- PAR ID:
- 10311754
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Studies in engineering education
- Volume:
- 2
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2690-5450
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Supporting students to direct their own learning is challenging. Here, we introduce framing agency, a construct defined as taking up opportunities to make consequential decisions about problems and how to proceed in learning and developing solutions. We analyzed two cases of student teams to describe framing agency in practice. We argue framing agency clarifies the kinds of learning experiences students need to overcome past experiences dominated by solving archetypical well-structured problems with predetermined solutions. Both teams faced impasses; one navigated the impasse by framing the problem, whereas the other treated the problem as given. Using sociolinguistic content analysis, we identify markers of agency in students’ talk. We compare and contrast the cases to illuminate nuances of framing agency.more » « less
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While project-based learning purportedly values student agency, supporting and managing this remains challenging. We conducted a design-based research study to understand how problem authenticity, and task and participant structures can contribute to students’ framing agency, in which students make decisions that are consequential to their learning through ill-structured problem framing. We compared three semesters of an undergraduate engineering design project (cohort 1 n=70; cohort 2 n=70; cohort 3 n=66). Discourse analysis of team talk highlights how task and participant structures supported students in the first and third cohorts to display framing agency. In contrast, cohort 2 displayed high agency over task completion, which they had framed as well-structured. We discuss implications for designing ill-structured learning in terms of participant and task structure and problem authenticity.
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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.more » « less
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Workplace engineering problems are different from the problems that undergraduate engineering students typically encounter in most classroom settings. Students are most commonly given well-structured problems which have clear solution paths along with well-defined constraints and goals. This paper reports on research that examines how undergraduate engineering students perceived solving an ill-structured problem. Eighteen undergraduate civil engineering students were asked to solve an ill-structured engineering problem, and were interviewed after they completed solving the problem. This qualitative study is guided by the following research question: What factors do students perceive to influence their solving of an ill-structured civil engineering problem? Students’ responses to seven follow-up interview questions were transcribed and reviewed by research team members, which were used to develop codes and themes associated with these responses. Students’ transcripts were then coded following the developed codes. The analysis of data revealed that students were generally aware of the main positives and negatives of their proposed solutions to the ill-structured problem and reported that their creativity influenced their solutions and problem solving processes. Student responses also indicated that specific life events such as classes that they had taken, personal experiences, and exposure to other ill-structured problems during an internship helped them develop their proposed solution. Given students’ responses and overall findings, this supports creating learning environments for engineering students where they can support increasing their creativity and be more exposed to complex engineering problems.more » « less
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