Engineering Design and Communication, or EDC, was launched as a pilot program in 1996, and has grown to become a required course for all engineering students at Northwestern. Part of Engineering First, the course is designed and taught by faculty from both the engineering school and the university's Writing Program.
In EDC, students work in small teams to tackle real-world design problems brought to them by individuals, not-for-profit organizations, entrepreneurs and industry. Students learn about the design process, about written, spoken, and graphical communication, and about teamwork and collaboration.
EDC is a two-quarter, two-credit sequence, and is designed to:
- Introduce freshmen to a user-centered design process and provide them with tools for the creative solving of complex, open-ended problems
- Provide students with design tools that will help them explore the design space, gather information, generate alternatives, develop design specifications, make decisions, and argue for their ideas
- Help students see that writing, speaking, graphical, and interpersonal communication are an integral part of design and are crucial to the intellectual life and practice of successful engineers
- Improve students' skill in all these areas of communication
- Nurture undergraduate students' enthusiasm for engineering
- Initiate a culture of design at Northwestern, drawing on the design expertise of the current engineering faculty in ways that break the traditional model of undergraduate education.
