Self-evaluation of design decision-making skills gained through student generated learning AIDS

Abstract

This paper presents the findings from research in improving undergraduate engineering design decision-making skills. This work is motivated by the need to provide students with more design-decision making experience to enable them to be ready to engineer upon graduation. In this research, third and fourth year undergraduate mechanical engineering students were guided through the process of designing learning aid prototypes to be used in general engineering education. Students were encouraged to use advanced technologies such as 3D printing and virtual simulation to realize their concepts. This project assisted students in identifying their own and typical misconceptions and devise tools which corrected those cognitive errors. A series of self-evaluation methods were used to identify the student's perception of their decision-making skill levels. Over the multiple categories of design decision-making skills examined, there were various levels of change in the student's perceived skill level. These results identify some of the challenges in using perceived skills assessment as a means for evaluating education reform efficacy. Inconsistencies between student reporting improvements in categories but also reporting reduced skill levels indicate that students may grow in their understanding of their own skill limitations through the project activities. Overall, this work demonstrates a situated cognitive approach to teaching design decision-making in an authentic environment and presents metrics for evaluating the efficacy of that approach in terms of perception. The objective of this work is to enable graduating students to be confident in their abilities to make design decisions in an industrial setting at the beginning of their careers.