scholarly journals Exploring the Effect of Design Education on the Design Cognition of Sophomore Engineering Students

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Williams ◽  
Marie Paretti ◽  
Yoon Suk Lee ◽  
John Gero
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Cognition

Exploring the Effect of Design Education on the Design Cognition of Mechanical Engineering Students

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Williams ◽  
John Gero ◽  
Yoon Lee ◽  
Marie Paretti
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Protocol Analysis ◽  
Design Cognition ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Protocol Study ◽  
The Impact

In this paper, the authors report on progress of a longitudinal study on the impact of design education on students’ design thinking and practice. Using innovations in cognitive science and new methods of protocol analysis, the authors are working with engineering students to characterize their design cognition as they progress through engineering curricula. In this paper, the results from a protocol study of sophomore Mechanical Engineering students are presented. Specifically, data gathered from two experimental sessions (conducted before and after the students’ introductory design course) are analyzed to identify changes in design thinking cognition. Design cognition is determined using protocol analysis with the coding of the protocols based on a general design ontology, namely, the Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) as a principled coding scheme (as opposed to an ad hoc one). Preliminary results indicate that statistically significant changes in students’ design cognition occur over the course of their sophomore year. The change manifests itself in an increase in focus on the purposes of designs being produced, which is often a precursor to the production a higher quality designs, and an increase in the design processes associated with the introduction of purposes of designs.

Exploring Spatial Reasoning Ability and Design Cognition in Undergraduate Engineering Students

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher B. Williams ◽  
John Gero ◽  
Yoon Lee ◽  
Marie Paretti
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Spatial Reasoning ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Design Cognition ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Paper Folding ◽  
Protocol Study

This paper presents preliminary results from the first phase of a longitudinal study of design cognition and the effects of design education on design practice. The study aims to monitor the development of engineering design thinking through a three-year protocol study of control and experimental groups of engineering students. Using innovations in cognitive science that include ontologically-based coding of protocols and new methods of protocol analysis, the study is intended to characterize students’ cognitive development, identify differences over time, and relate those differences to students’ educational experiences. The first phase of this study focuses on assessing students’ spatial reasoning ability. Spatial reasoning is the ability to process and form ideas through spatial relationships among objects. It has been found to correlate strongly with the design ability associated with one’s ability to generate, conceptualize, and communicate solutions to problems. Sophomore students entering two different majors took four spatial reasoning tests (Paper Folding, Vandenberg, Mental Rotation, and Spatial Imagery Ability) that addressed their ability to visualize objects and mentally manipulate them over an ordered sequence of spatial transformations. The results of these tests are presented in this paper. Tests were conducted to determine statistical significance in order to evaluate whether a student’s spatial reasoning ability correlates with their choice of engineering major. The students’ test performances are also compared with existing data from other fields (e.g., architecture, visual arts, science, and humanities).

A Pillar of Mechanical Engineering Design Education in Australia: 25 Years of the Warman Design and Build Competition

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren F. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
National Committee ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Institutional Learning ◽  
History Of

The “Warman Design and Build Competition”, running across Australasian Universities, is now in its 26th year in 2013. Presented in this paper is a brief history of the competition, documenting the objectives, yearly scenarios, key contributors and champion Universities since its beginning in 1988. Assuming the competition has reached the majority of mechanical and related discipline engineering students in that time, it is fair to say that this competition, as a vehicle of the National Committee on Engineering Design, has served to shape Australasian engineering education in an enduring way. The philosophy of the Warman Design and Build Competition and some of the challenges of running it are described in this perspective by its coordinator since 2003. In particular, the need is for the competition to work effectively across a wide range of student group ability. Not every group engaging with the competition will be competitive nationally, yet all should learn positively from the experience. Reported also in this paper is the collective feedback from the campus organizers in respect to their use of the competition as an educational experience in their classrooms. Each University participating uses the competition differently with respect to student assessment and the support students receive. However, all academic campus organizer responses suggest that the competition supports their own and their institutional learning objectives very well. While the project scenarios have varied widely over the years, the intent to challenge 2nd year university (predominantly mechanical) engineering students with an open-ended statement of requirements in a practical and experiential exercise has been a constant. Students are faced with understanding their opportunity and their client’s value system as expressed in a scoring algorithm. They are required to conceive, construct and demonstrate their device with limited prior knowledge and experience, and the learning outcomes clearly impact their appreciation for teamwork, leadership and product realization.

Not Good Enough? Exploring Relationships Between Students’ Empathy, Their Attitudes Towards Sustainability, and the Self-Perceived Sustainability of Their Solutions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Prabhu ◽  
Mohammed Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Elizabeth Starkey
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
The Self ◽  
Empathy Development ◽  
Concept Evaluation ◽  
Trait Empathy ◽  
Evaluation Stage ◽  
Future Work

Abstract Empathy plays an important role in designers’ ability to relate to problems faced by others. Several researchers have studied empathy development in engineering design education; however, a majority of this work has focused on teaching designers to empathize with primary users. Little attention in empathy development research is given to empathizing with those affected in a secondary and tertiary capacity. Moreover, little research has investigated the role of students’ empathy in influencing their emphasis on sustainability, especially in the concept evaluation stage. Our aim in this paper is to explore this research gap through an experimental study with engineering students. Specifically, we introduced first-year engineering students at a large public university in the northeastern United States to a short workshop on sustainable design. We compared changes in their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability from before to after participating in the workshop. We also compared the relationship between students’ trait empathy, attitudes towards sustainability, and the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions in a design task. From our results, we see that students reported an increase in their beliefs and intentions towards sustainability and a decrease in their personal distress from before to after participating in the workshop. Furthermore, students’ trait empathy correlated negatively with the self-perceived sustainability of their solutions. These findings highlight the need for future work studying the role of empathy in encouraging a sustainable design mindset among designers.

scholarly journals CHALLENGES IN ENGINEERING DESIGN EDUCATION: VERTICAL AND LATERAL LEARNING

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksander Czekanski ◽  
Maher Al-Dojayli ◽  
Tom Lee
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Engineering Practice ◽  
Design Strategies ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Advanced Analysis ◽  
Capstone Projects ◽  
Team Design

Engineering practice and design in particular have gone through several changes during the last two decades whether due to scientific achievements including the evolution in novel engineering materials, computational advancements, globalization and economic constraints as well as the strategic needs which are the drive for innovative engineering. All these factors have impacted and shaped to certain extent the educational system in North America and Canada in particular. Currently, high percentage of the engineering graduates would require extensive training in industry to be able to conduct reliable complex engineering designs supported by scientific verification and validation, understand the complete design stages and phases, and identify the economic and cultural impact on such designs. This task, however, faces great challenges without educational support in such vastly changing economy.Lots of attention has been devoted to engineering design education in the recent years to incorporate engineering design courses supported by team design projects and capstone projects. Nevertheless, the lack of integrated education system towards engineering design programs can undermine the benefits of such efforts. In this paper, observations and analysis of the challenges in engineering design are presented from both academic and industrial points of view. Furthermore, a proposed vertical and lateral engineering education program is discussed. This program is structured to cover every year of the engineering education curricula, which emphasizes on innovative thinking, design strategies, support from and integration with other technical engineering courses, the use of advanced analysis tools, team collaboration, management and leadership, multidisciplinary education and industrial involvement. Its courses have just commenced for freshmen engineering students at the newly launched Mechanical Engineering Department at the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University.

Emotional Tools Design: A Project to Increase Empathy, Engagement and Interest in Industrial Design Students

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan-Carlos Rojas ◽  
Gerardo Muniz ◽  
Juan Luis Higuera-Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Positive Perception ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
Emotional Aspects ◽  
Design Students ◽  
Second Year ◽  
Second Period ◽  
Project Dynamics

Abstract Empathy is the ability of people to identify emotional aspects of others. A fundamental aspect to teaching in design education must be empathy. This paper presents the design process of an emotional tools using emoticons or emojis for evaluated products as educational exercise. The dynamics behind of the tool is the empathy experimented during the develop of the emojis characters. The project was implemented in the second period of the second year, with an execution time of 5 weeks. A series of surveys were conducted to assess perception of aspects such as utility, novelty, sensitivity and relevance of the project, in addition to knowing the progress of empathy evoked by the students dynamic. The results revealed the following findings: The opinion of 25 students describe their wide acceptance of this project methodology. Students considered the relevance of assessment processes, their recommendation to use those processes, and invited other students to develop it. Also, student’s positive perception about utility, novelty, sensibility and relevance of project dynamics are not determined by acceptance of this type of project. The preliminary results suggest that this educational exercise has the potential to cultivate or train empathy and other skills in design and engineering students.

Initiating Development of a Concept Inventory for Engineering Design

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey R. Mountain
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Concept ◽  
Concept Inventory ◽  
Design Problems ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Education Community ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Fundamental Understanding

It has been stated that the topic of design is not conducive to assessment by concept inventory. While design problems are more ambiguous than problems in analytical subjects, such as physics, statics, or thermodynamics; the broader design education community of scholars might agree on a set of concepts that are essential to the fundamental understanding of design. Following a review of textbooks, industry interviews, and other literary sources, this paper will propose a set of commonly accepted overarching concepts that might form a nucleus of an engineering design concept inventory. This is intended primarily to initiate a dialog among the design engineering education community about the future development of a design concept inventory and it’s applicability in assessing the design content knowledge of undergraduate engineering students prior to entering the profession as graduate engineers.

Biomedical Engineering Design Education at King Saud University: A First of Its Kind Approach

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harcharan Singh Ranu ◽  
Aman Sweet Bhullar
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Biomedical Engineering ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
King Saud University ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Medical Centers ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Established Firms ◽  
First Time

Biomedical Engineering in the Millennium is building the future of biology and medicine. New products, from biotechnology and novel devices for diagnosis and treatment, are marketed through interactions between universities, medical centers, small start-up companies, and large, more established firms. The role of biomedical engineering in the 21st century has already been highlighted by Ranu as far as research, education and space age technologies are concerned. Therefore, educating the modern biomedical engineering students in design processes is extremely important. This paper highlights how biomedical engineering design is taught for the first time to King Saud University students in Saudi Arabia. The conclusion drawn from this is that for the first time an innovative design course has been developed to teach the biomedical engineering students at King Saud University to meet the needs of tomorrow’s biomedical engineers.

The Impact of Team-Based Product Dissection on Design Novelty

2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Toh ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Gül E. Okudan Kremer
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Method ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Current Design ◽  
The Impact

Although design novelty is a critical area of research in engineering design, most research in this space has focused on understanding and developing formal idea generation methods instead of focusing on the impact of current design practices. This is problematic because formal techniques are often not adopted in industry due to the burdensome steps often included in these methods, which limit the practicality and adoption of these methods. This study seeks to understand the impact of product dissection, a design method widely utilized in academia and industry, on design novelty in order to produce recommendations for the use or alterations of this method for supporting novelty in design. To investigate the impact of dissection, a study was conducted with 76 engineering students who completed a team-based dissection of an electric toothbrush and then individually generated ideas. The relationships between involvement in the dissection activity, the product dissected, the novelty and quantity of the ideas developed were investigated. The results reveal that team members who were more involved in the dissection activity generated concepts that were more novel than those who did not. In addition, the type of the dissected product also had an influence on design novelty. Finally, a positive correlation between the number of ideas generated and the novelty of the design concepts was identified. The results from this study are used to provide recommendations for leveraging product dissection for enhancing novelty in engineering design education and practice.

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