High School Students’ Application of the Engineering Design Process

Abstract

This work-in-progress paper examines the engineering design process to emphasize open-ended problem solving that encourages students to design, test, and learn from their trials. This process nurtures students' abilities to create innovative solutions to challenges in any subject. Integration of engineering design into secondary experiences is a supportive context for STEM learning. Such experiences introduce students to the nature of engineering and provide opportunities to experience how engineers respond to emerging challenges. These experiences are important in promoting an understanding of engineering and cultivating interest in the profession. The engineering design process engages students in identifying a problem, developing possible solutions, making a prototype, testing and evaluating, modifying and retesting, and communicating results. The last stage in this process extends the common five stage approach, recognizing the critical nature of scientific communication in sharing results. It is essential for students to become familiar with the process as they develop their design thinking, and model the processes used by engineers. This study explores students' use of the engineering design process by analyzing students’ written engineering design reports that were composed and submitted for a STEM competition at the secondary school level. Researchers used the six phases of the design process as a lens to explore students’ demonstration of each component. Preliminary results of the thematic analysis show that students identify design challenges to address, usually in the form of "I will engineer a XXX that will address YYY" where the problem and engineering solution are specified. Though students provide critical information on their design steps, steps are often not detailed enough to convey the actual process taken in design and testing. Students engage in a iterative process of testing, addressing issues, retesting, but often do not describe the retesting process or final changes. Data is often summarized in narrative form with limited attempts to incorporate tables, graphs, and illustrations to communicate design features and data from trials. Students summarize their findings but often fail to use language that conveys how the outcomes address the stated problem or challenge. This paper describes salient findings for each of the six engineering design phases.