Assessing Concept Generation Intervention Strategies for Creativity Using Design Problems in a Freshman Engineering Graphics Course
- Conference
- Location
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Columbus, Ohio
- Publication Date
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June 24, 2017
- Start Date
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June 24, 2017
- End Date
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June 28, 2017
- Conference Session
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Engineering Design Graphics Division Technical Session 2: Instructional
- Tagged Division
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Engineering Design Graphics
- Page Count
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24
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--27619
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/27619
- Download Count
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860
Paper Authors
Raghu Pucha Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Raghu Pucha is a Senior Lecturer at the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, in the area of CAD/CAE and Manufacturing. Dr. Pucha teaches computer graphics and design courses at Georgia Tech., and conducts research in the area of developing computational tools for the design, analysis and manufacturing of advanced materials and systems. Dr. Pucha has three provisional U.S. patents and co-authored over 60 research papers. He is honored with Undergraduate Educator Award in 2012 and Geoffrey G. Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award in 2015 from the Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Georgia Tech.
Bryan Levy Georgia Institute of Technology
Bryan Levy is a graduate student at Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech and is currently obtaining a Master's degree from the same institute. His research primarily focuses in the impact of maker spaces on students and design problem equivalency as it pertains to assessing creativity.
Julie S. Linsey Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Julie S. Linsey is an Associate Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technological. Dr. Linsey received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas. Her research area is design cognition including systematic methods and tools for innovative design with a particular focus on concept generation and design-by-analogy. Her research seeks to understand designers’ cognitive processes with the goal of creating better tools and approaches to enhance engineering design. She has authored over 100 technical publications including twenty-three journal papers, five book chapters, and she holds two patents.
Sunni Haag Newton Georgia Institute of Technology
Sunni Newton is currently a Research Associate II at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC). Her research focuses on assessing the implementation and outcomes of educational interventions at the K-12 and collegiate levels. She received her MS and Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Georgia Tech in 2009 and 2013, respectively. She received her BS from Georgia Tech in 2006, double-majoring in Psychology and Management.
Meltem Alemdar Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Meltem Alemdar is Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist at Georgia Tech's Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC). Her research focuses on improving K-12 STEM education through research on curriculum development, teacher professional development, and student learning in integrated STEM environments. Her interests also include evaluation of K-12 STEM initiatives that target low income and minority students. Dr. Alemdar has experience evaluating programs that fall under the umbrella of educational evaluation, including K-12 educational curricula, K-12 STEM programs after-school programs, and comprehensive school reform initiatives. She received her Ph.D. in Research, Measurement and Statistics from the Department of Education Policy at Georgia State University (GSU).
Tris Utschig
Kennesaw State University
orcid.org/0000-0003-1057-3825
Dr. Tristan T. Utschig is Associate Director for Learning Sciences in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and is Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Kennesaw State University. Formerly, he was Assistant Director for CETL and the Office of Assessment at Georgia Tech, and prior that was a tenured Associate Professor of Engineering Physics at Lewis-Clark State College. Dr. Utschig consults with faculty across the university about bringing scholarly teaching and learning innovations into their classroom and assessing their impact. He has regularly published and presented work on a variety of topics including assessment instruments and methodologies, using technology in the classroom, faculty development in instructional design, teaching diversity, and peer coaching. Dr. Utschig completed his PhD in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Abstract
Intervention through process-oriented instructions induces metacognitive processing to focus attention on monitoring and evaluating students’ problem-solving efforts [1]. There is a lack of knowledge of instructional intervention strategies to help students be more creative. In this paper we discuss implementation and assessment of UnTiED (Unconventional Thinking in Engineering Design) ideation methods and design heuristics cards to refer to a set of concept generation intervention strategies that support an iterative loop of divergent (creative) and convergent (critical) thinking within the context of a project-based learning environment in a freshman engineering graphics course. The four elements of UnTiED ideation, namely (i) random connections with unusual combinations between unrelated concepts, (ii) absurdity (pattern breaking thinking), (iii) tinkering with many nonjudgmental and open ended ideas, (iv) questioning the status quo and challenging assumptions with reverse thinking are initially introduced for ideation with divergent thinking. Students are encouraged to use design heuristics cards for ideation with convergent thinking. These process-oriented creative interventions are intended to help students’ creative processes during engineering conceptual design. To assess the above mentioned intervention strategies in terms of their impacts on engineering design, four design problems were selected from the literature [2] and the students were given 50 minutes to generate as many solutions as possible using an unguided method; they could not use any outside tools. The solutions were then scored according to metrics originally designed by Shah and further developed by Linsey [3]. The students were also given a survey at the beginning and end of class that included an engineering design self-efficacy assessment previously designed [4].
This paper will present results on (1) Quantity, quality, novelty, variety, and completeness of generated ideas for the two design problems (2) comparison of Self-Efficacy Motivation Scores, Self-Efficacy Confidence Scores, Self-Efficacy Success Scores and Self-Efficacy Anxiety Scores between the Control and Experiment Groups and (3) Results from a survey on student perceptions of ideation methods and data on Students’ course survey comments and design descriptions analysed using open-coding approach.
The control group includes students without any intervention on concept generation methods and the experimental group includes students with intervention instruction on concept generation methods (Spring 2016). In ongoing (Fall 2016) experiments the experimental group includes two categories. In category 1, students are explicitly instructed to use the concept generation methods with instructions and design heuristics cards and in category 2, students are asked to work on design problems without explicit instructions on the use of concept generation methods.
Spring 2016 results indicate that there may not be a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in reference to their scores in the ideation metrics. Analysis is ongoing and will be completed before the draft. Results from a survey on student perceptions of ideation methods indicate somewhat mixed results. Students’ course survey comments and design descriptions were analysed using open-coding approach.
References: [1] Berardi-Coletta, B., Buyer, L.S., Dominowski, R.L., & Rellinger, E.R. (1995). Metacognition and problem solving: A process-oriented approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 21, 205-223. [2] Durand, Fabien, et al. "In Search of Wood, and C. Schunn, A Study of Design Fixation, Its Mitigation and Perception in Engineering Design Faculty Effective Design Problems for Design Research." ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2015. [3] Linsey, J.S., I. Tseng, K. Fu, J. Cagan, K.L.. Journal of Mechanical Design, 2010. 132(4): p. 041003-041003. [4] Carberry, Adam R., Hee-Sun Lee, and Matthew W. Ohland. "Measuring engineering design self-efficacy." Journal of Engineering Education 99.1 (2010): 71.
Pucha, R., & Levy, B., & Linsey, J. S., & Newton, S. H., & Alemdar, M., & Utschig, T. (2017, June), Assessing Concept Generation Intervention Strategies for Creativity Using Design Problems in a Freshman Engineering Graphics Course Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27619
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