Work in Progress - Behavioral Aspects of Student Engineering Design Experiences

Problem- and Project-Based Learning courses have come to be popular as underlying pedagogies for Engineering Design classes. Though shown to increase student learning and engagement such active learning approaches also sometimes fall short of addressing student and faculty uneasiness with novel and seemingly unorthodox course designs. Through a planned 2-year qualitative comparison evaluation of two capstone engineering design courses at two different universities, the difficulties and successes of both students and faculty engaged in such courses will be described and characterized on a social plane. Qualitative and projective methods will be utilized to report project development across three dimensions: 1) assignment milestones of design iterations, 2) student and team reflections, and 3) instructor team reports on progress. It is planned that from these affective and social observations, interventions can be constructed and organized into a workshop format for students participating in these Problem- and Project-based Learning Engineering Design courses.