Co-Designing Design Activities with Undergraduate Students

Christopher Rennick; Michael Lenover; Eugene Li; Sanjeev Bedi

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: DEED Technical Session 9 - Design Across the Curriculum
Page Count: 18
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41047
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41047
Download Count: 393

Paper Authors

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Christopher Rennick University of Waterloo

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Christopher Rennick received his B.ASc. and M.ASc. in electrical engineering from the University of Windsor, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Chris is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo studying students’ design skill development. Chris was awarded the Canadian Engineering Education Association Engineering Education Graduate Student Award in 2019 for his contributions to the field.
Since 2010, Chris has been a member of the instructional staff at the University of Waterloo. Currently, Chris is the Engineering Educational Developer with the Engineering Ideas Clinic, where he designs and implements real-world, hands-on design activities for undergraduate engineering students.

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Michael Lenover University of Waterloo

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Graduate Research Assistant

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Eugene Li University of Waterloo

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Sanjeev Bedi University of Waterloo

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Dr. Sanjeev Bedi, Professor in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, Director of the Engineering Ideas Clinic: Sanjeev Bedi holds the Waterloo-NSERC Chair in Immersive Design Engineering Activities. He has extensive experience teaching engineering design and has focussed his teaching on improving student learning through introduction of real-world problem solving within undergraduate curricula. His research interests lie in advanced manufacturing methods.

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Abstract

The Engineering Ideas Clinic designs and implements hands-on, real-world design activities for undergraduate engineering students from all 14 programs at the University of Waterloo. Since the beginning of this initiative in 2015, the Ideas Clinic has employed over 200 full-time, paid, undergraduate engineering students who are on their co-operative work terms as the main designers of these activities. These students are involved in all stages of design activity creation from conceptualization, to initial research, to the design and implementation of prototype solutions to the problem, and ending with implementation in the classroom. These activities are discipline-specific, and frequently multi-disciplinary in nature; and when deployed in the classroom environment, are designed to be solved by teams of students in approximately 16 hours. Although these activities are open-ended and ill-structured, the problem space needs to be well-understood so appropriate supports can be put in place in the classroom to ensure student success. Not only are these interactive experiences an excellent learning opportunity for students solving them, but they also provide an additional learning opportunity for the coop students developing them. This paper describes the structures that are in place to support undergraduate students to design new activities for their peers, and the process that has been refined over many years to create new activities and bring them into the curriculum. To understand the impact of these work terms on students, an analysis has been conducted consisting of two parts: an investigation into the nature of the work being conducted through the lens of graduate attribute outcomes as described by the national accreditation board; and an inductive analysis of survey responses from past coop students investigating the impact of the work term on their own development. The results of this evaluation show that students demonstrated a breadth of graduate attributes during their work term, and in many cases, demonstrated these graduate attributes at levels higher than would be expected based on their academic progression – an indicator that this environment is conducive to “deliberate practice” of engineering skills. The students who responded to this survey commented that their work with the Ideas Clinic was useful in developing their engineering skills (both technical and professional in nature), and that their work with the Ideas Clinic positively impacted both subsequent academic, and work terms.

Citation
Format

Rennick, C., & Lenover, M., & Li, E., & Bedi, S. (2022, August), Co-Designing Design Activities with Undergraduate Students Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41047

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - The Engineering Ideas Clinic designs and implements hands-on, real-world design activities for undergraduate engineering students from all 14 programs at the University of Waterloo.  Since the beginning of this initiative in 2015, the Ideas Clinic has employed over 200 full-time, paid, undergraduate engineering students who are on their co-operative work terms as the main designers of these activities.  These students are involved in all stages of design activity creation from conceptualization, to initial research, to the design and implementation of prototype solutions to the problem, and ending with implementation in the classroom.  These activities are discipline-specific, and frequently multi-disciplinary in nature; and when deployed in the classroom environment, are designed to be solved by teams of students in approximately 16 hours.  Although these activities are open-ended and ill-structured, the problem space needs to be well-understood so appropriate supports can be put in place in the classroom to ensure student success.  Not only are these interactive experiences an excellent learning opportunity for students solving them, but they also provide an additional learning opportunity for the coop students developing them. 
This paper describes the structures that are in place to support undergraduate students to design new activities for their peers, and the process that has been refined over many years to create new activities and bring them into the curriculum. To understand the impact of these work terms on students, an analysis has been conducted consisting of two parts: an investigation into the nature of the work being conducted through the lens of graduate attribute outcomes as described by the national accreditation board; and an inductive analysis of survey responses from past coop students investigating the impact of the work term on their own development.  The results of this evaluation show that students demonstrated a breadth of graduate attributes during their work term, and in many cases, demonstrated these graduate attributes at levels higher than would be expected based on their academic progression – an indicator that this environment is conducive to “deliberate practice” of engineering skills. The students who responded to this survey commented that their work with the Ideas Clinic was useful in developing their engineering skills (both technical and professional in nature), and that their work with the Ideas Clinic positively impacted both subsequent academic, and work terms.

AU  - Christopher Rennick
AU  - Michael Lenover
AU  - Eugene Li
AU  - Sanjeev Bedi
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Co-Designing Design Activities with Undergraduate Students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/41047
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--41047
ER  -