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1. Design Thinking in Engineering Course Design

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--30271  

   Fila, Nicholas; McKIlligan, Seda; Guerin, Kelly (June 2018, 2018 ASEE Annual Conference)

   Design thinking is a robust framework for creatively and effectively identifying and solving important human problems. While design thinking is commonly associated with fields like industrial design, it can be applied to many problem types. For example, several recent examples demonstrate the applicability of design thinking to the design and development of educational materials, courses, and systems. These results suggest that design thinking could be used as a framework to (re)design and develop effective engineering courses. The goal of this project is to understand how nine educators from different backgrounds did or did not use design thinking to redesign a sophomore-level electrical and computer engineering course. The primary source of data was 21 transcribed audio recordings of design meetings and is supplemented with interviews, reflections, and course artifacts. Thematic analysis revealed 10 themes that represent connections and disconnections between the process used and a common five-stage design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test). These themes demonstrate some of the opportunities and challenges related to design thinking within an engineering course design setting. In particular, they suggest that engineering course design is a relevant context for design thinking, but one to which design thinking methods do not always naturally translated. Future work should focus on better understanding unique applications of design thinking within engineering course design and methods that might to support more designerly behaviors among engineering educators. 

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2. Game design experience for teachers’ design thinking in participatory design culture

   Pan, Y.; Ke, F.; Dai, C-P. (January 2022, Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2022)

   Clark Chinn; Edna Tan; Carol Chan; Yael Kali (Ed.)
3. Design Educators’ Conceptions of Prototyping in Engineering Design Courses

   Ali, Hadi; Lande, Micah (June 2019, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   This is a research study that investigates the range of conceptions of prototyping in engineering design courses through exploring the conceptions and implementations from the instructors’ perspective. Prototyping is certainly an activity central to engineering design. The context of prototyping to support engineering education and practice has a range of implementations in an undergraduate engineering curriculum, from first-year engineering to capstone engineering design experiences. Understanding faculty conceptions’ of the reason, purpose, and place of prototyping can help illustrate how teaching and learning of the engineering design process is realistically implemented across a curriculum and how students are prepared for work practice. We seek to understand, and consequently improve, engineering design teaching and learning, through transformations of practice that are based on engineering education research. In this exploratory study, we interviewed three faculty members who teach engineering design in project-based learning courses across the curriculum of an undergraduate engineering program. This builds on related work done by the authors that previously investigated undergraduate engineering students’ conceptions of prototyping activities and process. With our instructor participants, a similar interview protocol was followed through semi-structured qualitative interviews. Data analysis has been undertaken through an emerging thematic analysis of these interview transcripts. Early findings characterize the focus on teaching the design process; the kind of feedback that the educators provide on students’ prototypes; students’ behavior while working on design projects; and educators’ perspectives on the design course. Understanding faculty conceptions with students’ conceptions of prototyping can shed light on the efficacy of using prototyping as an authentic experience in design teaching and learning. In project-based learning courses, particular issues of authenticity and assessment are under consideration, especially across the curriculum. More specifically, “proportions of problems” inform “problem solving” as one of the key characteristics in design thinking, teaching and learning. More attention to prototyping as part of the study of problem-solving processes can be useful to enhance understanding of the impact of instructional design. Challenges for teaching engineering design exist, and may be due to difficulties in framing design problems, recognizing what expertise students possess, and assessing their expertise to help them reach their goals, all at an appropriate place and ambiguity with student learning goals. Initial findings show that prototyping activities can help students become more reflective on their design. Scaffolded activities in prototyping can support self-regulated learning by students. The range of support and facilities, such as campus makerspaces, may also help students and instructors alike develop industry-ready engineering students. 

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4. Inverse design in nanophotonics

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0246-9  

   Molesky, Sean; Lin, Zin; Piggott, Alexander Y.; Jin, Weiliang; Vucković, Jelena; Rodriguez, Alejandro W. (November 2018, Nature Photonics)
5. Queering Design in Alaska

   Nicewonger, Todd; Fritz, Stacey; McNair, Lisa (September 2021, European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA) Workshop 2021: Futures beyond Crises, 16 & 17 Sept 2021)

   This paper examines how a small cadre of builders are “queering” design in Alaska. Specifically, it draws on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork to introduce the concept of “design queering” as an analytical framework for situating the creative practices of housing designers within wider debates about housing insecurity and activism in the Panarctic. This requires drawing on queer theory (e.g., Hayward 2010; Hayward and Che 2017; Boyce, Gonzalez-Polledo, and Posocco 2020) to describe how a set of intersecting experiences inspired this small group of builders to develop a kit-of-parts prototype. This prototype is influenced by the lessons these builders learned while collaborating with rural Alaskan communities on building projects where they witnessed how contemporary construction methods pollute landscapes and force homeowners into what Michelle Murphy has termed “regimes of chemical living” (2008). Later, through their own personal research efforts they began to weave together a set of construction principles for decolonizing the building industry, both in Alaska and beyond. These principles include design for disassembly, designing for the circular economy, and the notion of home ownership as a human right. By mapping out how this prototype came into being through the “queering” of housing design, this paper explores what a “future beyond crisis” might look like from the perspective of a small group of builders who are invested in transforming the structural inequalities produced by construction industries in Alaska and beyond. 

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