The Engineering Design Laboratory is an exclusively instructional facility designed specifically to meet our D4P program needs. It serves primarily the course EGR 286 – Engineering Design: The Process but also other courses in the D4P sequence. The modular design of the space allow for both formal instruction as well as for design group work of students, a versatile arrangement that is functional in terms of its educational experience and process.
As show above, the space is composed of two conjoined rooms on the ground floor of the main Engineering building. These rooms are joined by two large, roll-up, insulated doors. The doors allow for separation of the front and rear spaces, as well as for accommodating the movement of large or rolling projects from a lecture space to a working space, if so desired. A large, roll-up access door is also present to the outside, for similar reasons. A glass wall is incorporated between the rooms to allow viewing of one space by the other, without mixing the two. The front room (Rm. 118) has multimedia presentation capabilities and can be used in a lecture format as required. A dedicated wireless environment is established in both rooms, such that laptops can be deployed for classes without over-taxing the building’s general-access wireless system. This system has gained preference by the instructors, over the Ethernet cable drop-downs, previously designed into the building structure. The furniture was chosen to be simple and sturdy, thus allowing it to be reconfigured for team-oriented laboratories as required. The back room (Rm. 119) has lockers dedicated to the EGR 286 class; this class uses preconfigured Legos® Mindstorms kits for a robotics-styled team design class. The lockers are used for storage by the teams during the semester.
