Engineering Design Thinking, Teaching, and Learning

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2005 by Dym, Clive L, Agogino, Alice M, Eris, Ozgur, Frey, Daniel D, Leifer, Larry J

ABSTRACT

This paper is based on the premises that the purpose of engineering education is to graduate engineers who can design, and that design thinking is complex. The paper begins by briefly reviewing the history and role of design in the engineering curriculum. Several dimensions of design thinking are then detailed, explaining why design is hard to learn and harder still to teach, and outlining the research available on how well design thinking skills are learned. The currently most-favored pedagogical model for teaching design, project-based learning (PBL), is explored next, along with available assessment data on its success. Two contexts for PBL are emphasized: first-year cornerstone courses and globally dispersed PBL courses. Finally, the paper lists some of the open research questions that must be answered to identify the best pedagogical practices of improving design learning, after which it closes by making recommendations for research aimed at enhancing design learning.

Keywords: design thinking, project-based learning, cornerstone courses, classroom as laboratory

I. INTRODUCTION

Design is widely considered to be the central or distinguishing activity of engineering [1]. It has also long been said that engineering programs should graduate engineers who can design effective solutions to meet social needs [2]. Despite these facts, the role of design in engineering education remains largely as stated by Evans et al. in 1990: "The subject [of design] seems to occupy the top drawer of a Pandora's box of controversial curriculum matters, a box often opened only as accreditation time approaches. Even 'design' faculty-those often segregated from 'analysis' faculty by the courses they teach-have trouble articulating this elusive creature called design'1 [3]. Design faculty across the country and across a range of educational institutions still feel that the leaders of engineering departments and schools are unable or unwilling to recognize the intellectual complexities and resources demanded to support good design education [4].

Historically, engineering curricula have been based largely on an "engineering science" model over the last five decades, in which engineering is taught only after a solid basis in science and mathematics. (The "engineering science" model is sometimes unfairly characterised as the "Grinter model," an attribution that ignores many other recommendations in the Grinter report [5], some of which are being independently revived today.) The first two years of the curriculum-which in many respects have changed little since the late 1950s [6]-are devoted primarily to the basic sciences, which served as the foundation for two years of "engineering sciences" or "analysis" where students apply scientific principles to technological problems. The resulting engineering graduates were perceived by industry and academia as being unable to practice in industry because of the change of focus from the practical (including drawing and shop) to the theoretical [7]. What is now routinely identified as the capstone (design) course1 eventually became the standard academic response, with the strong encouragement of the ABET engineering accreditation criteria [7]. The capstone course has evolved over the years from "made up" projects devised by faculty to industry-sponsored projects where companies provide "real" problems, along with expertise and financial support [7, 8].

The infusion of first-year design courses-later dubbed cornerstone (design) courses [9] in the 1990s-was motivated by an awareness of the curricular disconnect with first-year students who often did not see any engineering faculty for most of their first two years of study [10, 11]. During this period first-year project and design courses emerged as a means for students to be exposed to some flavor of what engineers actually do [12-14] while enjoying an experience where they could learn the basic elements of the design process by doing real design projects (e.g., [15, 16]).

Though the presence, role, and perception of design in the engineering curriculum have improved markedly in recent years, both design faculty and design practitioners would argue that further improvements are necessary [4, 17]. There have even been formal proposals for curricular goals and assessment measures for design-based curricula (e.g., MIT's Conccive-Design-Implement- Operate (CDIO) initiative [18]). This argument is driven in part by a widespread feeling that the intellectual content of design is consistently underestimated. Thus, section II provides definitions of both engineering and design to set a context for what follows. It then reviews research on design thinking as it relates to how designers think and learn, which is an important reason that design is difficult to teach. Design thinking reflects the complex processes of inquiry and learning that designers perform in a systems context, making decisions as they proceed, often working collaboratively on teams in a social process, and "speaking" several languages with each other (and to themselves). Assessment data on these characterizations are also discussed, although some of that data derives from studies in contexts other than design.