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Evaluation of a High School Engineering Short Course Integrating the Engineering Design Process, Creativity, and Innovation (Evaluation)

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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 8: Assessment, Framworks, Standards, Oh My!

Tagged Division

Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE)

Page Count

25

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43457

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43457

Download Count

101

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Paper Authors

biography

Jose Capa Salinas Purdue University

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Jose Capa Salinas is a Ph.D. Student in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering department at Purdue University. He did his undergraduate degree at Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja. His research interests include drone bridge inspection, routine and fracture critical (NSTM) inspections, the behavior of structures, earthquake engineering, student success, difficult concepts in engineering, and engineering education. He is a young member of the TRB Standing Committee on Seismic Design and Performance of Bridges and holds a Remote Pilot UAS license.

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Morgan R Broberg Purdue University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-2406-8117

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Morgan Broberg is a Research Engineer at the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI). She received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Purdue University and a B.S. in Engineering from LeTourneau University. Her research interests include modeling, analysis, and design of steel-concrete composite systems and effective teaching in civil engineering.

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Danielle N. Wagner Purdue University

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Danielle is interested in enabling transparent communication between different members of society, often with an environmental focus to increase access to natural resources. She is currently a graduate student in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University pursuing a PhD in Architectural Engineering with a focus in indoor air quality. She has had several opportunities to engage in education with undergraduates and community members, and has recently been honored to be able to practice advising undergraduate service-learning teams. She was formerly a co-instructor for this weeklong Civil Engineering summer course for high school students, where she enjoyed creating interactive activities to build student’s intuition of the indoors and built environments.

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Joshua Carpenter Purdue University

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Joshua Carpenter received his B.S. degree in Surveying and Mapping from the University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA in 2013 and his M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA in 2020. He is currently working towards a Ph.D. degree in geomatics at Purdue University.
His current research focusses on building tools for automatic point cloud segmentation and feature extraction for forestry applications.

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Abstract

Tomorrow’s engineers need to be innovative problem solvers able to approach multidisciplinary engineering challenges creatively yet methodically. Across the United States and the world, stakeholders, including NAE, NSPE, and ASEE, increasingly acknowledge the importance of creativity in engineering design. High school curricula are starting to introduce engineering concepts, including robotics, 3D printing, and the engineering design process. Traditionally, these technical concepts have been separated from opportunities to practice creativity and innovation. In this setting, students are led to think that creativity and innovation are not compatible with engineering design. The following paper evaluates the effectiveness of strategies geared toward encouraging creativity and innovation in conjunction with the engineering design process to foster new, unique, or atypical approaches to engineering problems. In a one-week civil engineering summer course, high school students were challenged to approach engineering problems with this integrated mindset. The authors introduced the students to an eight-phase engineering design process on the first day of class. This framework was developed in [1] based on realistic scenarios used in engineering and was proven effective in the literature for novice audiences in engineering. In class, students interacted with real-world problems and brainstormed creative and innovative solutions each day, either working toward the final project or with in-class activities. Using this framework, students were encouraged to identify and/or create new, unique, or atypical solutions while accommodating real-life constraints such as budget, location, and affected communities. Throughout the week, students were given various opportunities to practice brainstorming creative solutions in the context of the engineering design process from the point of view of different engineering disciplines. The effectiveness of the curriculum and the teaching approach is evaluated based on student evaluations, pre- and post-class surveys, student artifacts throughout the week, and a final multidisciplinary poster presentation. As part of this evaluation, a rubric based on the work by [2] was adapted to assess creativity and application of the engineering design phases in the final project. In general, students showed increased knowledge and application of the engineering design process over the course. This assessment suggests that creativity can be fostered through well-designed course materials. From the authors’ perspective, the developed curriculum was effective since it included diverse course activities championed in the literature, including problem-based learning, interaction with physical models, multidisciplinary case studies, site visits, new and modern technology, and a real-world, problem-based, summative assessment. Furthermore, the solutions presented in the poster show the use of problem-solving skills and the integration of multiple engineering disciplines. Finally, the paper shares detailed techniques and curricula that can be implemented in engineering courses to foster creativity and innovation while developing a better understanding of the engineering design process.

Capa Salinas, J., & Broberg, M. R., & Wagner, D. N., & Carpenter, J. (2023, June), Evaluation of a High School Engineering Short Course Integrating the Engineering Design Process, Creativity, and Innovation (Evaluation) Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43457

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