IUSE: A Pedagogical Framework for Undergraduate Project-Based Engineering Design Courses

这一改善本科STEM教育(IUSE)项目将开发一个框架来指导基于项目的工程设计课程的设计、评估和改进。涉及设计项目的工程课程越来越受到为本科工程课程设置课程的教育者的兴趣。设计项目能提高学生解决问题的能力。然而，项目的实施方式存在很大差异，现有的指导方针也很有限。这在一定程度上是因为，与典型的工程课程相比，这些课程具有非传统和开放式的性质。目前，由于缺乏旨在使教育实践与学习理论相一致的研究，以及对设计中涉及的认知过程的研究结果，指导方针也受到阻碍。这项研究将产生一个总体框架和数据收集工具，旨在指导工程学院在本科基于项目的设计课程中做出改进。该项目的成果将有助于提高工科学生设计创新系统和流程以满足消费者需求的能力。科学和工程方面的持续创新对国家安全、经济增长和实现可持续社会至关重要。该项目将制定一个框架，解决工程设计项目的三个方面的问题：需要与过程相关的、针对具体情况的指导，以帮助学生获得成功设计所需的程序性知识；缺乏对先前设计的详细文档，学生需要证明有能力传递知识；以及相关的缺乏进入工程实践社区的机会，学生必须参与其中，学习设计知识的技术和社会方面。为了确定工程设计的一般教学框架，有必要从各种课程和背景下的大量学生和教育工作者那里收集数据。为了实现这一目标，将开发新的方法和在线工具来评估不同学习环境的效果。在这个项目中嵌入的研究将深入了解新手设计师遵循的过程和提高学习者程序知识所需的指导类型，学习者与先前的设计和工程实践社区互动的方式，以及这些互动对他们的设计知识的影响。鉴于开放源码技术和相关在线实践社区的可获得性增加，后一项贡献尤为重要。该项目包括努力向更广泛的工程教育界传播这项工作的成果。

This Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project will develop a framework to guide the design, evaluation, and improvement of project-based engineering design courses. Engineering courses involving design projects are increasingly of interest to educators setting curricula for undergraduate engineering programs. Design projects improve students' problem solving abilities. However, much variation exists in how projects are implemented and existing guidelines are limited. This is due, in part, to the non-traditional and open-ended nature of these courses when compared to typical engineering courses. Currently guidelines are also hindered by a lack of research aimed at aligning educational practice with learning theories and results from research on the cognitive processes involved in design. The research will result in a general framework and data collection tools intended to guide engineering schools in making improvements in undergraduate project-based design courses. Results of this project will help improve the ability of engineering students to design innovative systems and processes to meet consumer needs. Continued innovation in science and engineering is vital to national security, economic growth, and achieving a sustainable society.The project will develop a framework that addresses three problematic aspects of engineering design projects: the need for process-related, context-specific coaching to help students acquire the procedural knowledge required for successful design; a lack of access to detailed documentation of prior designs, which students need to demonstrate an ability to transfer knowledge; and a related lack of access to engineering communities of practice, with whom students must engage to learn both the technical and social aspects of design knowledge. To define a general pedagogical framework for engineering design, it is necessary to gather data from large numbers of students and educators in a variety of courses and contexts. To achieve this, new methods and online instruments will be developed for evaluating the efficacy of different learning environments. The research embedded in this project will yield insights into the processes followed by novice designers and the types of coaching required to improve learners' procedural knowledge, the ways in which learners interact with prior designs and engineering communities of practice, and the effects these interactions have upon their design knowledge. This latter contribution is especially important given the increased availability of open source technology and related online communities of practice. The project includes efforts to disseminate the results of this work to the broader engineering education community.