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Engineering education guilds, such as the Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) and the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), seek to work at the forefront of educational innovation by creating networks of instructor change agents who design and implement a particular innovation in their own context to further the professional formation of engineers (PFE). While many of the innovations facilitated by CPREE and KEEN have been published extensively, it is unclear how successful the propagation of reflection and entrepreneurial mindset has been in the engineering education community. The major aim of this project is to characterize these two engineering education guilds with respect to their dissemination/propagation plans and, in the future, quantify the propagation of the innovations championed by CPREE and KEEN. The research questions we seek to answer in this paper are: (1) What are the planned dissemination/propagation approaches of well-established engineering education guilds? and (2) To what extent do their characteristics align with the Designing for Sustained Adoption Assessment Instrument (DSAAI)? The DSAAI was developed in 2016 to provide education developers, grant writing consultants, and funding agencies with a tool for assessing the propagation plans of researchers developing educational change strategies. To answer these questions, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the leaders of CPREE and KEEN. The transcriptions of the interviews will be used to create within-case reports for each guild. The within-case reports will consist of a rich description of the pedagogical innovation as well as the history of the guild and its goals. Using the DSAAI, we will qualitatively code the techniques that each guild is using to facilitate widespread adoption as well as the extent to which they are following a dissemination or propagation paradigm. Lastly, thematic analysis will be used to capture emerging themes that arise from the interviews.
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This content will become publicly available on June 22, 2026
Design Method Adoption in Industry as Uncovered Using Semi-Structured Interviews.”
Engineering design education frequently focuses on the methods and tools that enable and enhance product creation. These tools range from individual and group ideation techniques to innovation portfolio management for organizations and originate from a diversity of consulting, academic, and industrial sources. The factors that drive the adoption, use, and ongoing success of these tools are not well understood and are likely driven by a complex interaction of human, organizational, and economic factors. This paper investigates innovation method and tool adoption in industry through semi-structured interviews with individuals from a Fortune 500 company. This work explores three resulting themes 1) individual incentives and motivation for adoption, (2) the appropriateness of tool selection for the organizational product domain and compatibility with existing processes, and (3) executive and management support for adoption. The implications for engineering education are also discussed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2230550
- PAR ID:
- 10610347
- Publisher / Repository:
- 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Innovation, New Product Development, Design Methods, Method Adoption
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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