When I was studying eng problem sets like this were the norm for courses like statics, fluid dynamics, thermo etc. They were considered optional and you usually

When I was studying eng problem sets like this were the norm for courses like statics, fluid dynamics, thermo etc. They were considered optional and you usually collaborated on them in groups - university even encouraged it by helping to advertise/organize study groups. Mostly you'd sit in group everyone would work on problems independently then "What did you get for problem 3?" "100 kPa" "Yeah that's what I got." No different from looking up answer in back of textbook. Our assignments in these classes (i.e what counted towards your grade) was usually based off of lab reports i.e. I remember for thermo we had to play around with heat exchangers in various configurations and then compute their efficiency based on measurements we took.