Overview

Now this not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Winston Churchill, 1943, on the Battle of Egypt

Le vrai voyage de la d couverte consiste pas en cherchant de nouveaux paysages mais en ayant de nouveaux yeux. [The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.]

Marcel Proust, la Recherche du temps perdu [Remembrance of Things Past]

In this concluding chapter we revisit and consolidate the wide-ranging ideas loosely addressed in earlier chapters. This book has much more to do with learning to be an engineering designer than about the activity of engineering design. We have explored student motivation (engagement) and creativity as well as the broad educational framework within which these issues are addressed. What we have not yet seriously considered is the substantial human resource needed to administer and deliver the programme of learning explored in the book. There is no escaping the fact that without exception, the delivery and administration of effective engaging engineering design learning programmes is a resource intensive activity. The saving grace of participating in this activity is that although no engineer designs always, equally truly no engineer designs never.

A challenging perennial question addressed by engineering design educators is the apportionment of quality and quantity in design education. If we can think of a journey to some destination as a metaphor for the design educational experience, then quantity of education...