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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How do undergraduate engineering students conceptualize product design? An analysis of two third‐year design courses
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10445780
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Engineering Education
- Volume:
- 111
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1069-4730
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 616-641
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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