An Investigation of Engineering Students’ Information Sorting Approaches Using an Open-Ended Design Scenario

Chijhi Chang; Robert P. Loweth; Kelley E. Dugan

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Research Investigations in the Context of Design Education
Tagged Division: Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46564

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Paper Authors

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Chijhi Chang Purdue University

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Chijhi is an undergraduate student at Purdue University, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. She has served as a research assistant for Dr. Robert P. Loweth in the School of Engineering Education, focusing on how engineering students and practitioners engage stakeholders in their projects and she works as a research assistant in the Convergence Design Lab for Dr. Min Liu in the School of Mechanical Engineering, where her focus is on computational geometries for design and manufacturing. Chijhi is a teaching assistant in the College of Engineering Education, instructing the Transforming Ideas to Innovation I & II courses, which introduce first-year students to the engineering profession using multidisciplinary, societally relevant content.

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Robert P. Loweth Purdue University orcid.org/0000-0001-6337-2889

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Robert P. Loweth (he/him) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. His research explores how engineering students and practitioners engage stakeholders in their engineering projects, reflect on their social identities, and consider the broader societal contexts of their engineering work. The goals of his research are 1) to develop tools and pedagogies that support engineers in achieving the positive societal changes that they envision and 2) to address systems of oppression that exist within and are reproduced by engineering education and work environments. He earned his B.S. in Engineering Sciences from Yale University, with a double major in East Asian Studies, and earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Chinese and American Studies, jointly awarded by Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University in China.

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Kelley E. Dugan Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology orcid.org/0000-0002-1859-2230

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Kelley E. Dugan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Their research aims to understand and support complex sociotechnical problem solving in engineering, which can often be framed as engineering design problems. They focus on how social dimensions can be recognized and integrated into problem solving processes by studying student and practicing engineers’ processes with and without problem solving tools. She earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from The Ohio State University, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

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Abstract

This education research and assessment paper presents findings from a pilot study exploring how undergraduate engineering students process information related to an open-ended design scenario. To develop solutions that adequately address stakeholder needs, engineers must be able to synthesize design-relevant information from various sources – such as stakeholders, benchmarked products, and secondary research – and apply this information to their engineering work. While prior research has described how engineering students may gather information for design tasks and what types of information are applied in their final deliverables, relatively few studies have explored the transition from gathering information to applying that information. In other words, there is a gap in our understanding of how engineering students determine information relevance for their design projects. Addressing this research gap is critical for providing effective support to students during early-stage design activities.

This pilot study used card sorting and semi-structured interviews to explore the information processing approaches of 10 undergraduate engineering students. Our research questions were: RQ1) How do undergraduate engineering students determine information relevance for an open-ended design scenario? And RQ2) How do engineering students organize “clearly relevant” information? We developed a design scenario – redesigning a campus study space – and prepared 25 pieces of information related to this scenario. We asked each participant to sort the 25 pieces of information into three piles: “clearly relevant to their engineering work,” “possibly relevant to their engineering work,” and “not relevant to their engineering work.” We also asked participants to sort their “clearly relevant” information into piles based on topic s of their choosing. Participants completed their sorting tasks without researcher support and afterwards were asked to describe their sorting approaches. To answer our research questions, the first author documented the reasons that each participant provided for how they sorted information into “clearly relevant,” “possibly relevant” and “not relevant” piles (RQ1) and how they sorted their “clearly relevant” information based on topic (RQ2). They then, in collaboration with the second author, compared participants’ responses to identify approaches that recurred across participants.

Related to RQ1, we identified two main ways that our participants determined information relevance. First, participants identified a central stakeholder – other students – and consistently identified information about students as “clearly relevant.” Information relating to additional stakeholders, such as faculty, alumni, and student organizations, was infrequently identified as “clearly relevant.” Second, participants determined that some information did not pertain to the physical design of the study space and thus was not “clearly relevant.” Related to RQ2, we identified four main sorting schemas used by participants to organize their clearly relevant information. The two most common schemas were the “distributed model,” where participants sorted information into two or more groups simultaneously, and the “centralized model,” where participants first formed one central group of information and then sequentially organized remaining information into additional related groups. Our findings illuminate specific details about how engineering students may process information related to open-ended design tasks and can inform pedagogies that support more effective practices for incorporating a range of design-relevant information into design activities.

Citation
Format

Chang, C., & Loweth, R. P., & Dugan, K. E. (2024, June), An Investigation of Engineering Students’ Information Sorting Approaches Using an Open-Ended Design Scenario Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46564

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This education research and assessment paper presents findings from a pilot study exploring how undergraduate engineering students process information related to an open-ended design scenario. To develop solutions that adequately address stakeholder needs, engineers must be able to synthesize design-relevant information from various sources – such as stakeholders, benchmarked products, and secondary research  – and apply this information to their engineering work. While prior research has described how engineering students may gather information for design tasks and what types of information are applied in their final deliverables, relatively few studies have explored the transition from gathering information to applying that information. In other words, there is a gap in our understanding of how engineering students determine information relevance for their design projects. Addressing this research gap is critical for providing effective support to students during early-stage design activities.

This  pilot study used card sorting and semi-structured interviews to explore the information processing approaches of 10 undergraduate engineering students. Our research questions were: RQ1) How do undergraduate engineering students determine information relevance for an open-ended design scenario? And RQ2) How do engineering students organize “clearly relevant” information?  We developed a  design scenario – redesigning a campus study space – and prepared 25 pieces of information   related to this scenario.  We asked each participant to sort the 25 pieces of information into three piles: “clearly relevant to their engineering work,” “possibly relevant to their engineering work,” and “not relevant to their engineering work.” We also asked participants to sort their “clearly relevant” information into piles based on topic s of their choosing. Participants completed their sorting tasks without researcher support and afterwards were asked to describe their sorting approaches. To answer our research questions, the first author documented the reasons that each participant provided for how they sorted information into  “clearly relevant,” “possibly relevant” and “not relevant” piles (RQ1) and how they sorted their “clearly relevant” information based on topic (RQ2). They then, in collaboration with the second author, compared participants’ responses to identify approaches that recurred across participants.

Related to RQ1, we identified two main ways that our participants determined information relevance. First, participants identified a central stakeholder – other students – and consistently identified information about students as “clearly relevant.” Information relating to additional stakeholders, such as faculty, alumni, and student organizations, was infrequently identified as “clearly relevant.”  Second, participants determined that some information did not pertain to the physical design of the study space  and thus was not “clearly relevant.” Related to RQ2, we identified four main sorting schemas used by participants to organize their clearly relevant information. The two most common schemas were the “distributed model,” where participants sorted information into two or more groups simultaneously, and the “centralized model,” where participants first formed one central group of information and then sequentially organized remaining information into additional related groups. Our findings illuminate specific details about how engineering students may process information related to open-ended design tasks and can inform pedagogies that support more effective practices for incorporating a range of design-relevant information into design activities.  
AU  - Chijhi Chang
AU  - Robert P. Loweth
AU  - Kelley E. Dugan
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - An Investigation of Engineering Students’ Information Sorting Approaches Using an Open-Ended Design Scenario
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46564
ER  -