Abstract In undergraduate engineering programs, recent emphasis has been placed on a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach to engineering education. Some programs now teach product design within the context of the market, extending the curriculum to topics outside of scientific labs and computational analysis. However, it is unknown to what extent engineering students already understand the systems and contextual factors associated with product design, and also what characteristics or experiences have led students to these ways of thinking. This study analyzes survey and concept map data collected from 154 students in a third-year engineering design course. The aim is to understand how student backgrounds and experiences influence their mental models of product design. Data were gathered from surveys on student backgrounds and experiences, along with concept maps that were generated by the students at the beginning of a product design course. The concept maps were analyzed in a quantitative manner for structural and thematic elements. The findings show that several background attributes influence student conceptions of product design. Academic major appeared to have the largest impact on a variety of variables. Additionally, prior work experience, enrollment in a master’s program, and the presence of an engineering role model at home all showed significant impacts on design conceptions. By analyzing and understanding how the unique backgrounds of students lead to differences in thought, educators can adjust their curricula to more effectively teach design concepts to students of various backgrounds and experiences.
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An Initial Analysis of Undergraduate Student Mental Models of Product Design
Design is a concept that means different things to different people. Even in the engineering design research community, there is little agreement on a consistent definition of design. This study looks into how engineering students understand product design, using a concept mapping exercise to elicit the key concepts and relationships present in their mental models. An analysis of concept maps from 130 third-year undergraduate engineering students shows how these students think about design, the common themes and relationships that are seen across the population, and variations across different groups of students. By understanding how students in the midst of ABET-accredited programs conceptualize design, conclusions can be drawn regarding the effectiveness of existing curricula in instilling a complete understanding of holistic product design. This can lead to recommendations regarding future engineering design learning objectives, teaching materials, and activities.
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- PAR ID:
- 10253223
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASME 2020 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Background Engineering education traditionally emphasizes technical skills, sometimes at the cost of under‐preparing graduates for the real‐world engineering context. In recent decades, attempts to address this issue include increasing project‐based assignments and engineering design courses in curricula; however, a skills gap between education and industry remains.
Purpose/Hypothesis This study aims to understand how undergraduate engineering students perceive product design before and after an upper‐level project‐based design course, as measured through concept maps. The purpose is to measure whether and how students account for the technical and nontechnical elements of design, as well as how a third‐year design course influences these design perceptions.
Design/Method Concept maps about product design were collected from 105 third‐year engineering students at the beginning and end of a design course. Each concept map's content and structure were quantitatively analyzed to evaluate the students' conceptual understandings and compare them across disciplines in the before and after conditions.
Results The analyses report on how student conceptions differ by discipline at the outset and how they changed after taking the course. Mechanical Engineering students showed a decrease in business‐related content and an increased focus on societal content, while students in the Engineering Management and Industrial and Systems Engineering programs showed an increase in business topics, specifically market‐related content.
Conclusion This study reveals how undergraduate students conceptualize product design, and specifically to what extent they consider engineering, business, and societal factors. The design courses were shown to significantly shape student conceptualizations of product design, and they did so in a way that mirrored the topics in the course syllabi. The findings offer insights into the education‐practice skills gap and may help future educators to better prepare engineering students to meet industry needs.
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Research has shown that engineering students are graduating without all of the skills that they need to succeed in professional engineering practice. While undergraduate engineering programs emphasize technical design and analysis, they generally do not adequately teach or discuss marketability, and evidence suggests that engineering students are graduating without a sufficient grasp of the bigger picture of design. This is reinforced by the available tools for use in engineering education, which are highly focused on ensuring technical feasibility, and a corresponding lack of tools for engineers to explore other design needs. At the same time, research in engineering design has resulted in new market-driven design techniques, which provide guidance for design practitioners regarding how to develop products that are both technically sound and marketable. However, this concept of market-driven design has not yet been widely integrated into engineering curricula. By exploring how current students conceptualize design, this study seeks to contribute to a more balanced perspective on design in undergraduate engineers that accounts for both technical feasibility and market needs. In this paper, we examine third-year Engineering Management students’ mental models of design prior to and after a project-based design course that emphasizes market-driven design concepts and tools. The fundamental research questions are: (1) To what extent do undergraduate engineering students' initial conceptions of design account for the market context, such as competition and consumer considerations? (2) In what ways do these design conceptions change after introducing market-driven design techniques and tools in a design course? Using concept mapping exercises (pre- and post-course), open-ended reflection assignments, surveys, and an assessment of project performance, we reveal how students conceive of and learn about the market context as an integral part of the design process. This contributes to insights regarding how students conceptually balance the technical and non-technical elements of design, as well as evidence regarding the value of a constructivism-based educational approach to advancing student understanding of market-driven design. The results provide a foundational understanding and recommendations regarding holistic design education for engineers in order to reduce the school to work transition gap.more » « less
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Abstract In undergraduate engineering programs, recent emphasis has been placed on a more holistic, interdisciplinary approach to engineering education. Some programs now teach product design within the context of the market, extending the curriculum to topics outside of scientific labs and computational analysis. This study analyzes survey and concept map data collected from 154 students in a third-year engineering design course. The aim is to evaluate the impacts of student backgrounds and experiences on their mental models of product design. Data were gathered from surveys on student backgrounds and experiences, along with concept maps that were generated by the students on the first day of a product design class. The concept maps were analyzed in a quantitative manner for structural and thematic elements. The findings show that several background attributes influence student conceptions of product design. Academic major appeared to have the largest impact on a variety of variables. Additionally, prior work experience, enrollment in a master’s program, and the presence of an engineering role model at home all showed significant impacts on design conceptions. By analyzing and understanding unique backgrounds of students, educators can adjust their curricula to more effectively teach design concepts to students of various backgrounds and experiences.
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Neuroimaging provides a relatively new approach for advancing engineering education by exploring changes in neurocognition from educational interventions. The purpose of the research described in this paper is to present the results of a preliminary study that measured students’ neurocognition while concept mapping. Engineering design is an iterative process of exploring both the problem and solution spaces. To aid students in exploring these spaces, half of the 66 engineering students who participated in the study were first asked to develop a concept map and then construct a design problem statement. The concept mapping activity significantly reduced neurocognitive activation in the students’ left prefrontal cortex (PFC) compared to students who did not receive this intervention when constructing their problem statement. The sub-region in the left PFC that elicited less activation is generally associated with analytical judgment and goal-directed planning. The group of students who completed the concept mapping activity had greater focused neurocognitive activation in their right PFC. The right PFC is often associated with divergent thinking and ill-structured representation. Patterns of functional connectivity across students’ PFC also differed between the groups. The concept mapping activity reduced the network density in students’ PFC. Lower network density is one measure of lower cognitive effort. These results provide new insight into the neurocognition of engineering students when designing and how educational interventions can change engineering students’ neurocognition. A better understanding of how interventions like concept mapping shape students’ neurocognition, and how this relates to learning, can lay the groundwork for novel advances in engineering education that support new tools and pedagogy for engineering design.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2020-22459
