Engineering Design ” : Understanding how freshman students develop their understanding of engineering , design , and engineering design

Freshman engineering students often begin their studies with limited, imprecise, and minimally informed conceptions of “engineering design.” A deep understanding of this term, however, is vital to an informed awareness of what engineering practice might involve and what engineers see themselves as doing. Textbooks can provide authoritative definition for the student, but these formalisms are (1) challenging for freshman students with limited engineering experience to engage with and (2) fail to capture the complexity of engineering design practices, especially in different disciplines and cultures. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of an activity, developed for a freshman engineering design course that is intended to deepen and enrich students’ understanding of these terms by asking them to categorize various artifacts as works of engineering design. Starting with a simple binary question yes or no they move to a planar assessment and finally to a comparative exercise as complications are introduced into the artifact set. Analyzing their pre and post-activity definitions and student reflections on the activity allows us to explore the impact of the exercise on the students’ understanding of and engagement with the concept of “engineering design.” 1. Background and Introduction Freshman engineering students often begin their studies with limited, imprecise, and minimally informed conceptions of engineering, design, and engineering design. Researchers interested in promoting STEM education and enhancing engineering recruitment have explored these conceptions, and have used their findings to (e.g.) develop new communications and outreach strategies. They do not appear to have used this information to develop pedagogy and classroom activities intended to influence student conceptions. As undergraduate students progress through their education, they construct, generally implicitly, their engineering identity. Researchers interested in the study of engineering as a profession have focused on the identities that form, not on pedagogical strategies to promote or direct that formation. In their design-focused studies, engineering students are exposed to formal models of engineering design, and there is a body of research exploring changes in how students practice engineering design as they progress through their studies. Such research involves mapping student activities to a model of design chosen by the investigators; students are not asked to describe, explain, or justify their approach to or beliefs about engineering design. Many introductory engineering design courses and resources, acknowledging this lack of considered understanding of “engineering” and “design”, begin with a definition of “engineering P ge 23365.2 design” that serves as a basis for further activities. However, though many authoritative textbook definitions for “engineering design” exist, these formalisms have two central issues. First, though carefully constructed, they are still “just words” and are far removed from the lived experience of freshman students. As such, students have difficulty engaging with the subtleties embedded in the definitions, and often only grasp the most basic or surface aspects of the concept. Second, they offer a simple, authoritative response to defining a term and activity that at a minimum varies by discipline and in practice is fluid and dynamic, changing alongside the social and cultural expectations and responsibilities of engineers and designers. Developing a deep and fluid understanding of engineering design is an important part of an engineering education, because it enables a cognitive awareness of the profession that should inform a large part of their learning over their undergraduate career. Achieving such a goal at the freshman level presents a significant challenge, but would produce significant benefit by allowing such an awareness to inform all of their future learning. While many studies have examined how students engage in engineering design, none have looked at how students understand engineering design, and how personal definitions can influence undergraduate students’ perspectives on their studies and the profession. Typically, in defining engineering design, instructors rely on textbooks which arrive with rich, well thought out, and thorough definitions of engineering design. Such definitions include: “Engineering design is the systematic, intelligent generation of specifications for artifacts whose form and function achieve stated objectives and satisfy specified constraints” “engineers ... apply their scientific and engineering knowledge to the solution of technical problems, and then to optimize those solutions within the requirements set by material, technological, economic, legal, environmental and human-related considerations.” “Engineering design is the communication of a set of rational decisions obtained with creative problem solving for accomplishing certain objectives within prescribed constraints.” While commonalities exist within the above definitions, each one focuses uniquely on different aspects of the process, and reveal a specific ideology underlying their understanding of engineering design. The first, for example, focuses on the requirements definition part of the process while the last emphasizes the justification of decisions. Figure 1 shows in visual a summary of the relative frequency of the terms used in the definitions of “engineering design” provided by 11 university textbooks, which will later be compared to the definitions provided by the students . 14-24 P ge 23365.3 Figure 1– Relative frequency of the terms used in the definitions of “engineering design” provided by 11 university textbooks. Aside from engineering design textbooks, important, authoritative definitions also come from accreditation agencies such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) in the United States and the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) in Canada. ABET, for example, sees Engineering Design as: “... the process of devising a system, component, or process to meet desired needs. It is a decision-making process (often iterative), in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and the engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet these stated needs.” CEAB’s definition, though equally authoritative, differs in both structure and focus, highlighting rather different traits: “Engineering design integrates mathematics, natural sciences, engineering sciences, and complementary studies in order to develop elements, systems, and processes to meet specific needs. It is a creative, iterative, and openended process, subject to constraints which may be governed by standards or legislation to varying degrees depending upon the discipline. These constraints may also relate to economic, health, safety, environmental, societal or other interdisciplinary factors.” One might argue that students should be introduced to this multiplicity of definitions. But while these definitions are rich and multi-faceted, they also demand a strong engineering design vocabulary and experience to be truly understood, something freshman students lack. Further, they may imply a certain ideology of engineering design, or may be intended for specific purposes, such as defining accreditation requirements, and may not be the most useful to students P ge 23365.4 trying to understand the complicated range of activities encompassed by engineering design. The definitions also tend to imply a rational, idealized, vision of engineering design practice, distinct from that which is actually used by practicing engineering designers. In this project, we explore and experiment with how freshman engineering students in the first year design sequence in the Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto negotiate an understanding of “engineering design,” within the context of their first design course, Praxis I. Details on the structure, logistics, and pedagogical foundations of the Praxis sequence can be found in “Assessing the design of a rapid product design cycle activity that develops student understanding of engineering design and professional practice” . 2. Research Objectives and Study Methodology Our research has two main investigative purposes. The first is to assess incoming engineering students’ understanding of both the composite term “engineering design” and its constituent terms ‘engineering’ and ‘design’. The second goal is to probe the efficacy of an activity, developed for a freshman engineering design course, that is intended to deepen and enrich students’ understanding of these terms. This activity requires students to assess whether or not different types of the same artifact – a shoe, bowl, or bridge, for example – constitute a work of “engineering design.” In doing so, we hope to uncover their hidden assumptions about and understandings of engineering, design, and engineering design. In examining the students’ definitions of engineering design preand post-activity alongside teaching team observations, we hope to demonstrate that developing a deeper and dynamic understanding of engineering design in freshmen is both a possible and desirable outcome that will shape the way that they interact with design activities and courses in the future. This paper presents our preliminary findings, including samples of student pre and post definitions and their unsolicited commentary on the impact of the activity on their understanding of engineering design. The first step in the study involves students providing their own, unresearched and intuitive definitions of engineering design. To acquire this definition, we asked all students to submit a definition of engineering design as part of an initial online journal post immediately after their first engineering class. The next week students engaged in Studio 1 “Defining Engineering Design” in which students engage in an