COLLABORATING ON A CASE-BASED COURSE IN QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL
Year: 2015
Editor: Guy Bingham, Darren Southee, John McCardle, Ahmed Kovacevic, Erik Bohemia, Brian Parkinson
Author: Stacey, Lyndia; Barlatt, Ada; Lambert, Steve
Series: E&PDE
Institution: University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
Section: Collaboration
Page(s): 032-037
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9
Abstract
Quality Management and Control is a fourth year technical elective course focusing on analysis, evaluation and improvement of processes and designs. It has been taught in a conventional manner using lectures, assignments and exams for several years. The instructor, who is also one of the authors, was asked to teach this course for the first time and wanted to stress the real world importance of quality control in engineering design and provide students with realistic applications of quality management techniques. For this reason, the instructor chose to present the theoretical part of the course during the first half of the term by traditional lectures but use a case study approach for the second half of the term. Multiple available cases were reviewed for general alignment with the course objectives, and three case studies were chosen. The instructor then worked with the case-writing group to create case assignments to supplement the original case study, and concentrate student discussion around specific course objectives. There were several challenges associated with creating this case based course. These are presented as well as the development process, implementation strategy, suggestions for improvement, student feedback and instructor observations.
Keywords: Case studies, engineering education, deductive approach, inductive approach.