scholarly journals STUDENTS LEARNING TO LEARN THROUGH DESIGN

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Tallman
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Learning To Learn ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Limited Ability ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Video Recordings ◽  
Capstone Design

Research being conducted in an engineering capstone design course analyzes student creativity and its connection to metacognition. Data collected from questionnaires, video recordings, and interviews willattempt to show that creativity in the design process and metacognitive understanding of creative activity are important factors in successful engineering design.Motivation for this research comes from the observation that undergraduate engineering students, including those in senior years, have difficulty explaining their design processes. They often have limited understanding of their creative accomplishments as well as a limited ability to explain what makes their approach distinctive or effective.Future research will build on the methodology described here, including a more explicit framework for identifying and assessing creativity in engineering design.

How Engineering Design Students’ Creative Preferences and Cognitive Styles Impact Their Concept Generation and Screening

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Heininger ◽  
Hong-En Chen ◽  
Kathryn Jablokow ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Individual Traits ◽  
The Impact

The flow of creative ideas throughout the engineering design process is essential for innovation. However, few studies have examined how individual traits affect problem-solving behaviors in an engineering design setting. Understanding these behaviors will enable us to guide individuals during the idea generation and concept screening phases of the engineering design process and help support the flow of creative ideas through this process. As a first step towards understanding these behaviors, we conducted an exploratory study with 19 undergraduate engineering students to examine the impact of individual traits, using the Preferences for Creativity Scale (PCS) and Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation inventory (KAI), on the creativity of the ideas generated and selected for an engineering design task. The ideas were rated for their creativity, quality, and originality using Amabile’s consensual assessment technique. Our results show that the PCS was able to predict students’ propensity for creative concept screening, accounting for 74% of the variation in the model. Specifically, team centrality and influence and risk tolerance significantly contributed to the model. However, PCS was unable to predict idea generation abilities. On the other hand, cognitive style, as measured by KAI, predicted the generation of creative and original ideas, as well as one’s propensity for quality concept screening, although the effect sizes were small. Our results provide insights into individual factors impacting undergraduate engineering students’ idea generation and selection.

Teaching Design Methodologies Across Engineering Disciplines

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron J. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Mechanical Design ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Colorado School ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Design Methodologies ◽  
Design Program ◽  
Mechanical Products ◽  
Capstone Design

The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) offers a combined capstone design experience for mechanical, civil, electrical and environmental engineering students. In a recent re-invention of our design curriculum, a new emphasis on design methodologies has been implemented. Many of these design methods have origins in the design of electro-mechanical products, and it is certainly in these areas where the most vibrant design communities seem to reside. Yet in a combined setting, analogous design processes appear to exist in a broader engineering design community. This paper describes the capstone design program at CSM, with a focus on the methods that we are teaching and how they translate between disciplines. The lessons learned in such a translation not only illuminate how engineering design may differ in other disciplines, but also may reveal new perspectives on mechanical design processes.

Human-Centered and Psychological Concepts in Undergraduate Engineering Project Documentation

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 505-509
Author(s):  
Rod D. Roscoe ◽  
Samuel T. Arnold ◽  
Chelsea K. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Engineering Project ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Project Documentation ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Psychological Concepts

The success of engineering and design is facilitated by a working understanding of human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In this study, we explored how undergraduate engineering students included such human-centered and psychological concepts in their project documentation. Although, we observed a range of concepts related to design processes, teams, cognition, and motivation, these concepts appeared infrequently and superficially. We discuss how this analysis and approach may help to identify topics that could be leveraged for future human-centered engineering instruction.

Classification of Iteration in Engineering Design Processes

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Safoutin ◽  
Robert P. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Design Automation ◽  
Automated Design ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Standard Definition ◽  
Design Iteration ◽  
Formal Study ◽  
Poor Understanding

Abstract As engineering design is subjected to increasingly formal study, an informal attitude continues to surround the topic of iteration. Today there is no standard definition or typology of iteration, no grounding theory, few metrics, and a poor understanding of its role in the design process. Existing literature provides little guidance in investigating issues of design that might be best approached in terms of iteration. We review contributions of existing literature toward the understanding of iteration in design, develop a classification of design iteration, compare iterative aspects of human and automated design, and draw some conclusions concerning management of iteration and approaches to design automation.

Design Process for a Birthing Bed, Based on User Hierarchy: Promoting Improvement in User Satisfaction

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 9430
Author(s):  
Fabiola Cortes-Chavez ◽  
Alberto Rossa-Sierra ◽  
Elvia Luz Gonzalez-Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Medical Device ◽  
Design Process ◽  
User Satisfaction ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
User Acceptance ◽  
Development Stage ◽  
Device Design ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
Medical Device Design ◽  
User Hierarchy

The medical device design process has a responsibility to define the characteristics of the object to ensure its correct interaction with users. This study presents a proposal to improve medical device design processes in order to increase user acceptance by considering two key factors: the user hierarchy and the relationship with the patient’s health status. The goal of this study is to address this research gap and to increase design factors with practical suggestions for the design of new medical devices. The results obtained here will help medical device designers make more informed decisions about the functions and features required in the final product during the development stage. In addition, we aim to help researchers with design process didactics that demonstrate the importance of the correct execution of the process and how the factors considered can have an impact on the final product. An experiment was conducted with 40 design engineering students who designed birthing beds via two design processes: the traditional product design process and the new design process based on hierarchies (proposed in this study). The results showed a significant increase in the user acceptance of the new birthing bed developed with the hierarchical-based design process.

Development of a DSM-Based Methodology in an Academic Setting

2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
George Platanitis ◽  
Remon Pop-Iliev ◽  
Ahmad Barari
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Design Structure ◽  
Academic Settings ◽  
Task Durations ◽  
Random Disturbances ◽  
Process Convergence ◽  
Work Transformation

This paper proposes the use of a design structure matrix/work transformation matrix (DSM/WTM)-based methodology in academic settings to serve engineering educators as a facilitating tool for predetermining the difficulty and feasibility of design engineering projects they assign, given both the time constraints of the academic term and the expected skill level of the respective learners. By using a third-year engineering design project as a case study, engineering students actively participated in this comprehensive use of DSM methodologies. The engineering design process has been thoroughly analyzed to determine convergence characteristics based on the eigenvalues of the system followed by a sensitivity analysis on the originally determined DSM based on data provided by students in terms of task durations and number of iterations for each task. Finally, an investigation of the design process convergence due to unexpected events or random disturbances has been conducted. The obtained predictive model of the design process was compared to the actual dynamics of the project as experienced by the students and the effect of random disturbances at any point in the design process has thereby been evaluated.

Collaborative Information Behaviour of Engineering Students

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasser Saleh ◽  
Andrew Large
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Information Science ◽  
Information Behaviour ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering

Collaborative information behaviour is an emerging area in information science that studies when two or more actors identify, seek, search, and use information to accomplish a task. This paper reports on a recent research investigating the collaborative information behaviour of undergraduate engineering students in the context of engineering design group projects.Le comportement informationnel collaboratif est un sujet émergent en sciences de l’information qui s’intéresse aux moments où deux acteurs ou plus cherchent, repèrent, sélectionnent et utilisent l’information pour accomplir une tâche. Cette communication présente une étude récente sur le comportement informationnel informatif des étudiants en génie dans le contexte de projets de groupe en conception technique.

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.

How the Design of a 3D Printer Bridged Engineering Design Processes and the Agile Software Manifesto

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Lindberg ◽  
Matthew I. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Design Processes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Agile Software ◽  
Scale Design

Abstract Individual engineering design projects face different challenges depending on their scale. Instead of dealing with problems of complex multidisciplinary systems, small scale design must overcome issues of limited resources. The philosophy of agile software development has been highly successful in addressing similar issues in the software engineering realm over the past two decades. Through the design and prototyping of a low-budget desktop stereolithography printer, the application of agile principles to engineering design process is explored. The printer’s design is discussed in detail to provide examples of successes and failures when these agile principles are put into practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of how agile principles could be leveraged in engineering design. The approach taken in this paper is more of a longitudinal study of a single design process over a twelve-month period as opposed to rigorous experiments that engage multiple users in short design scenarios. Nonetheless, this case study demonstrates how the application of agile principles can inform, improve, and complement traditional engineering design processes.

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