described in NRO1) to investigate the problem of educating engineering students to accept the validity of ‘non-optimal’ solutions to indeterminate problems in complex, non-numerical domains. The fundamentals of these domains cannot easily be demonstrated using typical conventional pedagogical methods such as lectures and laboratory sessions or by a procedural, or formulaic, approach to problem solving. Analysis, in the form of an interpretive, qualitative study was carried out with the methods of data collection including group and semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and researcher observation. The finding was that the realistic simulation of professional engineering problems and practitioner heuristic approaches to problem solving, increased student willingness to accept the validity of non-optimal solutions.