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Journal of Engineering Education ResearchVol. 15, No. 4, pp. 31~34, July, 2012

Capstone Design Projects based on Invention EducationJoon-Hwan ShimDepartment of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Korea Maritime University

ABSTRACTThis paper deals with the introduction of capstone design projects based on invention education in Department of Electronics

and Communication Engineering, Korea Maritime University. This course is referred to as Creative Engineering Design for spring semester of 4th-year undergraduates. The course focuses on creative thinking and cooperative mind to students by learning engineering design skills, realizing their idea through design project and recognizing practicality of their systems. To improve creative thinking of students, intellectual property (IP) education is very helpful. If engineering students take training program in IP, it will be very beneficial for CEOs to manage intellectual capital in many industries and to ensure competition power in their business. This study suggested that students take interest in connecting their ideas with inventions through invention education reinforcing an invention and a patent exercise. It is expected that this study may help to develop new curriculum of capstone design project including IP education in many universities.

Keywords: Invention education, Capstone Design Projects, Intellectual property

I. Introduction1)

In a knowledge-based economic society, there is a view

that national competitiveness is obtained by strengthening

the science base and developing Research and Development

(R&D) capacity. Especially, for a business to stay alive in

an era of infinite competition, many of global companies

are trying to respond effectively with new innovative

product development technology. To assure successful

product development, most innovative companies need the

most creative people and should construct educational

systems to keep highly skilled manpower.

Many companies these days are asking college graduates

to have abilities such as leadership, teamwork, communi-

cation skills, creative thinking. In order to develop student’s

abilities, many universities have opened engineering education

program which encourage students to develop the sense

of creativity in engineering. Through this program, they are

trying to develop engineering curriculum added an industry

partner program which allows the students to address more

significant and practical solving skills [1-3]. A creative

engineering design has now been developed and has become

Received 4 October, 2011; Revised 12 June, 2012Accepted 17 July, 2012† Corresponding Author: jhsim@hhu.ac.kr

an integral and important component of engineering curri-

culum by these efforts. This subject helps students to

improve their engineering thinking and design idea. Thus

students are able to accomplish their projects successfully

through this subject. It also provides learning opportunities

in solving engineering problems through collaborative efforts

of team work as well as innovative and effective idea

creations and presentation skills [4-6].

Recently, with the increasing importance of the intellectual

property (IP), private firms and public institutions such as

universities, colleges and research institutes have em-

phasized the importance of intellectual property education.

Because most engineering students become engineers or

researchers of private companies and public institutions,

most universities should teach students about intellectual

property rights to be able to qualify creative and innovative

engineers [7-8]. Currently, most students don’t know to

protect their ideas and products by patents. Therefore, in

this study, I will propose a new curriculum of capstone

design project based on patent education and a way to

protect student’s new ideas or products through patents.

With this background, the purpose of this course is to provide

students with creative abilities to make new systems that

are technically sound, affordable, environmentally com-

patible and safe in research and development work.

Joon-Hwan Shim

공학교육연구 제15권 제4호, 201232

II. Invention Education and Promotion

1. Invention Education Program

In these days, IP education in Korean universities is sp-

reading gradually after Korean Intellectual Property Office

(KIPO) and Korea Invention Promotion Association (KIPA)

began the college’s IP education in 2006. In 2009, 10

graduate schools and 46 undergraduate schools conducted

IP educations and they opened about 250 IP classes. The

number of college, which opens IP class, is increasing every

year. Especially in a world of intensified IP competition

and conflict, the practical IP education is needed for college

students and the invention education plays a prominent

role in flourishing scientific and innovative thinking.

In Korea, KIPO and KIPA are responsible for invention-

related educational materials. And they are endeavoring

to develop and offer many contents related to patents,

designs, brands, trade secrets through systematic and

efficient invention education. Fig. 1 shows the web sites

Fig. 1 Web sites of KIPO and KIPA

Table 1 Basic course outline for invention education

Understanding of Invention and Patent Week 1

Intellectual Property Policies Week 2

Inventions and Configurations Week 3

Patent Information Week 4

Patent Search and Specification Survey Week 5

Practice of Patent Search and Specification Survey Week 6-7

Analysis of Drawings and Specification Week 8

Practice of Analysis of Drawings and Specification Week 9-10

Practice of Specification Writing Week 11-12

Practice of Patent Application Week 13-14

Evaluation and Summary Week 15

of KIPO and KIPA. KIPA provides on-line and off-line

invention educations for elementary, middle and high school

students.

The IP-Academy, national intellectual property portal

site, operates free IP education through e-learning program

for college students and industrial workers and people.

The basic contents of invention education for college

students are shown in Table 1. This course requires 2

hours of lectures per week for 15 weeks. It consists of

understanding of inventions and patents, idea creation,

analysis of drawings and specification, practice of specifi-

cation writing and patent application. Through this course

based on experiences and experiments, I think this would

be useful to foster creative talents in invention.

2. Invention Contests and Activities for Invention

Promotion

KIPA holds the Campus Patent Strategy Universiade which

is a competition for undergraduates and graduate school

student. It is designed to nurture their capabilities in dealing

with patent matters in an actual workplace. Participants

are required to choose from among a list of themes an-

nounced by the competition board, and have to present ideas

about how to set patent strategies for the their chosen

areas under the guidance of their professors. Outstanding

ideas can be adopted by companies, which makes this com-

petition a new type of industrial and academic collaboration

based on the concept of open innovation. The University

Creation Patent Competition is also held by KIPA as shown

Capstone Design Projects based on Invention Education

Journal of Engineering Education Research, 15(4), 2012 33

in Fig. 2. This causes students to create and develop new

knowledge. And KIPA supports invention clubs of college

students which provide students opportunities to express

themselves through the fabrication of innovative ideas as

shown in Fig. 3. Through various invention activities the

members have the opportunity to provide real world appli-

cations of knowledge gained through different majors. By

participation in events such as invention contests, the club

is a great medium for providing students with the under-

standing of technological trends of the world. Most students

who have taken part in invention contests have high desires

to learn IP knowledge and try to develop their own ideas

into inventions. When KIPA investigated the number of

participants and the level of invented products in invention

contests, they published that the number of participants

increased and the level of the products was improved each

year. Because the student given contest prizes can receive

financial incentives, the participated students greatly satisfy.

Thus if the course requirement of capstone design projects

Fig. 2 Winners of the University Creation Patent Competition in 2011

Fig. 3 Workshop of invention clubs of college in 2010

includes mandatory participation in the invention contest

with their own products, most students will try to build

creative innovative ideas and implement them.

III. Proposed Course Procedure

The creative engineering design is a required course

opened in the spring semester of 4th-year undergraduates

in Department of Electronics and Communication Engi-

neering, Korea Maritime University. This course focuses

on a practical approach to help students gain experience in

teamwork, communication, project management and technical

skills that will help them in their career paths [9]. Fig. 4

shows process steps operating in current class and Fig.

5 shows the proposed class procedures including invention

education to protect their project outcomes. The composed

team should firstly establish a basic conception for team

project and they investigate patent validity of their project

through patent prior-art search. After completing prior-art

search, they make a final project decision through brain-

Fig. 4 Process steps of current class

Fig. 5 Process steps of proposed class

Joon-Hwan Shim

공학교육연구 제15권 제4호, 201234

Table 2 Proposed course outline including invention edu-cation

Introductions and Team Formation Week 1

Team Building Exercises Week 1&2

Basic Project Concept & P1: Understanding of

Invention and PatentWeek 3

Project Proposal & P2: Patent Search and

Specification SurveyWeek 4

Project Design & P3: Analysis of Drawings and

SpecificationWeek 5

Detailed Project Design Week 6-7

1st Prototype Week 8-10

Final Product Week 11-12

Performance Test & P4: Practice of Patent

ApplicationWeek 13-14

Final Presentation and Exhibition Week 15

storming. And the final project product is made through

detailed design work and several prototyping. After that,

each team applies for patents through on-line patent ap-

plication service to obtain their patents of project outcomes.

Finally the final project results are displayed in a poster

gallery room to all students and all members of the faculty.

Table 2 is to propose course contents of the capstone

engineering design introducing invention education. This

course consists of three hours per week over 15 weeks.

In this course, the patent education is composed of four

main topics: understanding of invention and patent, patent

search and specification survey, analysis of drawings and

specification, practice of patent application.

IV. Conclusion

In this study, I proposed the new course of capstone

engineering design in order to develop creative thinking

and improve innovative ability of students through intellectual

property education. This approach can be used to set up

efficiently intellectual property education for different groups

in the capstone engineering design. In order to carry out

continuously creative engineering education, it is necessary

to improve and change the course contents of the capstone

engineering design considering economic importance of

knowledge. When suitable IP education is conducted for

engineering students, colleges may play an important role

in creating campus ventures and encourage companies to

recruit students or create an environment which attracts

new technology based start-up companies.

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심준환 (Shim, Joon-hwan)

He received the M.S. and Ph. D. degrees from Kyungpook

National University in 1993 and 1998. He was a Visiting

Professor in Texas University at Arlington. He is currently

a professor in Dep. of Electronics and Communications

Engineering at Korea Maritime University in Pusan, Korea.

Phone: +82-51-410-4811

Fax: +82-51-404-3986

E-mail: jhsim@hhu.ac.kr