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

这个改进本科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引起教育工作者为本科工程专业设置课程的兴趣。设计项目提高学生解决问题的能力。然而，在如何实施项目方面存在着很大的差异，而且现有的指导方针是有限的。这部分是由于与典型的工程课程相比，这些课程的非传统和开放式的性质。目前的指导方针还受到缺乏旨在将教育实践与学习理论和设计中涉及的认知过程研究结果相结合的研究的阻碍。这项研究将产生一个通用的框架和数据收集工具，旨在指导工程学院改进基于项目的本科设计课程。本计划的成果将有助提高工科学生设计创新系统和流程的能力，以满足消费者的需求。科学和工程领域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。该项目将开发一个框架，解决工程设计项目的三个问题：需要与过程相关的、具体环境的指导，以帮助学生获得成功设计所需的程序知识；缺乏对先前设计的详细文档的访问，这是学生需要展示知识转移能力的；与此相关的是缺乏进入工程实践社区的机会，学生必须与他们一起学习设计知识的技术和社会方面。为了定义工程设计的一般教学框架，有必要从各种课程和环境中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有效性。本项目的研究将深入了解新手设计师所遵循的过程，以及提高学习者程序知识所需的指导类型，学习者与先前设计和工程实践社区互动的方式，以及这些互动对他们设计知识的影响。鉴于开放源码技术和相关的在线实践社区的可用性增加，后一种贡献尤其重要。该项目包括努力将这项工作的结果传播给更广泛的工程教育界。

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.