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Evaluating the Impact of a One-Week Human-Centered Design Engineering Summer Camp on Pre-College Students’ Learning Outcomes (RTP)

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE) Technical Session 11: Summer Camps and more!

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE)

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43438

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43438

Download Count

201

Paper Authors

biography

Taylor Tucker University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Taylor Tucker earned her bachelor's in engineering mechanics and master's in curriculum & instruction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on promoting teamwork in complex engineering problem solving through collaborative task design. As a Fellow at the Siebel Center for Design, she currently co-leads the integration of human-centered engineering design principles within select courses across the Grainger College of Engineering.

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biography

Saadeddine Shehab University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Saadeddine Shehab is currently the Associate Director of Assessment and Research at the Siebel Center for Design (SCD) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He works with a group of undergraduate and graduate SCD scholars at SCD’s Assessment and Research Laboratory to conduct research that informs and evaluates the practice of teaching and learning human-centered design in formal and informal learning environments. His research focuses on studying students’ collaborative problem-solving processes and the role of the teacher in facilitating these processes in STEM classrooms that feature the learning of STEM through design.

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Abstract

Engineering summer camps, which allow pre-college-aged students to participate in authentic design tasks, provide opportunity to experience topics or activities that may not be offered at school. These opportunities can help students to diversify their learning and explore personal interests. In this research-to-practice study, we developed and implemented a week-long camp that guided 31 high school students (15 female) through a collaborative human-centered design task while exploring the relationship between engineering and design. Human-centered design (HCD), or design thinking, is an important characteristic of the future direction of engineering education. Indeed, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET) includes teamwork and empathic thinking among its student outcomes. Literature has defined six human-centered design mindsets, including the collaborative mindset, which is characterized by the belief that collaboration is a key component of problem solving. Our previous work has stressed the importance and impactfulness of fostering collaboration in engineering education; in the same vein, we structured our camp activities around the collaborative mindset. We used ethnographic observations and pre-/post-test surveys to understand the impact of our camp on students’ awareness of and interest in engineering careers, as well as their understanding of the role of HCD in engineering. Findings indicated that understanding of HCD significantly increased and that campers also gained a better understanding of the field of engineering and could make a more informed decision regarding engineering as a potential career path. Upcoming work will more deeply explore the story of the camp and its outcomes, especially regarding the collaborative (i.e., teamwork) mindset.

Tucker, T., & Shehab, S. (2023, June), Evaluating the Impact of a One-Week Human-Centered Design Engineering Summer Camp on Pre-College Students’ Learning Outcomes (RTP) Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43438

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