Teaching towards design-based learning in manufacturing technology course: Sino–Australia joint undergraduate program

The internationalized higher education in Engineering has made the sustainable future of Chinese regional universities prosper in the recent decade. The teaching practices of engineering courses pose many challenges in Sino–foreign joint undergraduate programs. The design-based learning (DBL) approach addresses students learning challenges in the joint undergraduate program facilitated by the Wuhan University of Science and Technology (WUST) in central China along with Deakin University (DU), Australia. Following the seven general principles of DBL, a project of process planning was performed for teaching and learning in the Manufacturing Technology course. An implicit meta-cognitive competence was developed through performing the engineering project tutoring, diverse learning tasks and normative assessment criteria. The DBL pedagogy succeeds in bridging the diverse knowledge systems in the specialized courses of Manufacturing Technology between Chinese and Australian programs in Mechanical Engineering. Many achievements and awards won by the students demonstrate a satisfactory result in the case study on the teaching practice towards DBL. The pedagogy towards DBL truly improves the teaching quality of the courses in joint programs and further strengthens the internationalized engineering education for the sustainable development of regional universities in China.