Week 1 - Introduction, Syllabus

The first class of CPE101 - Engineering Exploration

August 19, 2022

• not able to attend onsite class (visa paperwork)

• all the references are coming from the Facebook guide (syllabus, literature review)

Coursework (the 'what?') 🤷‍♂️

It is the first day of CPE101 class. Here we learned about the syllabus, reflexive writing journal, and the norms of being in an engineering profession.

About the term "engineering"

My conventional understanding is based on Wikipedia's definition, which is to build useful stuff using scientific principles. So, creative applications of scientific principles (conditions applied) are basically engineering works. Factors like personal and professional ethics, safety, and the economics of operation, are also valuable considerations.

...it is the engineering that changes the world.

Issac Asimov, 1970

The major steps of engineering work (considering the diversity of roles they work in), can be summarized as ASK, IMAGINE, CREATE and IMPROVE. Let's take a look at the breakdown of those steps (extended version):

• Define your problem

• Do the necessary research

• Develop a possible solution (a model of a solution)

• Design your solution (based on proof of concept/proof of technology)

• Build a prototype

• Test and improve

• Evaluate your solutions and deliver

We also recall S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting process in this course. I learned this concept in an entrepreneurship session (out of the course). So, I'm just going to place a brief infographic about it.

source: https://venngage.com/templates/infographics/colorful-smart-goals-process-infographic-dafbc103-a27f-498a-bde0-f6d6d34cd26b

Tip: Time is the most valuable resource you’ll ever have.

CPE101 Project

We were going to have two projects as part of the course. The first one is building a gambler bot. The team will be prefixed by the organizers (CPE101 class) we had to go pick some dice around by manually controlling the robot. The collected dice had to be put onto the wooden stage. The scores will be based on the number of dice and values on top-facing dice.

The second project let us choose the project idea and team by ourselves. We had to work on a team to reach the final end of the project and then we are going to showcase it at the end of the course. The project had to be organized using the Planner tool for better team coordination.

Impact (the 'so what?') 🚀

This session just manifests the overall picture of an engineering role. It also helps in clarifying what the proficient problem-solving pattern looks like.

It is a big advantage to be able to know S.M.A.R.T. goal setting since time is our most valuable resource. Working on actions with no reasonable outcome can be a terrible waste of time and resources. It is also said that in the competition, "time is our greatest enemy", even bigger than our rivals.

Having an opportunity to work on multiple team projects during the start of the engineering journey is a very valuable gain. Having said that, we will be able to explore different areas of computer engineering roles with the help of both coursework and project works.

Reflections (the 'now what?') 🤔

To provide the best results, one must have clearly defined goals. Now, I think we can combine these concepts to set the targets for our project.

I'm further excited to learn these concepts with a hands-on experience in further classes.

Additional References

Follow up goals

This was one of the important topics discussed in the session. This practice helps bring positive changes and improvements in the existing technical solutions.

source: My scribbles from the class session

Action plan

Here are some of the helpful infographics related to this week's session:

source: https://slidemodel.com/how-to-present-an-action-plan/

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