Engineering analysis: a pre-requisite for design

The design element of an engineering curriculum in a higher education degree course is often found to shape the structure and content of the whole course. That is, all other elements ranging from mathematics, applied science to finance and management are devised to provide the engineering student with sufficient knowledge to support the requirements of the design process. The definition and the description of the design process have been given considerable attention in the literature. For example Pugh (1991) discussed the design process in depth and presented what was to become an established view on the multitude of the diverse elements that exist and the skills that are required to be mastered. This diversity is often found to be rather troublesome for engineering teachers and the developers of engineering course curricula due to the different types of subject matter and the provision of effective teaching and learning environments.