Use of Fuller-Polya Diagram for Teaching Engineering Problem Solving in Undergraduate Design Classes

On teaching a sophomore Engineering design class the author emphasizes a problem solving approach to teaching which integrates through team-work design miniprojects. The three levels of design-problem complexity, e.g., routine standard, poorly defined and open-ended creative-design problems, are introduced in a studio-lab classroom setting. The last two problem types are readily solved by sophomores after they learn basic techniques. However, the routine single-answer standard-algorithms may be difficult for students if not presented as straight "plug-data" computations (i.e., if formulas or procedures are not for explicit computation of the required results from the given data). Sophomores are not used to make the connections between the mathematics and physics they learned and the standardized handbook-type engineering computations, where multiple data and result values may be required or produced, and non-algebraic procedures are employed. The author introduced in his class the Fuller-Polya diagram for problem solving, a simple structured method outlined by Fuller and Polya and formalized by Kardos, to graphically organize the variables and their relationships in the computation without the mathematical formula and procedure details. The approach showed useful to help students' understanding and insight of deterministic engineering algorithms.