The goals of an introductory design course can span a wide range – including familiarization with design and shop tools, incorporation of physics into design decisions, and learning to work on a team and manage a project. In addition, the goals can also include fostering creativity and persistence and making all students welcome regardless of their prior experience in design. While attainment of some of these goals is straight-forward to assess in exams and report questions, attainment of others is more difficult to measure. This difficulty in evaluation prompts the need for new assessment methods to complement the more traditional approaches.
To address this need and better understand the success of achieving the educational objectives of the design course, a weekly reflection that included both multiple choice and free response questions was implemented. Reflection questions investigated student’s self-assessment of both their traditional engineering skills, as well as the experiential components of the course. One of the hypotheses explored was whether an individual project early in the course increased students’ level of confidence in the lab prior to a team-based project. Students’ self-reported scores for comfort in using various tools, insights on creative breakthroughs, and effectiveness of teamwork were also tracked, and trends in significant changes were measured and evaluated. In addition, correlations between self-assessment scores and performance on critical assignments, including both analysis and design-related questions, were explored.
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-5319-8995
University of California, San Diego
[biography]
Tania K. Morimoto received the B.S. degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, in 2012 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 2015 and 2017, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. She is currently an Assistant Professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and an Assistant Professor of surgery with University of California, San Diego. Her research interests include robotics, haptics, and engineering education.
Nathan Delson, Ph.D. is an Associated Teaching Professor at the University of California at San Diego. He received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and his interests include robotics, biomedical devices, product design, and engineering education. He was a co-founder and past president of Coactive Drive Corporation (currently General Vibration Corp.), a company that provides haptics and force feedback solutions. He is currently co-founder of eGrove Education Inc. which develops educational software for spatial visualization. He teaches hands-on design and entrepreneurship courses. His interests in engineering education include increasing student motivation, teamwork, and integration of theory into design projects.
Dr. Sandoval is the Associate Director of the Teaching + Learning Commons at the University of California, San Diego. She earned a PhD in Adult Education-Human Resource Development. Her research interests include adult learning and development, faculty development, qualitative methods of inquiry, and social justice education.
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