Who Listens To Whom? A Citations Analysis Of Recent Papers On Engineering Design Education

Abstract

Design is a central component of engineering education and practice. Students may experience design as early as their freshman year, and most students conclude their baccalaureate education with a capstone design experience. In addition, there are many studies in engineering design that can be of value to design educators. In this paper we describe the methods, data, and results of a citation* analysis of journal and conference articles concerning design education. Our goal was to determine the extent to which design educators bring outside knowledge into the classroom or reference design research. The citation analysis was conducted by selecting articles with “design” in the title from selected engineering journals and conferences from the past five years. Bibliographic entries from each of the resulting 274 articles were entered into a database, and this information was imported into a spreadsheet to analyze the number and kinds of citations. For example, the information could be catalogued and sorted by type (e.g., journal, book, conference), specific sources (e.g., Journal of Engineering Education), and topics (e.g., book titles that contained “assessment”). From this research we discovered that most of the citations were publications by design educators, not design researchers. In particular, most of the journals, conferences, and periodicals were from the engineering design education community. In comparison, references to design research or education research sources, such as AERA and Research in Engineering Design, were rare. We are currently using this research to develop a workshop for introducing design educators to design research and illustrating how design research may be used in the classroom. This research may also be used to develop an awareness of communication patterns within the design education community, describe the current state of design education, and identify areas of improvement in design education. *The words “citation” and “reference” are used interchangeably throughout the document.