Paper Info
Title
Why make it? Understanding undergraduate engineering students' conceptions for the purpose of prototyping in engineering design activities.
Abstract
Prototyping in design provides ways to navigate ambiguity in the design problem, gain insight through the refinement of ideas, and aid in communication between team members. However, while designing, students often underutilize prototyping and do not consider it as an integral part of the design process. To facilitate the scaffolding of design activities, it is necessary first to understand students' conceptions of prototyping. In this study, we use artifact elicitation interviews as a method to elicit students' conceptions by moving from the specifics of the artifacts they brought with them to the interview, to their general understanding of prototyping. Participants in the study are students in an undergraduate sophomore designoriented, project-based learning course in a large southwestern university. Students were invited to participate in a screening survey. After potential participants suitable for the purpose of this study were identified, some were selected for a follow-up interview. The findings of the study describe students' conceptions of "what counts" as a prototype; what is valued in a prototype; the benefits of, and challenges associated with prototyping; and differences between in-class and out-of-class prototyping activities. The findings of this study improve our understanding to effectively scaffold prototyping activities in design and experiential learning.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1109/FIE.2018.8658628
Frontiers in Education Conference
Keywords
Field
DocType
prototyping,scaffolded activities,design education,design learning
Experiential learning,Engineering management,Sociology,Visualization,Mathematics education,Engineering design process,Ambiguity,Design activities
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0190-5848
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hadi Ali100.34
Micah Lande264.21