Interdisciplinary Design Education Strategies

Grant:

Gilbert Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching

Academic Year:

2009 - 2010 (June 1, 2009 through May 31, 2010)

Funding Requested:

$10,000.00

Project Dates:

Mon, 06/01/2009 - Fri, 04/30/2010

Applicant(s):

gonzo

srdaly

pyp

Overview of the Project:

Designing products, systems, or services offers students a unique way to explore the disciplinary knowledge accumulated in their chosen curriculum in a hands-on manner, representative of the problems they will face in their chosen careers. In engineering, application of technical knowledge through design is essential; however, the ability to apply disciplinary knowledge through design is dependent on students' design skills. These include strategies to approach design tasks, decision-making, innovative thinking, dealing with ambiguity, understanding the user, interdisciplinary communication, working within constraints, evaluating alternatives, and iterating on solutions. The goals of this project are to (i) assemble and analyze qualitative data of design pedagogies from design educator, and form a collection of strategies that can be used in diverse disciplinary design education contexts; (ii) develop curricular materials to help introduce innovative educational strategies into undergraduate design curricula and experiences. Our experience over the past several years in teaching the courses Analytical Product Design (ME455, DESCI 501, ARTDES 300) and Design Process Models (PSYCH 541, DESCI 502, ARTDES 350) have encouraged us to pursue a more systematic documentation of practices across campus, and a codification suitable for curricular implementation, not only in the above courses but in several other courses, including mainstream core classes (e.g., ME 250, 350, 450 and MDE 350). The faculty team associated with the Design Science (DESCI) Program provides a natural vehicle for curricular dissemination.

Final Report Fields

Project Objectives:

The goals of this project were to (i) assemble and analyze qualitative data of design strategies from student and practicing engineering and industrial designers, and; (ii) develop a curricular tool to help introduce these strategies into undergraduate design curricula and experiences.

Project Achievements:

We completed an extensive analysis of idea generation strategies in engineering. These strategies were then formulated as a set of design heuristics that can be applied to new design problems. The heuristics provide specific guidance about ways to create novel ideas. We then designed a pedagogical tool, "design heuristic cards," grounded in data collected from advanced students and practitioners in engineering and industrial design. The cards are a way to translate our findings to a tool that can be integrated into curricula. We have piloted these cards with novices in both engineering and industrial design, and have done a number of iterations to refine the cards. Seda Yilmaz received her doctoral degree based on the development of the design heuristics. b. How many students were impacted by this project? Undergraduate students: 225 Graduate students: 10 c. How many courses were impacted by this project? 5

Continuation:

Yes, the Phase I efforts developed the training materials. The next step is to implement this pedagogy into a broader population of existing engineering classes. We will continue our study of the heuristics and their impact, and we plan to write further grant applications as the work develops.

Dissemination:

We have published a number of papers in refereed outlets, including the following: Yilmaz, S., Daly, S., Seifert, C., Gonzalez, R. (2010). A comparison of cognitive heuristics use between engineers and industrial designers. Proceedings of the Design Computing and Cognition conference. Daly, S., Yilmaz, S., Seifert, C., Gonzalez, R. (2010). Cognitive heuristic use in engineering design ideation. Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education (AC 2010-1032). Washington, DC: American Society for Engineering Education. We received a best paper award at the Design Computing and Cognition Conference for this work. We have two manuscripts in preparation for journal publication based on the Phase 1 findings. We have also begun disseminating this work by introducing the design heuristic pedagogy as supplemental training in engineering classrooms. Professors in these classes have learned about the tool through our modeling of the pedagogy in workshops held in their classes. Dissemination will continue through our future work in engineering and industrial design courses, and we plan to expand to include courses from other fields, such as business, architecture, and art & design. Additionally, we are developing a workshop for design educators that we can offer at UM, potentially through CRLT, as well as at the national American Society for Engineering Education conference.

Advice to your Colleagues:

Engaging colleagues teaching relevant courses was key to our pilot testing of the training pedagogy. We were able to interest several faculty teaching Engineering 100 sections, and these pilot tests were very positively received. However, initiating contacts with teaching faculty and asking for access to class time can pose a problem. Outreach with personal contacts was key to finding testbed courses for the project.

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