Design processes can be decomposed into several steps, including information acquisition and application. Retrieving prior knowledge and experience is an important method of acquiring design information, thus designers' precedents retrieval styles reflect their design thinking. The obvious difference between industrial (ID) and mechanical design…

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…

Background: Both learning and problem solving are major goals of complex problem solving in engineering education. The order of knowledge construction and problem solving in learning through problem solving, however, has not been explained in current literature. Objectives: To understand their relationships, this study compared the effects of…

This study explored the use of heuristics in the design space by novice and expert engineers in the initial ideation of a design solution. Verbal protocol analyses were conducted with four engineering students and four professional engineers as they generated ideas to solve a design problem. Overall, both experts and novices used various types of…

This study focuses on the investigation of the effects of computer simulation and animation (CSA) on students' cognitive processes in an undergraduate engineering course. The revised Bloom's taxonomy, which consists of six categories in the cognitive process domain, was employed in this study. Five of the six categories were investigated,…

The introduction of engineering practices within the "Next Generation Science Standards" provides technology educators with opportunities to help STEM educators infuse engineering design within a core curriculum. The introduction of teaching engineering design in early elementary grades also provides opportunities to conduct research…

The authors investigated the differences in using problem decomposition and problem recomposition between dyads of engineering experts, engineering seniors, and engineering freshmen. Participants worked in dyads to complete an engineering design challenge within 1 hour. The entire design process was video and audio recorded. After the design…

Open-ended problem solving is a central skill in engineering practice; consequently, it is imperative for engineering students to develop expertise in solving these types of problems. The complexity of open-ended problems requires a unique set of skills. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the approaches used by engineering…

This study investigated the mental representations of student and professional engineers while they solved an engineering design problem. The intent was to gain a deeper insight into the differences that exist in the cognitive processes of engineering students and professional engineers as they use mental representations (i.e., propositions,…

A cognitive construct that is important when solving engineering design problems is executive control process, or metacognition. It is a central feature of human consciousness that enables one "to be aware of, monitor, and control mental processes." The framework for this study was conceptualized by integrating the model for creative design, which…

This exploratory study highlights certain differences in the way an expert and a novice engineer used their analyzing and generating skills while solving a fairly ill-structured design problem. The expert tends to use more inferences and elaboration when solving the design problem and the novice tend to use analysis that is focused on the…

The present project embarked on an educational intervention, consisting of a series of online ethics learning modules, to aid international graduate students in overcoming the acculturation barriers to understanding and inculcating normative ethical obligations associated with engineering practice and research in the United States. A fundamental…

Describes an investigation of students' problem-solving strategies as seventh-grade students (n=10) attempted to design a solution to a technological problem. Concludes that novice designers use highly iterative rather than linear strategies, develop their ideas using three-dimensional materials rather than two-dimensional sketches, and develop…

States that scientific journal article introductions usually open with standard moves that introduce the community to new findings in specific literature. Presents a study in which 4 articles on chaos theory were analyzed--then 12 scientists were asked to think aloud while reading them. Emphasizes that scientific readers reacted differently.…

In this paper it is presented a virtual organizational environment, conceived with the integration of three computer programs: a manufacturing simulation package, an automation of businesses processes (workflows), and business intelligence (Balanced Scorecard) software. It was created as a supporting tool for teaching IE, its purpose is to give…