Systems Engineering course 2013
- Post by: Tobias Larsson
- 22nd May 2013
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The Systems Engineering course mostly targets analyzing complex systems, and their sub-systems.
SE course is part of MSPI, Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Economics programs. . And it also educates and teaches students how to find end customers’ needs, and design and define them as ‘requirement specification’. Next step is mapping those specifications as the product-service or system’s functions in order to seek for solutions. These steps are needed for basic production planning and service offering. So, holistic system and design thinking approaches are required to analyze each steps, when one designing or analyzing complex systems. This is the main goal of the System Engineering course in order to equip students with the methods, tools and mindset to have the capabilities to run complex system analyses.
Students are requested to work in groups of 4 or 5 members for the dominant part of the course as their ‘group projects’. Teacher assistants, Babak Kianian and Shahryar Eivazzadeh, provide participants with coaching and mentoring during their projects.
Students will present the final result of their group projects on May 28th – 29th 2013. As a middle point check-in, on May 8th the instructors introduced and provided students groups with a group exercise session with holding a space, that enabled students to implement a creative, action-oriented technic called “Pro Action Café’.
Pro Action Café is a conversational process that follows a methodology to host, in this case and course, project that each group are defined and engaged for a period of two months. The process collects and flourishes the perspective of each group and respectively its members, and also it enables them to involve and engage with other participants in order to have the benefits of their inputs and point of views.
Babak Kianian, SE course teacher assistant, mentioned that; “It was the first time that we have introduced and practiced the Pro Action Café technic with Systems Engineering students. The result indicated around 30% more active participation within the students. This result is really optimistically impressive and it illustrates that students are really keen and open to new experiences, and also they would like to participate in activities that allow them to be fully involved and responsible for their own learning and also benefits from their peers and other classmates’ perspectives and experiences. I have noticed that even a small change to single arrangement and properties of a place (Classroom) result and alter the mood and nature of interaction among students.”
Here are some pictures of our Pro Action Café exercise in May 8th 2013 for SE course in the Wednesday afternoon session. One representative for each student group projects starts to illustrate and describe their projects for the rest of the participants as the middle check-in time in their projects.
For more information, contact Professor Tobias C. Larsson, tobias.larsson@bth.se, Product Development Research Lab.