Transdisciplinary Engineering Design Education: Ontology for a Generic Product Design Process

Abstract

Today’s highly integrated product development practices emphasize the need to transform the engineering education from disciplinary to transdisciplinary. This paper is based on the results of an empirical study designed to introduce a common transdisciplinary design process in engineering education. It aims to validate the hypothesis that engineering disciplines in education share a common engineering design process. It describes the methodology for the development of a Transdisciplinary Engineering Design Education Ontology (TEDEO) for eight major engineering disciplines. It proposes a high-level transdisciplinary engineering design process that consolidates a diverse array of engineering terms and concepts into a generalized model.