Eleven high school students participated in a one-week STEM summer camp focused on designing and building parachutes to deliver fragile objects safely. Using the Engineering Design Process (EDP) as a framework, students explored how canopy size affects performance. They applied physics concepts such as terminal velocity, forces, and acceleration,…

Expert designers determine what problem needs to be solved by creating a frame that allows the identification of potential solutions. However, it is unclear how students learn to generate these frames effectively, particularly in relation to ethical decision-making and selecting appropriate constraints. In this study, undergraduate and graduate…

In this study, middle school students' (8th grade, n = 24) problem-solving processes were investigated while implementing a design-based science learning (DBSL) approach. DBSL tries to incorporate science learning with the processes of engineering design. A DBSL module was developed by the research team within which students were expected to…

As part of ongoing design-based research exploring financial literacy teaching and learning, ten tasks termed "financial dilemmas" were trialled by 14 teachers and more than 300 Year 5 and 6 students in 4 government primary schools in urban Darwin. Drawing on data related to two tasks--"Catching the bus" and "Buying…

This research highlights a university-school division collaboration to pilot a professional development framework for integrating STEM in K-8 mathematics classrooms. The university researchers worked with mathematics coaches to construct a realistic and reasonable vision of STEM integration built upon the design principles of model-eliciting…

Drawing on a participatory study of the Perplex City alternate reality game, this paper considers the data obtained through participation and a detailed survey of the most engaged players, in order to determine the most engaging features and suggest methods for their transfer to educational contexts. Originally presented at a conference in 2008,…

The quasi-experimental field study with 174 advanced engineering students analysed the possibilities to assist the requirement analysis when solving design problems. Technical check lists are in common practice for assisting the requirement analysis. We wondered if a generic question answering system (GQAS) aiming at the "semantic relationships"…

With the rise of Web pages providing interactive support for problem-solving or providing large amounts of information on which a person is expected to act, designers and writers need to consider how a person interacts with increasingly complex information-rich environments and how they intend to use the information. This article examines some of…

This study discusses findings that replicate and extend the original work of Burns and Vollmeyer (2002), which showed that performance in problem-solving tasks was more accurate when people were engaged in a non-specific goal than in a specific goal. The main innovation here was to examine the goal specificity effect under both observation-based…

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…

This paper argues that an important design principle for building expert systems is to represent all control knowledge abstractly and separately from the domain knowledge upon which it operates. Abstract control knowledge is defined as the specifications of when and how a program is to carry out its operations, such as pursuing a goal, focusing,…

A study of grade 7 boys (n=6) and girls (n=4) investigated how students model ideas while designing and making. Analysis of video recordings identified five differences between modeling as described in the literature and as used by the subjects. The results suggest a need for students to model ideas in three-dimensional form early in the design…

This deliverable has been produced in the context of the Knowledge-Practice Laboratory (KP-Lab) project. KP-Lab focuses on innovative practices of working with knowledge in higher education, teacher training, and workplaces. Participants of WP10 are University of Helsinki, University of Oslo and Poyry Forest Industry representing both researchers…

Computing is a complex, multidisciplinary field that requires a range of professional proficiencies. Computing students are expected to develop in-depth knowledge and skills, integrate and apply their knowledge flexibly to solve complex problems, and work successfully in teams. However, many students who graduate with degrees in computing fail to…

The PRODIGY/EBL system [Minton88] was one of the first works to directly attack the problem of strategy utility. The problem of finding effective strategies was reduced to the problem of finding effective rules. However, this paper illustrates limitations of the approach. There are two basic difficulties. The first arises from the fact that the…