Humanitarian Engineering Design Project
Overview
This unit aims to introduce students to the profession of engineering and covers foundational professional skills including design, communication (written, oral, visual and technical), teamwork, sustainability, ethics and creativity and innovation. This unit will help students clarify an engineering career path and will build their skillset towards being an innovative engineer with skills in both open-ended problems and solution focused outcomes. By participation in a global humanitarian engineering design project with a community partner organisation, students will be introduced to the role engineers can take in creating positive impact on people’s lives and the wellbeing of wider communities. Students work on developing design concepts that achieve social, economic and/or environmental outcomes.
Requisites
01-June-2025
02-November-2025
Learning outcomes
Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:
- Identify, locate, and select appropriate sources of data and interpret and use these to describe the issues facing a given community (K1, K4, K5, S1, S2, S4, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6)
- Discuss and debate the most effective means of dealing with a humanitarian engineering problem that is addressed in the unit of study (K4, K5, S2, A2, A5)
- Identify, discuss, and generate solutions to a humanitarian engineering design problem using sustainability solutions and prioritise these solutions in terms of social, economic and environmental factors and their technical merits and/or viability (K1, K2, K3, K4, K6, S1, S2, S3, A3, A4, A6)
- Plan and design a solution to an engineering design problem, assess alternative design strategies in terms of economic, social and environmental factors and justify your design in terms of these factors and standard engineering principles and practices (K2, K3, K5, S1, S2, S3, S4, A1, A2, A3, A4, A6)
- Appraise and assess the quality of their colleagues’ project work and reflect upon their own experiences within the unit and how these relate to their future employment and professional purpose (A4, A5, A6, A7)
- Use and improve negotiation, professional communication, presentation, planning, design, management, research and analysis skills (S2, S4, A2, A5, A6,A7)
- Develop basic skills in design including creativity and sketching and apply these skills to a design problem (K2, K3, S1)
Teaching methods
Hawthorn
| Type | Hours per week | Number of weeks | Total (number of hours) |
|---|---|---|---|
| On-campus Lecture |
1.00 | 12 weeks | 12 |
| On-campus Class |
2.00 | 12 weeks | 24 |
| On-campus Workshop |
2.00 | 12 weeks | 24 |
| Unspecified Activities Independent Learning |
7.50 | 12 weeks | 90 |
| TOTAL | 150 |
Assessment
| Type | Task | Weighting | ULO's |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project | Individual/Group | 100% | 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 |
Content
- Introduction to engineering as a profession including major sub-disciplines of engineering and professional purpose
- Introduction to sustainable and humanitarian engineering
- Introduction to design processes, design thinking, creativity and visualisation skills development to conceptually understand ill-defined problems
- Humanitarian engineering design project, learning to solve real-world engineering problems in challenging environments
- Developing professional communication skills
Study resources
Reading materials
A list of reading materials and/or required textbooks will be available in the Unit Outline on Canvas.