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1. Characterizing framing agency in design team discourse

   Svihla, Vanessa ; Gomez, Jamie R. ; Watkins, Martin A. ( January 2019 , Proceedings of the ASEE 126th Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   Purpose. To make course-based, undergraduate design projects more manageable, instructors often reduce or remove the open-ended quality, which in turn limits opportunities for students to learn to frame design problems. Here we introduce and characterize the construct, framing agency, which involves taking up opportunities to make consequential decisions about design problems and how to proceed in learning and developing solutions. Methodology. We employed a multi-case study design, selecting cases of student design teams across different sites and levels, all in undergraduate engineering courses. Teams were audio/video recorded during their design process. We adapted a functional linguistics tool [1] to identify markers of agency in students’ design discourse, comparing and contrasting the cases to illuminate the nuances of framing agency. We also identified learning versus task-completion orientations. Results. All students exhibited agency in some form, but not all exhibited framing agency. Analysis suggests that framing agency is commonly shared across participants and tentative in nature early in the design process. Students who exhibited framing agency tended to adopt a learning rather than task-completion orientation. Students who exhibited agency, but not framing agency, made decisions that foregrounded accuracy and efficiency at the expense of exploring tentative ideas, and tended to treat the problem as having a single right answer. Conclusions. We argue that how students negotiate design problem framing depends on whether or not they consider the design problem relevant and authentic, the belief that each member brings different and potentially useful information to the task, and the opportunity to iterate design ideas over time. Framing agency provides a lens for understanding the kinds of design learning experiences students need to direct their own learning and negotiate that learning with peers in design projects. 

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2. Exploring agency in capstone design problem framing

   https://doi.org/10.21061/see.69  

   Svihla, V. ; Peele-Eady, T.B. ; Gallup, A. ( January 2021 , Studies in engineering education)

   Background: Because of prior experience solving well-structured problems that have single, correct answers, students often struggle to direct their own design work and may not understand the need to frame ill-structured design problems. Purpose: Framing agency—defined as making decisions that are consequential to framing design problems and learning through this process—sheds light on students’ treatment of design problems; by framing, we mean the various actions designers take to understand, define, and bound the problem. Using the construct framing agency, we sought to characterize design team discourse to detect whether students treated design problems as ill- or well-structured and examine the consequences of this treatment. Method: Data were collected through extended participant observation of a capstone design course in a biomedical engineering program at a large research university. Data included audio and video records of design team meetings over the course of framing and solving industry-sponsored problems. For this paper, we analyzed three cases using sociolinguistic content analysis to characterize framing agency and compared the cases to illuminate the nuances of framing agency. Results: All teams faced impasses; one team navigated the impasse by framing the problem, whereas the others treated the problem as given. We identified markers of agency in students’ discourse, including tentative language, personal pronouns, and sharing ownership. Conclusions: Framing agency clarifies the kinds of learning experiences students need in order to overcome past experiences dominated by solving archetypical well-structured problems with predetermined solutions. 

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3. Confirmatory factor analysis of the framing agency survey.

   Wilson-Fetrow, M. ; Svihla, V. ; Olewnik, A. ( July 2023 , Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference and Exhibition)

   In this research paper, we investigate the structure and validity of survey data related to students’ framing agency. In order to promote increased opportunities for students to engage in and learn to frame design problems that are innovative and empathetic, there is a need for instruments that can provide information about student progress and the quality of learning experiences. This is a complex problem because, compared to problem solving, design problem framing is less studied and harder to predict due to the higher levels of student agency involved. To address this issue, we developed a survey to measure framing agency, which is defined as opportunities to frame and reframe design problems and learn in the process. This study extends past research which focused on the construct of framing agency and developing an instrument to measure it following best practices in survey design, including using exploratory factor analysis of pilot data, which recovered six factors related to shared and individual consequentiality, problem structure and constrainedness, and learning. However, as a pilot, the sample limited generalizability; the current study addresses this limitation. We used a national cohort that included multiple engineering disciplines (biomedical, mechanical, chemical, electrical, computer, aerospace), types of formal design projects (e.g., first-year, design-spine, senior capstone) and institution types, including private religious; Hispanic-serving; public land-grant; and research flagship institutions (N=449). We report sample characteristics and used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to provide validity evidence, reporting the chi-square and standardized root mean square residual as estimates of fit. We report Cronbach’s alpha as a measure of internal consistency. We found that overall, the CFA aligned with the prior exploratory results, in this case, recovering four factors, measured on a seven-point scale: shared consequentiality (the extent to which the student identifies that their understanding of the problem changed as result of a teammate’s decision, M = 6.15; SD = 1.13); learning as consequentiality (the extent to which the student identifies learning as the result of decisions, M = 5.88; SD = 0.98); constrainedness (the extent to which the student reports the ability to make decisions despite design constraints, M = 4.95; SD = 1.49); and shared tentativeness (the extent to which the student identifies uncertainty about the problem and solution, M = 4.02; SD = 1.76). This suggests the survey can provide valid data for instructional decisions and further research into how students learn to frame engineering design problems and what role framing plays in their professional formation. 

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4. Case study on engineering design intervention in physics laboratories

   Kaufman-Ortiz, K. ; Morphew, J. W. ; Rebello, N. S. ; & Rebello, C. M. ( January 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings)

   Problem-solving is a critical skill in the workplace, but recent college graduates are often deficient in problem-solving skills. Introductory STEM courses present engineering students with well-structured problems with single-path solutions that do not prepare students with the problem-solving skills they will need to solve complex problems within authentic engineering contexts. When presented with complex problems in authentic contexts, engineering students find it difficult to transfer the scientific knowledge learned in their STEM courses to solve these integrated and ill structured problems. By integrating physics laboratories with engineering design problems, students are taught to apply physics principles to solve ill-structured and complex engineering problems. The integration of engineering design processes to physics labs is meant to help students transfer physics learning to engineering problems, as well as to transfer the design skills learned in their engineering courses to the physics lab. We hypothesize this integration will help students become better problem solvers when they go out to industry after graduation. The purpose of this study is to examine how students transfer their understanding of physics concepts to solve ill-structured engineering problems by means of an engineering design project in a physics laboratory. We use a case-study methodology to examine two cases and analyze the cases using a lens of co-regulated learning and transfer between physics and engineering contexts. Observations were conducted using transfer lenses. That is, we observed groups during the physics labs for evidence of transfer. The research question for this study was, to what extent do students relate physics concepts with concepts from other materials (classes) through an engineering design project incorporated in a physics laboratory? Teams were observed over the course of 6 weeks as they completed the second design challenge. The cases presented in this study were selected using observations from the lab instructors of the team’s work in the first design project. Two teams, one who performed well, and one that performed poorly, were selected to be observed to provide insight on how students use physics concepts to engage in the design process. The second design challenge asked students to design an eco-friendly way of delivering packages of food to an island located in the middle of the river, which is home to critically endangered species. They are given constraints that the solution cannot disrupt the habitat in any way, nor can the animals come into contact directly with humans or loud noises. Preliminary results indicate that both teams successfully demonstrated transfer between physics and engineering contexts, and integrated physics concepts from multiple labs to complete the design project. Teams that struggle seem to be less connected with the design process at the beginning of the project and are less organized. In contrast, teams that are successful demonstrate greater co-regulated learning (communication, reflection, etc.) and focus on making connections between the physics concepts and principles of engineering design from their engineering course work. 

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5. WIP: Hands-On Statics in the Online “Classroom”

   Davishahl, Eric ; Self, Brian P. ; Fuentes, Mathew Parsons ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   null (Ed.)

   Engineering instructors often use physical manipulatives such as foam beams, rolling cylinders, and large representations of axis systems to demonstrate mechanics concepts and help students visualize systems. Additional benefits are possible when manipulatives are in the hands of individual students or small teams of students who can explore concepts at their own pace and focus on their specific points of confusion. Online learning modalities require new strategies to promote spatial visualization and kinesthetic learning. Potential solutions include creating videos of the activities, using CAD models to demonstrate the principles, programming computer simulations, and providing hands-on manipulatives to students for at-home use. This Work-in-Progress paper discusses our experiences with this last strategy in statics courses two western community colleges and a western four-year university where we supplied students with their own hands-on kits. We have previously reported on the successful implementation of a hands-on statics kit consisting of 3D printed components and standard hardware. The kit was originally designed for use by teams of students during class to engage with topics such as vectors, moments, and rigid body equilibrium. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and shift to online instruction, the first author developed a scaled down version of the kit for at-home use by individual students and modified the associated activity worksheets accordingly. For the community college courses, local students picked up their models at the campus bookstore. We also shipped some of the kits to students who were unable to come to campus, including some in other countries. Due to problems with printing and availability of materials, only 18 kits were available for the class of 34 students at the university implementation. Due to this circumstance, students were placed in teams and asked to work together virtually, one student showing the kit to the other student as they worked through the worksheet prompts. One community college instructor took this approach as well for a limited number of international students who did not receive their kits in a timely manner due to shipping problems. Two instructors assigned the hands-on kits as asynchronous learning activities in their respective online courses, with limited guidance on their use. The third used the kits primarily in synchronous online class meetings. We found that students’ reaction to the models varied by pilot site and presume that implementation differences contributed to this variation. In all cases, student feedback was less positive than it has been for face-to-face courses that used the models from which the take home kit was adapted. Our main conclusion is that implementation matters. Doing hands-on learning in an online course requires some fundamental rethinking about how the learning is structured and scaffolded. 

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