Utilizing Informed Design Pedagogy and Strategies in Creating an Introduction to Engineering Design Module

David Crismond

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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)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48247

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Paper Authors

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David Crismond City University of New York, City College

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David P. Crismond is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at City College of New York, 160 Convent Ave. NAC 6/207b, New York, NY 10031; dcrismond@ccny.cuny.edu. His research interests include science and engineering education, informed design and computational thinking, teacher growth of pedagogical content knowledge, and student assessment.

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Abstract

This Complete Evidence-based Practice paper will describe a 10-week Introduction to Engineering module created and taught by the author that introduced and emphasized the use of informed design thinking when doing design challenges. The module has been offered for three consecutive semester to undergraduates, where classes of 22 students working in teams faced design challenges involves meeting the needs of K-12 wheelchair users. The main challenge for this instructional module involved creating Halloween costumes that could be attached to a child's wheelchair without marring it, be light in weight, safe to use, easily assembled, allow the child easy entrance and exit, and have sufficient clearance to pass through doorways and halls. A second challenge reported in this paper involved designing and building a rain protection system for a HS wheelchair user. The need for such a system was uncovered when students conducted a whole-class interview of a HS student who was visiting the class after having volunteered to answer questions about her MS-based disability and experiences as a wheel-chair user. The Halloween design challenge was drawn from the work of a Kansas-based, non-profit organization called Walkin’ & Rollin’ Costume, which annually provides children who use wheelchairs with made-to-order costumes that get produced for free by volunteers and school groups around the country. Halloween costume typically was fitted onto a frame made of PVC pipe, glued joints, and covered with a decorated shell made of PVC sheet material. Teams worked within a budget of $300, costs that were covered by the School of Engineering. Teams were required to design an “action component” that was either electrical and/or mechanical in nature. The child user had to be able to manipulate the action component safely and easily; e.g., if mechanical, the applied forces and range of motion had to be doable by the child. A safety feature was also required to alert passers-by of the user and costume during daytime or nighttime, given that there are more fatal traffic accidents on Halloween than any other day of the year in the US. The 10-week module was part of a 15-week undergraduate Introduction to Engineering course (location redacted). Students met in-person once a week for a 110-minute hands-on class session. This was followed each week by 50-minute Friday lecture that introduced students to various engineering fields. The pedagogical strategies used during the course were derived from a framework of informed design teaching and learning (citation). An emphasis on human-centered design, understanding and empathizing with the user, and making informed design decisions, was highlighted. Design thinking was introduced and reinforces in a variety of ways in the course. Students started in the first week watching a 1999 Ted Koppel Nightline episode called, Deep Dive, which documented the work of the Palo Alto-based IDEO product design firm. During the first two meetings, students working in teams faced a tallest tower challenge, where using 40 paper straws, paper clips, they had to build a freestanding structure that support a half-liter bottle of water placed at least half-way up the total length of the tower, and which could remain standing when undergoing a 6° tilt test. Students learned about and applied ideas regarding stability and rigidity of structures, the use of free-body diagrams, and a structured 4-step process of troubleshooting the structure. Diagnostic troubleshooting was a point of emphasis in students’ reports on their work in teams. Readings were in groups of 4, and reviewed via Small-Group Discussions where each team member was responsible for creating Leader Notes and running a 5-7 minute discussion with the other team members. Students working in teams took on a variety of roles: Team Lead; Design & Research; Engineers/Makers; Coordinator of Materials; Presenter (Visuals); Testing / Safety; and Design Minder. Students reviewed case studies and tutorials that illustrated how things work, including hands-on investigations of the mechanical advantage provided by bicycles, Irwin Quick-Grip clamps (Ullman, 2020), nutcrackers, and pipe cutters, and included asking students to qualitatively rank order and then quantify via measurements taken the mechanical advantage provided by these devices. The force vs. distance tradeoff was illustrated by determine whether different devices were force or distance multipliers even while input and output work is the same. Students' research efforts were supported by the class having virtual and face-to-face meetings with classroom visitors. Two were teenagers who were experienced wheelchair users and who acted as consultants to the design teams. Raising students awareness of their own growth of design capability was addressed using contrasting cases (Bransford et al, 1989), where students read descriptions that compared beginning versus informed designers doing various strategies related to design thinking. Titles linked to these descriptions highlighted the contrasts: skipping vs doing research; idea scarcity vs fluency, unfocused vs diagnostic troubleshooting. A variety of creativity heuristics were introduced, including lateral thinking (de Bono, 2014), biomimicry, and analogical reasoning. The use of design thinking for career planning was also emphasized. Building schemas of what beginning versus informed design think and do, and using design thinking in a variety of contexts, were key sought-after outcomes of the course. Students read a graphic novel about an MIT seniors taking a product design course, and used an Informed Design Rubric to rate their design thinking and work. Students at the end of the course used this same rubric to self-assess their own design actions and thinking when planning their prototypes or building their final costumes; e.g., a MineCraft Pig & Carrot and Buzz Lightyear spacecraft. A variety of formative assessments were used to adjust instruction and provide evidence of learning at various points in the 10-week course. This course was taught for three consecutive semesters from Fall 2022 to Fall 2023. The course will become a 15- rather than a 10-week module. The evolution of this instructional module, the specific topics of the 10-lesson sequence, and changes in the course’s design and rationales behind those decisions will be included in the final version of this paper.

Citation
Format

Crismond, D. (2024, June), Utilizing Informed Design Pedagogy and Strategies in Creating an Introduction to Engineering Design Module Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/48247

TY - CPAPER
AB - This Complete Evidence-based Practice paper will describe a 10-week Introduction to Engineering module created and taught by the author that introduced and emphasized the use of informed design thinking when doing design challenges. The module has been offered for three consecutive semester to undergraduates, where classes of 22 students working in teams faced design challenges involves meeting the needs of K-12 wheelchair users.
The main challenge for this instructional module involved creating Halloween costumes that could be attached to a child&#39;s wheelchair without marring it, be light in weight, safe to use, easily assembled, allow the child easy entrance and exit, and have sufficient clearance to pass through doorways and halls. A second challenge reported in this paper involved designing and building a rain protection system for a HS wheelchair user. The need for such a system was uncovered when students conducted a whole-class interview of a HS student who was visiting the class after having volunteered to answer questions about her MS-based disability and experiences as a wheel-chair user.
The Halloween design challenge was drawn from the work of a Kansas-based, non-profit organization called Walkin’ &amp;amp; Rollin’ Costume, which annually provides children who use wheelchairs with made-to-order costumes that get produced for free by volunteers and school groups around the country.
Halloween costume typically was fitted onto a frame made of PVC pipe, glued joints, and covered with a decorated shell made of PVC sheet material. Teams worked within a budget of $300, costs that were covered by the School of Engineering. Teams were required to design an “action component” that was either electrical and/or mechanical in nature. The child user had to be able to manipulate the action component safely and easily; e.g., if mechanical, the applied forces and range of motion had to be doable by the child. A safety feature was also required to alert passers-by of the user and costume during daytime or nighttime, given that there are more fatal traffic accidents on Halloween than any other day of the year in the US.
The 10-week module was part of a 15-week undergraduate Introduction to Engineering course (location redacted). Students met in-person once a week for a 110-minute hands-on class session. This was followed each week by 50-minute Friday lecture that introduced students to various engineering fields. The pedagogical strategies used during the course were derived from a framework of informed design teaching and learning (citation). An emphasis on human-centered design, understanding and empathizing with the user, and making informed design decisions, was highlighted.
Design thinking was introduced and reinforces in a variety of ways in the course. Students started in the first week watching a 1999 Ted Koppel Nightline episode called, Deep Dive, which documented the work of the Palo Alto-based IDEO product design firm. During the first two meetings, students working in teams faced a tallest tower challenge, where using 40 paper straws, paper clips, they had to build a freestanding structure that support a half-liter bottle of water placed at least half-way up the total length of the tower, and which could remain standing when undergoing a 6° tilt test. Students learned about and applied ideas regarding stability and rigidity of structures, the use of free-body diagrams, and a structured 4-step process of troubleshooting the structure. Diagnostic troubleshooting was a point of emphasis in students’ reports on their work in teams.
Readings were in groups of 4, and reviewed via Small-Group Discussions where each team member was responsible for creating Leader Notes and running a 5-7 minute discussion with the other team members. Students working in teams took on a variety of roles: Team Lead; Design &amp;amp; Research; Engineers/Makers; Coordinator of Materials; Presenter (Visuals); Testing / Safety; and Design Minder. Students reviewed case studies and tutorials that illustrated how things work, including hands-on investigations of the mechanical advantage provided by bicycles, Irwin Quick-Grip clamps (Ullman, 2020), nutcrackers, and pipe cutters, and included asking students to qualitatively rank order and then quantify via measurements taken the mechanical advantage provided by these devices. The force vs. distance tradeoff was illustrated by determine whether different devices were force or distance multipliers even while input and output work is the same. Students&#39; research efforts were supported by the class having virtual and face-to-face meetings with classroom visitors. Two were teenagers who were experienced wheelchair users and who acted as consultants to the design teams.
Raising students awareness of their own growth of design capability was addressed using contrasting cases (Bransford et al, 1989), where students read descriptions that compared beginning versus informed designers doing various strategies related to design thinking. Titles linked to these descriptions highlighted the contrasts: skipping vs doing research; idea scarcity vs fluency, unfocused vs diagnostic troubleshooting. A variety of creativity heuristics were introduced, including lateral thinking (de Bono, 2014), biomimicry, and analogical reasoning. The use of design thinking for career planning was also emphasized.
Building schemas of what beginning versus informed design think and do, and using design thinking in a variety of contexts, were key sought-after outcomes of the course. Students read a graphic novel about an MIT seniors taking a product design course, and used an Informed Design Rubric to rate their design thinking and work. Students at the end of the course used this same rubric to self-assess their own design actions and thinking when planning their prototypes or building their final costumes; e.g., a MineCraft Pig &amp;amp; Carrot and Buzz Lightyear spacecraft. A variety of formative assessments were used to adjust instruction and provide evidence of learning at various points in the 10-week course.
This course was taught for three consecutive semesters from Fall 2022 to Fall 2023. The course will become a 15- rather than a 10-week module. The evolution of this instructional module, the specific topics of the 10-lesson sequence, and changes in the course’s design and rationales behind those decisions will be included in the final version of this paper.
AU - David Crismond
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Utilizing Informed Design Pedagogy and Strategies in Creating an Introduction to Engineering Design Module
UR - https://peer.asee.org/48247
ER -