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Context Engineering design skills are essential for engineering students to succeed in their careers. Engineering design is a skill that is in high demand in the current job market and should be prioritized in education. Purpose While design has been acknowledged as a cognitive skill in research, there exists limited literature addressing the cognitive foundations of design thinking. Hence, engineering educators must understand the engineering design process, as well as the different ways students approach design problem-solving and the potential reason behind these differences. To understand how people solve design problems, we need to consider how their minds work and the strategies they use. Spatial ability stands out as a cognitive factor that is crucial for designers and holds significance in well-established theories and models of intelligence. However, to date, research exploring the impact of spatial ability on design thinking and its influence on problem-scoping behaviors remains limited. This paper examines how engineering students’ spatial skills influence how they define the scope of open-ended design problems. The central research question that guides this paper is “How do design problem-scoping behaviors differ for engineering students based on their spatial scores?”. Methods The researchers used a mixed methods research approach to answer their research question, collecting qualitative and quantitative data in two phases. One hundred twenty-seven undergraduate engineering students completed four tests that measure spatial reasoning skills in the quantitative phase and 101 students returned to finish the three design tasks in the second phase. This paper will examine the performance of students with low spatial and high spatial skills on one of the completed design tasks. Outcomes From the study, it was clear that spatial skills have an impact on the design-scoping behaviors of the undergraduate engineering students. It was inferred that high spatial skill visualizers emphasized the technical details of the design problem whereas low spatial skill visualizers emphasized the context of the design problem during their problem-scoping behavior. A Mann-Whitney test revealed there was a statistically significant difference in detail- and context-focused segments between the high and low spatial visualizer groups. Conclusion This research study confirms that a relationship exists between spatial and design skills. The study also found that undergraduate engineering students with different levels of spatial skills had different approaches to scoping design problems.
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Problem Scoping in Designing Biomimetic Robots
We examine problem scoping in our interdisciplinary curriculum where students build biomimetic robots. Biomimicry is a context for learning biology, computational thinking, and engineering design. In the solution space, students narrow the scope of their robot designs, informed by animal structure-function relationships. In the challenge space, they narrow the scope of real-world disasters by modeling them in the classroom. This dual problem scoping enables students to be active participants shaping the content of their learning.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1742127
- PAR ID:
- 10064799
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Context Engineering design skills are essential for engineering students to succeed in their careers. Engineering design is a skill that is in high demand in the current job market and should be prioritized in education. Purpose While design has been acknowledged as a cognitive skill in research, there exists limited literature addressing the cognitive foundations of design thinking. Hence, engineering educators must understand the engineering design process, as well as the different ways students approach design problem-solving and the potential reason behind these differences. To understand how people solve design problems, we need to consider how their minds work and the strategies they use. Spatial ability stands out as a cognitive factor that is crucial for designers and holds significance in well-established theories and models of intelligence. However, to date, research exploring the impact of spatial ability on design thinking and its influence on problem-scoping behaviors remains limited. This paper examines how engineering students’ spatial skills influence how they define the scope of open-ended design problems. The central research question that guides this paper is “How do design problem-scoping behaviors differ for engineering students based on their spatial scores?”. Methods The researchers used a mixed methods research approach to answer their research question, collecting qualitative and quantitative data in two phases. One hundred twenty-seven undergraduate engineering students completed four tests that measure spatial reasoning skills in the quantitative phase and 101 students returned to finish the three design tasks in the second phase. This paper will examine the performance of students with low spatial and high spatial skills on one of the completed design tasks. Outcomes From the study, it was clear that spatial skills have an impact on the design-scoping behaviors of the undergraduate engineering students. It was inferred that high spatial skill visualizers emphasized the technical details of the design problem whereas low spatial skill visualizers emphasized the context of the design problem during their problem-scoping behavior. A Mann-Whitney test revealed there was a statistically significant difference in detail- and context-focused segments between the high and low spatial visualizer groups. Conclusion This research study confirms that a relationship exists between spatial and design skills. The study also found that undergraduate engineering students with different levels of spatial skills had different approaches to scoping design problems.more » « less
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Most social challenges fall outside of the authority of any single individual and therefore require collective action—coordinated efforts by many stakeholders to implement solutions. Despite growing interest in teaching students to lead collective action, we lack models for how to teach these skills. Collective action ostensibly involves design: the act of planning to change existing situations into preferred ones. In other domains, instructors commonly scaffold design using an instructional model known as studio critique in which students strengthen their plans by exchanging arguments with peers and instructors. This study explores whether studio critique can serve as the basis for an effective instructional model in collective action. Using design-based research methods, we designed and implemented scoping deliberations, a new instructional model that augments studio critique with domain-specific templates for planning collective action and repeats weekly to enable iterations. We used process tracing to analyze data from field notes, video, and artifacts to evaluate causal explanations for events observed in this case study. By implementing scoping deliberations in a 10-week undergraduate course, we found that this model appeared effective at scaffolding engagement in planning collective action: students articulated and refined their plans by engaging in argumentation and iteration, as expected. However, students struggled to contact the community stakeholders with whom they planned to work. As a result, their plans rested on implausible, untested assertions. These findings advance instructional science by showing that collective action may require new instructional models that help students to test their assertions against feedback from community stakeholders. Practically, scoping deliberations appear most useful for scaffolding thoughtful planning in conditions when students are already collaborating with stakeholders.more » « less
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This experimental investigation seeks to confirm and extend previous investigations that resource interdependence vs. independence during problem-solving relatively extends the problem representation phase before convergence on a solution. In this current investigation, ninth-grade Korean native language participants (n = 240) worked online to complete either a well-structured or an ill-structured problem in either independent triads where all of the members were provided with all of the information needed to solve the problem, or in interdependent triads where members were each provided with different portions of the information needed. The discussions were analyzed using a content analysis rubric from Engelmann and Hesse (JAMA 5:299–319, 2010), and knowledge structures were elicited as concept maps and essays and then analyzed using a graph-theoretic psychometric network scaling approach. Analysis of transcripts of the triad interactions showed a similar pattern of divergence and then convergence for the well-structured and the ill-structured problems that confirmed the previous investigations. As anticipated, interdependent triads performed relatively better on the ill-structured problem perhaps due to the extended divergence phase, while independent triads were better on the well-structured problem perhaps due to a rapid transition to the convergence phase. Knowledge structure analysis of group maps shows that the interdependent triad maps resembled the fully explicated problem space, while the independent triad maps most resembled the narrow problem solution space. Suggestions for practice include first increasing students’ awareness of divergent and convergent thinking, allowing enough time for the activity, and also requiring teams to submit a problem space artifact before working on a solution. Such skills are a basis for learning in school, but more importantly, will prepare students for a world where change is a constant and learning never stops.more » « less
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Paulo Blikstein; Nathan Holbert; Leah Buechley (Ed.)This paper presents findings from a year-long after-school program that engages youth from local communities in computational making and community problem solving. Our goal is to understand how self-directed computational making activities contribute to shifts in students’ self-efficacy and perception of themselves as people who can pursue careers in STEM. During the first, skill-building semester, our preliminary findings suggest that when youth have the opportunity to work through self-directed projects, they engage in a variety of strategies to set goals and work through challenges. We believe that this work contributes to a growing field-wide understanding of novice designers’ problem scoping practices and their nuanced perceptions of challenge.more » « less
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