A Skills-focused Approach to Teaching Design Fundamentals to Large Numbers of Students and Its Effect on Engineering Design Self-efficacy

William H. Guilford

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Design Tools and Skill Development
Tagged Division: Design in Engineering Education
Page Count: 10
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--27512
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/27512
Download Count: 475

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Paper Authors

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William H. Guilford University of Virginia orcid.org/0000-0002-6543-5713

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Will Guilford is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He is also the Undergraduate Program Director for Biomedical Engineering, and the Director of Educational Innovation in the School of Engineering. He received his B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from St. Francis College in Ft. Wayne, Indiana and his Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Arizona. Will did his postdoctoral training in Molecular Biophysics at the University of Vermont under David Warshaw. His research interests include novel assessments of educational efficacy, the molecular basis of cell movement, and the mitigation of infectious diseases.

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Abstract

Design courses are often tasked with teaching all the steps of the engineering design process in the span of a single semester. The coverage is often biased; problem identification, research, and brainstorming are easily taught in a traditional classroom, and therefore are emphasized in training of students. Fabrication, testing, and iteration, in contrast, are often emphasized less simply because they unusually demanding of faculty time, and require greater physical resources. Nevertheless, we believe that immersive design-build-iterate experiences are a vital part of early-year undergraduate engineering education.

Project-based courses in design are useful for providing end-to-end training in all the steps of the engineering design process, including fabrication, testing, and (sometimes) iteration. However, depending on the nature of the design project, there can be great variability between the skills acquired by individual student teams, and between individual students on a given team.

To partially overcome these limitations, we instituted three changes to a second-year design course. First, the course was delivered in two sections, partially online, to reduce the student-to-instructor ratio. Second, rather than an open-ended project, the students were instead trained individually in a variety of useful engineering skills, ranging from embedded controllers and CAD, to power tools and welding. Finally, rather than a forward engineering approach to teaching design within the context of an open-ended project, design was instead learned through the reverse engineering approach of product archaeology.

We assessed these changes relative to a previous project-based year via anonymous course evaluations, including textual analysis. We found that course evaluations were improved, that students better connect learning to skills, and that students appreciated the opportunity to develop a uniform skill set by the end of the semester. This is in contrast to a project-based class where skills development was not uniform between or within teams, and students did not connect learning to skills development. We further assessed this pedagogical approach by measuring the psychological construct engineering design self-efficacy at the beginning and end of the semester, since there are prior reports of gains in the confidence of students in their fabrication skills as a result of immersive design-build projects. We found that students’ belief in their abilities improved significantly over the course of the semester in every step of the engineering design process. We hypothesize that developing early student competencies in design fundamentals will lead to improvements in design projects in the later years of engineering students’ education, and at a level greater than project-based learning.

Citation
Format

Guilford, W. H. (2017, June), A Skills-focused Approach to Teaching Design Fundamentals to Large Numbers of Students and Its Effect on Engineering Design Self-efficacy Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27512

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Design courses are often tasked with teaching all the steps of the engineering design process in the span of a single semester. The coverage is often biased; problem identification, research, and brainstorming are easily taught in a traditional classroom, and therefore are emphasized in training of students. Fabrication, testing, and iteration, in contrast, are often emphasized less simply because they unusually demanding of faculty time, and require greater physical resources. Nevertheless, we believe that immersive design-build-iterate experiences are a vital part of early-year undergraduate engineering education. 

Project-based courses in design are useful for providing end-to-end training in all the steps of the engineering design process, including fabrication, testing, and (sometimes) iteration. However, depending on the nature of the design project, there can be great variability between the skills acquired by individual student teams, and between individual students on a given team. 

To partially overcome these limitations, we instituted three changes to a second-year design course. First, the course was delivered in two sections, partially online, to reduce the student-to-instructor ratio. Second, rather than an open-ended project, the students were instead trained individually in a variety of useful engineering skills, ranging from embedded controllers and CAD, to power tools and welding. Finally, rather than a forward engineering approach to teaching design within the context of an open-ended project, design was instead learned through the reverse engineering approach of product archaeology. 

We assessed these changes relative to a previous project-based year via anonymous course evaluations, including textual analysis. We found that course evaluations were improved, that students better connect learning to skills, and that students appreciated the opportunity to develop a uniform skill set by the end of the semester. This is in contrast to a project-based class where skills development was not uniform between or within teams, and students did not connect learning to skills development.  We further assessed this pedagogical approach by measuring the psychological construct engineering design self-efficacy at the beginning and end of the semester, since there are prior reports of gains in the confidence of students in their fabrication skills as a result of immersive design-build projects. We found that students’ belief in their abilities improved significantly over the course of the semester in every step of the engineering design process. We hypothesize that developing early student competencies in design fundamentals will lead to improvements in design projects in the later years of engineering students’ education, and at a level greater than project-based learning.
AU  - William H. Guilford
CY  - Columbus, Ohio
DA  - 2017/06/24
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - A Skills-focused Approach to Teaching Design Fundamentals to Large Numbers of Students and Its Effect on Engineering Design Self-efficacy
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/27512
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--27512
ER  -