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1. Influences of Engineering Student Backgrounds and Experiences on Conceptions of Product Design

   https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4056735  

   Hoffenson, Steven; Corby, Adam; Zheng, Steven; Pitterson, Nicole (March 2023, Journal of Mechanical Design)

   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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2. Undergraduate Student Learning of Market-Driven Design Topics in a Third-Year Design Course

   Hoffenson, Steven; Pitterson, Nicole (July 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   Generally, the focus of undergraduate engineering programs is on the development of technical skills and how they can be applied to design and problem solving. However, research has shown that there is also a need to expose students to business and society factors that influence design in context. This technical bias 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. One important contextual area is market systems, where design decisions are made while considering factors such as consumer choice, competitor behavior, and pricing. This study examines student learning throughout a third-year design course that emphasizes market-driven design through project-based activities and assignments, including a custom-made, interactive market simulation tool. To bridge the gap between market-driven design and engineering education research, this paper explores how students think about and internally organize design concepts before and after learning and practicing market-driven design approaches and tools in the context of an engineering design course. The central research question is: In what ways do student conceptions of product design change after introducing a market-driven design curriculum? In line with the constructivism framework of learning, it is expected that student conceptions of design should evolve to include more market considerations as they learn about and apply market-driven design concepts and techniques to their term projects. Four different types of data instruments are included in the analysis: Concept maps generated by the students before and after the course, open-ended written reflection assignments at various points in the semester, surveys administered after learning the market simulation tool and at the end of the course, and final project reports in which student teams listed their top 3-5 lessons learned in the course. Using the changes between the pre- and post-course concept maps as the primary metric to represent evolving design conceptions, data from the reflections, surveys, and reports are evaluated to assess their influence on such learning. Because market-driven design is a multi-faceted topic, a market-driven design is hierarchically decomposed into specific sub-topics for these evaluations. These include profitability (which itself encompasses pricing and costs), modeling and simulation, and market research (which encompasses consumers and competition). For each topic, correlation analyses are performed and regression models are fit to assess the significance of different factors on learning. The findings provide evidence regarding the effectiveness of the course’s market-driven design curriculum and activities on influencing student conceptions of design. 

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3. Undergraduate Student Learning of Market-Driven Design Topics in a Third-Year Design Course

   Hoffenson, Steven Pitterson (July 2021, American Society of Engineering Education)

   Generally, the focus of undergraduate engineering programs is on the development of technical skills and how they can be applied to design and problem solving. However, research has shown that there is also a need to expose students to business and society factors that influence design in context. This technical bias 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. One important contextual area is market systems, where design decisions are made while considering factors such as consumer choice, competitor behavior, and pricing. This study examines student learning throughout a third-year design course that emphasizes market-driven design through project-based activities and assignments, including a custom-made, interactive market simulation tool. To bridge the gap between market-driven design and engineering education research, this paper explores how students think about and internally organize design concepts before and after learning and practicing market-driven design approaches and tools in the context of an engineering design course. The central research question is: In what ways do student conceptions of product design change after introducing a market-driven design curriculum? In line with the constructivism framework of learning, it is expected that student conceptions of design should evolve to include more market considerations as they learn about and apply market-driven design concepts and techniques to their term projects. Four different types of data instruments are included in the analysis: Concept maps generated by the students before and after the course, open-ended written reflection assignments at various points in the semester, surveys administered after learning the market simulation tool and at the end of the course, and final project reports in which student teams listed their top 3-5 lessons learned in the course. Using the changes between the pre- and post-course concept maps as the primary metric to represent evolving design conceptions, data from the reflections, surveys, and reports are evaluated to assess their influence on such learning. Because market-driven design is a multi-faceted topic, a market-driven design is hierarchically decomposed into specific sub-topics for these evaluations. These include profitability (which itself encompasses pricing and costs), modeling and simulation, and market research (which encompasses consumers and competition). For each topic, correlation analyses are performed and regression models are fit to assess the significance of different factors on learning. The findings provide evidence regarding the effectiveness of the course’s market-driven design curriculum and activities on influencing student conceptions of design. 

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4. Towards Development of an Engineering Design Value-expectancy Scale (EDVES)

   Hylton, J. Blake; Herak, Patrick; France, Todd; Youssef, Sherri (January 2021, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   As high school programs are increasingly incorporating engineering content into their curricula, a question is raised as to the impacts of those programs on student attitudes towards engineering, in particular engineering design. From a collegiate perspective, there is a related question as to how first-year engineering programs at the college level should adapt to a greater percentage of incoming students with prior conceptions about engineering design and how to efficaciously uncover what those conceptions may be. Further, there is a broader question within engineering design as to how various design experiences, especially introductory experiences, may influence student attitudes towards the subject and towards engineering more broadly. Student attitudes is a broad and well-studied area and a wide array of instruments have been shown to be valid and reliable assessments of various aspects of student motivation, self-efficacy, and interests. In terms of career interests, the STEM Career Interest Survey (STEM-CIS) has been widely used in grade school settings to gauge student intentions to pursue STEM careers, with a subscale focused on engineering. In self-efficacy and motivation, the Value-Expectancy STEM Assessment Scale (VESAS) is a STEM-focused adaptation of the broader Values, Interest, and Expectations Scale (VIES), which in turns builds upon Eccles’ Value-Expectancy model of self-efficacy. When it comes to engineering design, there have been a few attempts to develop more focused instruments, such as Carberry’s Design Self-Efficacy Instrument. For the purposes of this work, evaluating novice and beginning designer attitudes about engineering design, the available instruments were not found to assess the desired attributes. Design-focused instruments such as Carberry’s were too narrowly focused on the stages of the design process, many of which required a certain a priori knowledge to effectively evaluate. Broader instruments such as the VESAS were too focused on working and studying engineering, rather than doing or identifying with engineering. A new instrument, the Engineering Design Value-Expectancy Scale (EDVES) was developed to meet this need. In its current form the EDVES includes 38 items across several subscales covering expectancy of success in, perceived value of, and identification with engineering and design. This work presents the EDVES and discusses the development process of the instrument. It presents validity evidence following the Cook validation evidence model, including scoring, generalization, and extrapolation validity evidence. This validation study was conducted using pre- and post-course deployment with 192 first-year engineering students enrolled in a foundational engineering design course. 

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5. Understanding STEM Outcomes for Autistic Middle Schoolers in an Interest-Based, Afterschool Program: A Qualitative Study

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-024-10158-5  

   Murthi, Kavitha; Chen, Yu-Lun; Martin, Wendy; Riccio, Ariana; Patten, Kristie (August 2024, Research in Science Education)

   Abstract Current research underscores that there are only a few evidence-based programs that teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as part of their curriculum, especially for autistic students. Even fewer programs focus on engineering and design learning. Hence, we developed an informal afterschool maker program to develop autistic and non-autistic students’ interests in engineering to understand their experiences learning STEM concepts and values while applying the engineering mindset to develop projects. This qualitative study aimed to explore and understand students’ experiences participating in STEM activities in the maker club. We interviewed twenty-six students (seventeen autistic and nine non-autistic), nine teachers, and thirteen parents representing diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds across three public middle schools in a large urban metropolitan city between 2018 and 2019. Our thematic analysis yielded four themes:(1) active participation in STEM; (2) curiosity about STEM topics, concepts, and practices, (3) capacity-building to engage in STEM learning; and 4) understanding of the importance of STEM education in daily life.The results of this study enabled us to understand that students were deeply engaged with the content and curriculum of our program, expanded their knowledge base about scientific concepts, used engineering-specific scientific terminologies, and engaged with the engineering design process to conceptualize, test, improvise, and problem-solve. Furthermore, this afterschool engineering education program created a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment for students to build engineering readiness skills. 

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