What are some mechanical engineering software necessary or useful to be proficient in?

Can Design Studio environments be utilised to successfully teach Computing and Software Engineering, immersing students in a similar reflective education without losing or diluting what makes the studio useful in the first place?

• Design Studios are visually-centred reflective environments that allow students to learn by doing (See: 'Educating the Reflective Practitioner', D. Schön). The idea is that some things you can't learn by being told and need to simply experience it. Studio approaches are yet to largely be done in Computer Science/Software Engineering - a few attempts have been made, but only to a limited level.

• Answer:

  I'm sure there are certain aspects of engineering, that would benefit from the open architecture, and abductive & associative mindsets that come with the Studio Environment. As someone who is trying to work on how to make the studio environment work in a more distributed model than the current in person model, I can say that early research demonstrates that some types of engineering definitely will benefit from these cultural changes to not just education but actual work environments. There are also overlaps that exist between code and design, especially in the areas of front-end development where the look is as important as the performance to the success of the product/solution. But just like in design education itself, not everything is good for studio. There are theory classes that are much better in a seminar environment than a studio environment. But if you look at a game design or interactive design education program where there is much coding happening, you'll see plenty of students getting a ton out of the studio environment for many of their courses, especially where peer co-learning is really important for total class success.