Ill-Structured Design Challenges in First-Year Courses

Madalyn Wilson-Fetrow; Anjali Mulchandani; Vanessa Svihla; Ruben D. Lopez-Parra; Sydney Donohue Jobe; Paris Eisenman; Ethan Kapp

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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: First-Year Programs Division Technical Session 4: Design Thinking & Entrepreneurship
Tagged Division: First-Year Programs Division (FYP)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47549

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Dr. Anjali Mulchandani is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Mexico. She leads the Environmental Resource Sustainability group, which studies themes related to environmental and water resources engineering, atmospheric water harvesting, waste-to-energy technologies, and environmental remediation. Her work integrates and highlights science communication and community needs-based research. Her passions include designing hands-on learning tools and leading public outreach initiatives for STEM awareness and engagement among all levels of learners.

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Vanessa Svihla University of Texas at Austin orcid.org/0000-0003-4342-6178

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Dr. Vanessa Svihla is a learning scientist and associate professor at the University of New Mexico in the Organization, Information and Learning Sciences program and in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department.

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Ruben D. Lopez-Parra Purdue University orcid.org/0009-0007-8901-5688

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Ruben D. Lopez-Parra is a Post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering at the University of New Mexico. His Ph.D. is in Engineering Education from Purdue University, and he has worked as a K-16 STEM instructor and curriculum designer using various evidence-based active and passive learning strategies. In 2015, Ruben earned an M.S. in Chemical Engineering at Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, where he also received the title of Chemical Engineer in 2012. His research interests are grounded in the learning sciences and include how K-16 students develop engineering thinking and professional skills when addressing complex socio-technical problems. He aims to apply his research to the design of better educational experiences.

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Sydney Donohue Jobe University of New Mexico orcid.org/0009-0009-6920-5921 

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Sydney Donohue Jobe works as the Outreach Coordinator and Education Specialist for the Center for Water and the Environment and the Accelerating Resilience Innovations in Drylands Institute at the University of New Mexico. She holds a Master of Water Resources degree from the University of New Mexico and a B.A. in Ecology from the University of Georgia.

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Paris Eisenman University of New Mexico

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Ethan Kapp University of New Mexico

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Abstract

In this Complete Research Paper, we investigate how first-year students in two departments navigate the same design challenge. Design challenges are difficult for students because of the nature of these problems. They are ill-structured [1], meaning there are many possible satisficing solutions, as well as many possible paths toward solution, requiring designers to frame the problem by deciding what to focus on about the problem. This aspect also makes teaching design difficult, especially in the first-year when students have completed little to none of their technical coursework. To overcome this issue, faculty sometimes reduce the complexity by making the design problem purely technical, removing social and policy factors. However, this approach can actually make the problem more difficult for students, by obscuring the problem context and meaning. Another way faculty address the issue is by reducing the ill-structuredness, providing kit-based projects in which students lack opportunities to frame the problem. Research on design learning demonstrates that offering ill-structured, authentic problems increases student capacity to frame and solve engineering problems, in turn supporting their identity as engineers [2]. In particular, such problems are sociotechnical, meaning the technical factors are related to and depend upon social factors [3].

We sought to investigate how first-year students navigated such a design challenge, guided by a research question:

In what ways do first-year engineers navigate ill-structured sociotechnical design challenges?

We conducted the study in two introductory courses at an R1 university in the southwestern US: a 3-credit Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering course (CCEE, n=81) and a 1-credit Chemical and Biological Engineering course (CBE, n=49). We developed an ill-structured design challenge centered around the Gold King Mine spill in 2015. This disaster released pollution into waterways across the southwest, including water sources that rural communities need to survive. We asked students to identify a community in our state that would be impacted by a mine drainage spill and design a water remediation solution for that specific community. They tested their solutions in a simulation before moving to a bench-scale test. Their final solution included a plan for community engagement. Scaffolded deliverables guided them on identifying the problem, researching current solutions, and drawing conclusions from their data.

To conduct the study we engaged in design-based research, which instantiates learning theory in the instruction and tests it iteratively in the classroom [4]. Data included team deliverables, a survey of their perceptions of the design problem, and group interviews with teams after the bench-scale design test (CCE n = 4, CBE n = 4).

We found that in both courses, teams contextualized the challenge to the community they chose. Students targeted a wide range of communities to design remediation for, from towns and cities to extremely rural ranch land, all of which required different types of remediation efforts i.e community infrastructure and water requirements. In their final proposal students articulated the reasons for their decisions, and connected collected data to their solution.

In their end of design surveys, students reported that the choices they made increased their ownership of their design, that they learned as a result of those decisions, and that they had a better understanding of what it took to be an engineer.

In post-experiment interviews, students discussed the challenge of being unsure about how to move forward, but also overcoming those challenges to reach their data collection goals. They expressed the desire to get the answer “right” and that they weren’t sure what right should be. However, this was more of a focus in iterations related to CCEE rather than CBE, with CBE students being more comfortable with the ill-structured nature of the experiment.

Overall we found students leveraged the sociotechnical nature to navigate the ill-structured challenge and took ownership of their decisions as engineers

References [1] Jonassen, D. H. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(4), 63-85. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02300500 [2] Svihla, V., Wilson-Fetrow, M., Chen, Y., Chi, E. Y., Datye, A. K., Han, S. M., Gomez, J. R., & Olewnik, A. (2021). The educative design problem framework: Relevance, sociotechnical complexity, accessibility, and nondeterministic high ceilings. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, 1-17. https://peer.asee.org/37852 [3] Smith, J. M., & Lucena, J. C. (2020). Socially responsible engineering. In The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering (pp. 661-673). Routledge. [4] The Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5–8. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032001005

Citation
Format

Wilson-Fetrow, M., & Mulchandani, A., & Svihla, V., & Lopez-Parra, R. D., & Donohue Jobe, S., & Eisenman, P., & Kapp, E. (2024, June), Ill-Structured Design Challenges in First-Year Courses Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47549

TY - CPAPER
AB - In this Complete Research Paper, we investigate how first-year students in two departments navigate the same design challenge. Design challenges are difficult for students because of the nature of these problems. They are ill-structured [1], meaning there are many possible satisficing solutions, as well as many possible paths toward solution, requiring designers to frame the problem by deciding what to focus on about the problem. This aspect also makes teaching design difficult, especially in the first-year when students have completed little to none of their technical coursework. To overcome this issue, faculty sometimes reduce the complexity by making the design problem purely technical, removing social and policy factors. However, this approach can actually make the problem more difficult for students, by obscuring the problem context and meaning. Another way faculty address the issue is by reducing the ill-structuredness, providing kit-based projects in which students lack opportunities to frame the problem. Research on design learning demonstrates that offering ill-structured, authentic problems increases student capacity to frame and solve engineering problems, in turn supporting their identity as engineers [2]. In particular, such problems are sociotechnical, meaning the technical factors are related to and depend upon social factors [3].

We sought to investigate how first-year students navigated such a design challenge, guided by a research question:

In what ways do first-year engineers navigate ill-structured sociotechnical design challenges?

We conducted the study in two introductory courses at an R1 university in the southwestern US: a 3-credit Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering course (CCEE, n=81) and a 1-credit Chemical and Biological Engineering course (CBE, n=49). We developed an ill-structured design challenge centered around the Gold King Mine spill in 2015. This disaster released pollution into waterways across the southwest, including water sources that rural communities need to survive. We asked students to identify a community in our state that would be impacted by a mine drainage spill and design a water remediation solution for that specific community. They tested their solutions in a simulation before moving to a bench-scale test. Their final solution included a plan for community engagement. Scaffolded deliverables guided them on identifying the problem, researching current solutions, and drawing conclusions from their data.

To conduct the study we engaged in design-based research, which instantiates learning theory in the instruction and tests it iteratively in the classroom [4]. Data included team deliverables, a survey of their perceptions of the design problem, and group interviews with teams after the bench-scale design test (CCE n = 4, CBE n = 4).

We found that in both courses, teams contextualized the challenge to the community they chose. Students targeted a wide range of communities to design remediation for, from towns and cities to extremely rural ranch land, all of which required different types of remediation efforts i.e community infrastructure and water requirements. In their final proposal students articulated the reasons for their decisions, and connected collected data to their solution.

In their end of design surveys, students reported that the choices they made increased their ownership of their design, that they learned as a result of those decisions, and that they had a better understanding of what it took to be an engineer.

In post-experiment interviews, students discussed the challenge of being unsure about how to move forward, but also overcoming those challenges to reach their data collection goals. They expressed the desire to get the answer “right” and that they weren’t sure what right should be. However, this was more of a focus in iterations related to CCEE rather than CBE, with CBE students being more comfortable with the ill-structured nature of the experiment.

Overall we found students leveraged the sociotechnical nature to navigate the ill-structured challenge and took ownership of their decisions as engineers

References
[1] Jonassen, D. H. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48(4), 63-85. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02300500
[2] Svihla, V., Wilson-Fetrow, M., Chen, Y., Chi, E. Y., Datye, A. K., Han, S. M., Gomez, J. R., &amp;amp; Olewnik, A. (2021). The educative design problem framework: Relevance, sociotechnical complexity, accessibility, and nondeterministic high ceilings. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference &amp;amp; Exposition, 1-17. https://peer.asee.org/37852
[3] Smith, J. M., &amp;amp; Lucena, J. C. (2020). Socially responsible engineering. In The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering (pp. 661-673). Routledge.
[4] The Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-based research: An emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5–8. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X032001005

AU - Madalyn Wilson-Fetrow
AU - Anjali Mulchandani
AU - Vanessa Svihla
AU - Ruben D. Lopez-Parra
AU - Sydney Donohue Jobe
AU - Paris Eisenman
AU - Ethan Kapp
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Ill-Structured Design Challenges in First-Year Courses
UR - https://peer.asee.org/47549
ER -