High School Student Information Access and Engineering Design Performance

Developing solutions to engineering design problems requires access to information. Research has shown that appropriately accessing and using information in the design process improves solution quality. This quasi-experimental study provides two groups of high school students with a design problem in a three hour design experience. One group has access to the internet while the other does not. Quality of design solution was measured and the two groups were compared. Solution quality did not change significantly. Student information requests were categorized and the most commonly requested piece of information related to cost of materials. Students spent substantially more time in the design process with internet access

Transforming the Core Course in the College of Technology

During the summer of 2012, a team of four faculty members from the College of Technology redesigned Tech 12000 (Design Thinking in Technology). This course, after its first year of implementation as a traditional course, was flipped and blended. In addition, the content related to achieving the learning outcomes was drastically remodeled. Faculty threw out the paper-based textbooks, lecture approaches and large class sizes. The new course embraced a distributed model of resources including web based text and multimedia created by our faculty and others accessed by students asynchronously in preparation for class. Classes are small (40 students) and feel like workshops where the instructor is a guide and facilitator. Students experience flexibility and autonomy within a guided sequence of learning experiences. The first half of the semester students experience short duration small group work with structure and guidance as they work collaboratively to solve problems. The problems and approaches are structured to allow students to apply concepts focused on design thinking in a technological context. During the second half of the semester, students work in groups of 4-5 and begin with identifying a problem in their environment, researching the issue, benchmarking, brainstorming, evaluating, prototyping and presenting their work

Team Based Engineering Design Thinking

The objective of this research was to explore design thinking among teams of high school students. This objective is encompassed in the research question driving this inquiry: How do teams of high school students allocate time across stages of design? Design thinking on the professional level typically occurs in a team environment. Many individuals contribute in a variety of ways to facilitate the successful development of a solution to a problem. Teachers often require students to work in groups, but little is known about how the group functions in the context of design and the potential interaction between group performance and authentic design challenges. Few research results are available to guide teachers in developing successful design teams and encouraging them in their efforts

Engineering Design Thinking and Information Gathering Final Report

The objective of this research was to explore the relationship between information access and design solution quality of high school students presented with an engineering design problem. This objective is encompassed in the research question driving this inquiry: How does information access impact the design process? This question has emerged in the context of an exploratory DR-K12 grant project titled, Exploring Engineering Design Knowing and Thinking as an Innovation in STEM Learning. The research work presented here has expanded the data set developed in the DR-K12 and examined the larger data set with a focus on how information access impacts design thinking. The opportunity to explore the impact of information gathering was not afforded in the DR-K12, but emerged as an area of interest during the pilot phase

Academic Performance as a Predictor of Student Growth in Achievement and Mental Motivation During an Engineering Design Challenge in Engineering and Technology Education

The purpose of this correlational research study was to determine if students’ academic success was correlated with: (a) the student change in achievement during an engineering design challenge; and (b) student change in mental motivation toward solving problems and critical thinking during an engineering design challenge. Multiple experimental studies have shown engineering design challenges increase student achievement and attitude toward learning, but conflicting evidence surrounded the impact on higher and lower academically achieving students. A high school classroom was chosen in which elements of engineering design were purposefully taught. Eleventh-grade student participants represented a diverse set of academic backgrounds (measured by grade point average [GPA]). Participants were measured in terms of achievement and mental motivation at three time points. Longitudinal multilevel modeling techniques were employed to identify significant predictors in achievement growth and mental motivation growth during the school year. Student achievement was significantly correlated with science GPA, but not math or communication GPA. Changes in achievement score over time are not significantly correlated with science, math, or communication. Mental motivation was measured by five subscales. Mental focus was correlated with math and science GPA. Mental focus increases over time were negatively correlated with science GPA, which indicated that the initial score differential (between higher and lower science GPA students) was decreased over time. Learning orientation and cognitive integrity were not correlated with GPA. Creative problem solving was correlated with science GPA, but gains over time were not correlated with GPA. Scholarly rigor was correlated with science GPA, but change over time was not correlated with GPA

An Analysis of Student Performance at the Intersection of Diversity and Information literacy

Objective--When teaching information Literacy (IL) concepts, instructors often have no knowledge about the background or previous IL exposure of the students they are teaching. This study aims to create a holistic picture of the students at a large Midwestern U.S. university in a first year introductory course on the design process for solving engineering problems. Method--Institutional data and course level data were traced and linked to individual students, in introduction to design thinking first year course. This course at a major high research activity institution in the Midwestern United States. From a total course size of 650, institutional and course level data of 127 students were selected randomly and analyzed. Some data points are self-reported and some data points are performance-based. Results--Underrepresented minorities had a higher increase in IL score from assignment 1 to assignment 3 than non-URM students. However, non-URMs performed higher on both the first and the last assignments. Students in concurrent IL- designated courses had a higher increase from assignments 1 to 3, than those not in simultaneous IL- designated courses. Black and international students had the highest increases from assignments 1 to 3 of any demographic. Regarding IL, the fact that none of the students had been exposed to much IL instruction justified continued collaboration in the course between the instructor of record and the IL specialist. There were significantly negative correlations between the final grade and first-generation status. Legacy students also performed more poorly from assignments 1 to 3. Conclusions--Students are more diverse in a single classroom setting than presumed prior to research, therefore our instructional practices should be diverse and inclusive, as well. More preparation work and fact finding should be conducted by Libraries Faculty and instructors to facilitate the learning of the students, and not just the act of teaching. Librarians could ask for more information about the course demographics and respond accordingly. Librarians should also be properly trained in instructional practices to be better equipped to meet the expectations and challenges of teaching a diverse class

Collaboration in an Online Course is Comparable to Collaboration in a Face-to-Face Course

Remote learning through various communication systems has been available as a teaching strategy for many years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote learning has become an important method of educational delivery available for K-12 and higher education as leaders follow the health and safety guidelines. However, in remote learning environments, active learning collaborative team projects are more complex. Many institutions of higher learning around the country began using a Hybrid-Flexible (HyFlex) instructional model in response to the current global pandemic where students can choose to take online or face to face sections of their course. The flexibility in the model allows students and school systems to follow social distancing guidelines while providing quality educational experiences. Dumford and Miller (2018) contend “a user-friendly design and adequate technological support must be considered differently within online education” (p. 453) since online students sometimes feel isolated from professors. We offered an online only version of our traditionally face-to-face design thinking course during the fall of 2020. Students participated from different parts of the world and various time zones. Course materials were available in the learning management software and students worked as individuals and in small groups asynchronously and synchronously. Active learning in small groups requires collaboration, which is potentially more difficult in online environments. This research brief reports on our comparison of collaboration between the two modes of participation

Quantifying the Information Habits of High School Students Engaged in Engineering Design

stract This study measured the information gathering behaviors of high school students who had taken engineering design courses as they solved a design problem. The authors investigated what types of information students accessed, its quality, when it was accessed during the students’ process, and if it impacted their thinking during the activity. Students overwhelmingly relied on internet searching to acquire information, rather than printed materials available to them. The sites they found were generally popular rather than technical, and persuasive (i.e., trying to sell something) rather than informative. The high school students understood the need for information, as they sought a large volume of information, which they did, generally, incorporate in their solution development process, but their skill in locating high-quality information was relatively poor

Factors of Group Design Decision Making

Design is a decision-making process. Designers make decisions between alternative solutions,decisions about feasibility of individual solutions, decisions about narrowing or broadening the problem scope. They also make logistical decision about when teams will meet, how decisions will be made. Recent analysis of high school student design activities revealed that groups and individuals are not spending much time on decision processes and it can be assumed that the faculties of beginning college students are in a similar vein. In the past year changes were made to a freshman level design thinking course to improve student approaches to decision making.Accompanying these changes, the instructors, as researchers, have attempted to understand student decision processes in order to improve instruction.This paper will discuss the development of an instrument to help evaluate student decision priorities. Understanding and measuring the decision processes among group decisions poses challenges. Based on an initial review of the literature, an instrument to measure group design decisions was not identified. Literature was reviewed to identify elements of effective design decisions as well as useable items from existing instruments. Literature on effective strategies for decision-making in related fields of study. The survey instrument developed included 16 questions about decision processes that related to four proposed latent constructs. Prior to administration of the instrument, a team of teacher educators and educational researchers provided feedback on content validity. The survey was administered to 218 students following reflection on a group design project at the end of the semester.Using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), several results are elucidated. By focusing only on questions in the survey relevant to decision processes, a nascent model was formed with 13 indicators loading on three factors (6, 4, and 4 questions respectively, with one item weakly cross-loading). The model explains 61.814% of the variation in the items and each factor has strong internal consistency as measured by Cronbach’s alpha (α = .898, α = .877, and α = .80).The accompanying results also support a new survey instrument for understanding sources of design decision processes revolving around the three factors: processing data, considering alternatives, and understanding decisions.The model is currently undergoing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a 670 student sample,which will be completed in December 2014. The CFA process may confirm the suggested model as well as evaluate its validity through convergence and discrimination with appropriate metrics of group behavior. Once confirmed, this model could be used in other environments to gauge the ubiquity of these constructs. Regardless of these results however, these findings provide focus areas for subsequent instructional design based on student perceptions of group decision-making processes