Project-based Design Course Research Articles

Teaching child-computer interaction: Critical reflections on a project-based interaction design course

As a response to a recent call for developing teaching materials and sharing examples of good teaching practice in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI), this paper describes previous experiences from incorporating an existing CCI curriculum into an Interaction Design course, that is mandatory for third year Bachelor students enrolled in Communication Design program. This article is an attempt to reflect on the four-year experience constructively and critically in teaching and progressively developing an existing CCI course. The paper describes key elements to teaching how to carry out a theory-oriented and project-based design course formulated around the challenge of interaction design with and for children. As the paper reflects on previous experiences, the contribution of this paper is including formal procedural research ethics into student project proposals as part of core principles and giving students the possibility to manage a group work on several iterations for the same project throughout the semester. I discuss some of the reflections on the teaching experience for interaction design and children have posed to me as a CCI researcher and university teacher and outline a set of lessons learned that I think would shed a light for taking ethical approval for student project works in future CCI teaching practices.

A Socio-Emotional Framework to Understand Engagement in Engineering Student Project-Teams

Project-based design courses typically involve self-managed teams whose goal is to develop solutions to open-ended engineering problems. Due to their collaborative nature, team-based design courses are largely effective only if students participate and are engaged with both individual and team level learning and tasks. Despite efforts to improve team effectiveness, low engagement persists as a critical issue in engineering student project-teams. In this work, we present a socio-emotional conceptual framework to better understand how team member interactions affect the engagement of team members within engineering-student project-teams over time. It is proposed that this framework will be used to investigate previously overlooked characteristics of a team's social climate (including task interdependence, intra-team trust, and psychological safety) which may affect student engagement in the engineering project-team context. It is anticipated that this framework will provide novel insight into the social climate of the team environment and its effects on student engagement. Through better understanding these phenomena, we will be able to design curriculum to leverage this understanding and improve student engagement at a course-wide level.

SUPPORTING HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN IN PSYCHOLOGICALLY DISTANT PROBLEM DOMAINS: THE DESIGN FOR CYBERSECURITY CARDS

AbstractIncreasingly digital products and services make cybersecurity a crucial issue for designers. However, human-centered designers struggle to consider it in their work, partially a consequence of the high psychological distance between designers and cybersecurity. In this work, we build on the Design for Cybersecurity (DfC) Cards, an intervention to help designers consider cybersecurity, and examine a project-based design course to understand how and why specific DfC cards were used. Three findings result. First, designers found the intervention useful across all design phases and activities. Second, the cards helped design teams refocus their attention on the problem domain and project outcome. Third, we identify a need for support in framing and converging during user research, opportunity identification, and prototyping. We argue that the psychological distance between designers and the problem space of cybersecurity partially explains these findings, and ultimately exacerbates existing challenges in the design process. These findings suggest that design interventions must consider the psychological distance between designer and problem space, and have application in design practice across many complex problem domains.

When classroom interactions have to go online: the move to specifications grading in a project-based design course

Purpose The events surrounding the COVID-19 crisis had a profound effect on higher education, forcing students and instructors to face a sudden transition to wholly online learning contexts. This paper aims to examine how the design of a residential course was adapted to an online context and how this adaptation may prove beneficial to future iterations of the course. Design/methodology/approach This analysis centers on a master’s-level course in which students design software to support learning. One of the major changes to the course revolves around the transition from a traditional rubric-based grading scheme to a specifications grading system. This latter approach provides a series of binary (pass/fail) requirements (specifications) that students must meet to pass. Various forms of interactions were also altered during the transition; the authors investigate these in the paper. Findings This study found that the move to specifications grading helped students and the instructor to focus on the important work of meeting course learning goals. The approach also aligned well with authentic scenarios in which software projects are tested against certain specifications. Finally, this study concludes that thinking about specifications grading in the future can help us to develop more resilient pedagogical design approaches that respond to various forms of disruptions and changes. Originality/value The course design insights described in this paper illustrate alternative ways of instruction that can be especially useful during times of emergency, but which may also provide an added level of authenticity and learner motivation during times of stability.

The Influence of Entrepreneurial Mindsets on Student Design Problem Framing

Contribution: Increased understanding of the influence of a project-based multidisciplinary design and innovation course on students’ engineering design thinking, specifically regarding problem framing. Background: Entrepreneurship-related education has been offered to engineering and technology students, but its influence has been discussed mainly in terms of students’ self-efficacy or awareness of entrepreneurship or technological innovation, relying mostly on their self-reported data. Research Questions: 1) How do undergraduate students perceive the relationship between entrepreneurial mindsets and engineering design thinking after a project-based design course that integrates entrepreneurial activities and 2) How differently do they frame a design situation after this course? Methodology: This qualitative case study involved 14 undergraduate students pursuing a minor in design and innovation at a polytechnic institute. For more systematic data collection and analysis, a conceptual framework was developed based on literature about cognitive operations for problem framing and entrepreneurial engineering mindsets. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews and pre- and post-activities focused on problem framing. The interview and activity data were analyzed through multiple qualitative analysis approaches based on the conceptual framework. Findings: The analysis of the interview responses reveals the participants’ thoughts on the role of an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering design practice, and the comparison between their pre- and post-problem framing activities shows that they tended to focus more on Customer and Social problem elements and less on Technical and Business problem elements after the course. However, important questions remain to better understand the impact of this change on their design abilities.

Makerspaces in First-Year Engineering Education

Langara College, as one of the leading undergraduate institutions in the province of British Columbia (BC), offers the “Applied Science for Engineering” two-year diploma program as well as the “Engineering Transfer” two-semester certificate program. Three project-based courses are offered as part of the two-year diploma program in Applied Science (APSC) and Computer Science (CPSC) departments: “APSC 1010—Engineering and Technology in Society”, “CPSC 1090—Engineering Graphics”, and “CPSC 1490—Applications of Microcontrollers”, with CPSC 1090 and CPSC 1490 also part of the Engineering Transfer curriculum. Although the goals, scopes, objectives, and evaluation criteria of these courses are different, the main component of all three courses is a group-based technical project. Engineering students have access to Langara College’s Makerspace for the hands-on component of their project. Makerspaces expand experiential learning opportunities and allows students to gain a skillset outside the traditional classroom. This paper begins with a detailed review of the maker movement and the impact of makerspace in higher education. Different forms of makerspace and the benefits of incorporating them on first-year students’ creativity, sense of community, self-confidence, and entrepreneurial skills are discussed. This paper introduces Langara’s engineering program and its project-based design courses. Langara’s interdisciplinary makerspace, its goals and objectives, equipment, and some sample projects are introduced in this paper in detail. We then explain how the group-project component of APSC 1010, CPSC 1090, and CPSC 1490 are managed and how using makerspace improves students’ performance in such projects. In conclusion, the paper describes the evaluation of learning outcomes via an anonymous student survey.

Integrated Learning in First-Year Engineering: Preliminary Findings and Impressions from a New Project-Based Design Course

The first-year engineering curriculum at McMaster University is a common curriculum that introduces students to the field of engineering through discrete courses focused in graphics design, computing, materials science, and the engineering profession. While these courses provide an important foundation for entry into second year (in addition to the required courses in math and science), course topics are isolated and there is very little cross-over in content from one course to the next. This paper will present initial findings and impressions of “Health Solutions Design Projects I”, a project-based first-year course in McMaster’s new Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences (iBiomed) program. This new course, first offered in Fall 2017, integrates the aforementioned topics in first-year engineering into one course, and further reinforces these concepts through a series of design projects.

Peer Tutoring in Project-Based Course

In undergraduate engineering programs, design competency is mainly developed through project-based design courses. In such courses, a well framed practice is one of the best strategy to help students develop the ability to design solutions to complex, multifaceted and open-ended engineering problems. Nevertheless, supervising students, especially first-year students, requires a lot of effort and time. As the number of students increases, the task of closely supervising them becomes more difficult. Considering the small number of academic staff, peer tutors can provide a solution to the lack of resources. In addition to this, peer-tutoring is a very interesting pedagogical solution. In fact, the literature demonstrates that peer tutoring can benefit both students and tutors.Teaching assistants (TAs) have contributed in project based courses for a long time but there are not so many documented experiences about how to integrate peer-tutoring in a project-based design course or how to use fourth year students to tutor first year students.In fall 2017, a peer-tutoring program (PTP) has been implemented in the first year multidisciplinary design course. Fourth-year engineering students with relevant design experience acted as tutors for teams of four or five students. The intention was to reduce the pressure on our professional staff, while maintaining the same quality level of supervision.PTP assessment revealed that all stakeholders appreciated the experience. At low cost, it allowed more weekly hours of supervision and gave the professionals the possibility to perform tasks that only them can do. Although the impact of PTP on the quality of learning was not measured, the student level of satisfaction was very high.

A qualitative investigation of design knowledge reuse in project-based mechanical design courses

ABSTRACTThe interpretation and reuse of previous design solutions, or precedents, is central to design. This paper describes qualitative research conducted over three years at two institutions, aimed at investigating the role of design knowledge re-use in project-based mechanical design courses. Research data were collected through participant observation, student interviews, anonymous questionnaires, and website analytics. The paper identifies challenges that must be addressed in order to support novice engineers in rehearsing the types of knowledge required to successfully reason about and engage with design precedents. Two categories of design precedents are identified: concept precedents and detail precedents. Providing students with access to the latter is identified as a particular challenge, as is providing students with access to engineering communities of practice. Approaches to addressing these challenges are discussed.

Warp and Woof Method --- An Approach to Creativity

Since design education gets more importance nowadays a more effective teaching and learning model enhancing students' creativity becomes badly in need. The division between two categories of design schools also adds to the complexity of the given challenge towards innovation. To tackle this task many thoughts were collected and one special means developed to bridge the gap between theories and practice in design schools, namely the “Warp and Woof Method”. The warp and woof method trains designers in a practice-focused learning process, where theories and knowledge acquired separately are organized for findings and building new products. New courses are fitted inside existing curriculum to transform it into trans-disciplinary one. The STEM course forms the missing warp in a curriculum of art and design schools, while a project-based creative course serves as a strong woof building up the fabric of designer training for all design schools. The applications involved examples and feedback from universities in China. STEM course was carried out in BIT in Zhuhai and the project-based design course was done in Qilu University of Technology in Jinan, China. Both cases involved teaching with Warp and Woof Method combining lecture and practice. Students' feed back were very positive and open to improvements.

Increasing Quality and Involvement in Online Peer Feedback Exchange

Design instructors are integrating the use of online peer review platforms to keep pace with growing class sizes. However, these platforms typically prioritize randomized peer assignment strategies and show only the current solution to peers when writing feedback. This can result in low quality feedback in project-based design courses. We report on an experiment in which students (N=59) worked on twelve-week design projects and both wrote and received online feedback at four stages. The experiment tested a novel assignment strategy of peer mentorship, where peers were assigned to give feedback to all stages of the same project, and tested showing the context from the preceding design stage when composing feedback. The results showed that displaying the context from the preceding design stage led to feedback with higher perceived quality at the late design stages (but not at earlier stages) and feedback from mentors prompts longer responses from the feedback recipients. Our work contributes deeper empirical understanding of how assignment strategies and showing additional context affects peer feedback and provides practical guidelines for instructors to implement these methods in design courses.

Developing a Project-Based Capstone Design Course for English Writing Class

Developing a Project-Based Capstone Design Course for English Writing Class

A NOVEL PROJECT-BASED MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN EXPERIENCE

This paper presents the new multidisciplinary project based course at the graduate level. We explore how this novel course has been evolved from our multidisciplinary capstone course in the undergraduate level. We also introduce a new addition to our framework for multidisciplinary project based design courses, which is the faculty expert zone. This addition will enhance the students' multidisciplinary project based experience by providing a support system for wide ranges of projects that is offered by these courses. We also investigate qualitative and quantitative feedback from our students regarding the proposed framework that reflect students’ experiences

First Year Engineering, Hands-on, Team Design Project Course; Reflections of a Ph.D. Student/Teaching Assistant

The ultimate goal of engineering education is to produce graduates who know the principles and practice of design in their chosen field. The engineering design process is complex and for that reason is hard to learn and harder still to teach in a traditional lecture format. The pedagogy behind the team projects described in this paper is project-centered learning in which students develop team work skills, and are taught basic engineering design concepts in a hands-on format that complements the traditional lecture. An ideal project is one that is challenging, enjoyable, requires teamwork, low cost, and doable in a short amount of time. This paper presents the reflections of a PhD student/teaching assistant who was involved in a project-based design course for first-year engineering students. It outlines the course activities and reviews three contexts for practicing project-based design learning.

Laboratory Activities in Industrial Sequential Automation through a Virtual and Physical Environment

 Abstract—The present project is intending as a new training approach based on the communication technology and the interaction between future engineers and technicians students. The first phase of the global project was consisted of developing of an automated mini-plant for containers recycling process and was realized by engineering students attending the project-based design courses. The second phase is consisting in development of the virtual environment allowing interactions between the students and between the students and the mini-plant. A laboratory activity has been conducted on the modules of the mini-plant. Future engineers and technicians have the mission to design, program and troubleshoot while they are working simultaneously. The obtained results demonstrate that the engineers and technicians students communicate effectively but they have different skills and competences. The training objectives have been achieved and the learned lessons will be exploited to enhance the training level and the competences in the future. engineers and technician to rapid technological changes in automation systems. A relevant solution can be based on training by providing required skills to future engineers and technicians training. In fact, their academic contents also have to be constantly modernized to track current technologies and future trends. Aware to the training quality, the Universite du Que bec a Rimouski (UQAR), the Ce gep de Rivie re du-Loup (CEGEP) and the Premier Tech Company (PTS), a world leader in the bagging equipment field, have decided to join forces in order to improve the training of future engineers and technicians in Industrial Automation field.

DESIGNING DESIGN TEAM EXPERIENCES: CREATING STEAMER

A challenge in teaching engineering design lies in guiding the collaboration of students in a design team environment. We have identified a need for a virtual design space application that enhances the user experience so as to encourage teamwork and project management skills. The Student Team Electronic Resource (STeamER) project arose out of lessons learned over the past nine years teaching project-based design courses to engineering students. The overall objective of STeamER is to support students and instructors involved in team-based projects. We describe the rationale as well as identified requirements for the STteamER application.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS? HOW TO MAKE THEM AN ASSET FOR YOUNG ENGINEERS

There is no doubt that engineers need to develop oral and written communication skills during their engineering degree in order to satisfy the expectations of the profession and employers. According to the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board, the development of communication skills must be part of any engineering curriculum. These cross-disciplinary skills should be integrated throughout the curriculum in order to create links between technical and communication skills. Project-based design courses provide real-world contexts for the development of communication skills. Our actions could benefit from a broader view of communication skills. In this respect, this paper presents a chart structured around four communication situations: reception, production, mediation, and interaction. For each situation, the chart associates a general skill and presents the skill elements, learning objectives, skill activation context, and task samples. The chart can help the Faculty and program or department heads to develop pedagogical strategies and integrate them into specific courses or throughout the curriculum.

SERVICE LEARNING: A POWERFUL APPROACH TO THE INTRODUCTION OF ENGINEERING DESIGN FOR FRESHMAN

Service learning is a very interesting pedagogical approach for engineering education. It can be used in most engineering courses, but it fits well in a project-based design course. Through service learning, the students work with a real customer, apply all the steps of the design cycle, deliver a functional prototype, manage a real project, understand the multi-faceted responsibilities of an engineer and develop team work and communication skills. The approach was introduced in an existing, first year, first semester, design course. The experience shows that projects can be found in the community without too much effort, students perform very well and can deliver functional and useful prototypes in four months. Before introducing the service learning approach, the course was already well evaluated and is even more appreciated now. The conclusion is that service learning is a perfect approach for a course that was designed to introduce students to real-world problems in engineering at the start of their engineering education.

Learning Sustainable Design through Service

Environmental sustainability and sustainable development principles are vital topics that engineering education has largely failed to address. Service-learning, which integrates social service into an academic setting, is an emerging tool that can be leveraged to teach sustainable design to future engineers. We present a model of using service-learning to teach sustainable design based on the experiences of the Stanford chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World. The model involves the identification of projects and partner organizations, a student led, project-based design course, and internships coordinated with partner organizations. The model has been very successful, although limitations and challenges exist. These are discussed along with future directions for expanding the model.

Designing smart machines: Teaching mechatronics to mechanical engineers through a project-based, creative design course

Design curricula in departments of mechanical engineering should provide students with an exposure to systems which incorporate embedded processors, real-time software, sensors and actuators. A graduate-level, project-based design course taught at MIT is described as one model for such an experience. The challenges in developing such courses are to channel student energy into a successful learning experience and to manage the high costs of student and instructor time, equipment and supplies. Embedded processor courses need not be at the forefront of technology to be effective.