High school pre-engineering students’ engineering design cognition

This paper presents the results of a 2-year longitudinal study aimed at characterizing and comparing the design cognition of high school students with and without formal engineering design experiences. The students—working as dyads—engaged in design-only sessions generating solutions in response to the same engineering design challenges. The design sessions were video and audio recorded, transcribed, then segmented and coded using the Function–Behavior–Structure ontologically-based design issues and design processes coding scheme. Both the design issues and design processes were described and compared between the two high school student groups. The results of this study revealed significant differences in design issues, processes, and the cognitive effort in their problem/solution spaces between the two high school student groups when the design sessions were partitioned in two and three equal contiguous fractions. The paper concludes with a discussion regarding the significance of the differences found in this study and their pedagogical implications.