Development of a Concept Inventory for Functional Reasoning

伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校的这个项目将通过创建和测试一种评估功能推理能力的方法，帮助提高工程专业学生设计技术产品的能力。功能推理是将工程设计问题所需的任务设想为通过一系列步骤或功能来完成的能力。功能推理使工程师能够分解机械系统，并根据其子系统所执行的功能和特征对其进行正确分析。本项目将开发一种有效的方法来评估学生对功能的理解。功能推理能力的评估将通过帮助教师更准确地确定一些学生在发展功能推理技能方面遇到的困难的性质，来改善工程教育并增加工程专业学生的保留率。这项工作将包括伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校和社区学院教员之间的合作。这项工作将开发和验证功能推理的概念清单，作为帮助促进对本科生进行深思熟虑和有效的功能推理教学的一种手段。项目人员将在概念清单的开发中应用公认的最佳实践。该方法将采用德尔菲研究方法作为一种结构化的手段，向专家征求功能设计方法内容方面的信息。虽然工程功能通常包含在高级工程课程中，但本项目将考虑在一年级工程学生的设计课程中教授功能推理。项目团队预计功能推理的能力可能与某些人口变量相关；一个多样化的、受过良好教育的工程师队伍将取决于一个深思熟虑的、经过深思熟虑的方法来教授和学习功能。项目团队包括具有工程设计方法专业知识的工程教师以及来自学习科学的合作者。这项工作的结果将是一个概念清单，以评估工程学生的功能推理能力。

This project at the University of Illinois at Chicago will help to improve the ability of engineering students to design technological products by creating and testing a means to assess functional reasoning capabilities. Functional reasoning is the ability to conceive of a task required in an engineering design problem as accomplished by a set of steps or functions. Functional reasoning allows engineers to decompose a mechanical system and correctly analyze it in terms of the functions performed by its subsystems and features. This project will develop a validated method to assess student understanding of function. Assessment of functional reasoning ability will improve engineering education and increase retention of students in engineering by helping faculty to more precisely determine the nature of the difficulties some students have in developing functional reasoning skills. The work will include a collaboration between faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago and faculty at community colleges.This work will develop and validate a concept inventory for functional reasoning as a means to help promote thoughtful and effective teaching of functional reasoning to undergraduate students. Project personnel will apply accepted best practices in the development of the concept inventory. The approach will use Delphi study methods as a structured means to solicit information from experts in the content of functional design methods. While engineering function is often covered in senior-level engineering courses, this project will consider the teaching of functional reasoning in the context of design courses for first year engineering students. The project team anticipates that facility with functional reasoning may correlate with certain demographic variables; and a diverse and well-educated pool of engineers will depend upon a thoughtful, considered approach to teaching and learning about function. The project team includes engineering faculty with expertise in engineering design methodologies as well as collaborators from the learning sciences. The outcome of the work will be a concept inventory to assess functional reasoning ability in engineering students.