Design activities are gaining interest as rich contexts for learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. STEM teachers may find this challenging however, as designing requires support that they are not used to providing. In a subject like chemistry, teachers would have to balance creativity and responsibility for the…

Desired affordances and appropriate product semantics are important when considering products that are easy to use and easy to understand. Despite affordances and product semantics being taught in some design educations, many designers in industry do not explicitly consider affordances nor product semantics during the design process. This is…

Food Preservation Technology is a main module within a course integrated in a Master of Science program in Food Consumption at Universidade Aberta, Portugal. The pedagogical model adopted at Universidade Aberta encourages open practices such as teamwork and participation at the forums for learning exchange. E-learning and b-learning tools are…

Educational assessment has profound effects on the nature and depth of learning that students engage in. Typically there are two core types discussed within the pertinent literature; criterion and norm referenced assessment. However another form, ipsative assessment, refers to the comparison between current and previous performance within a course…

First year undergraduate design students have found difficulties in realising the standards expected for academic writing at university level. An assessment initiative was used to engage students with criteria and standards for a core interdisciplinary design subject notable for its demanding assessment of academic writing. The same graduate…

Iteration during the design process is an essential element. Engineers optimize their design by iteration. Research on iteration in Primary Design Education is however scarce; possibly teachers believe they do not have enough time for iteration in daily classroom practices. Spontaneous playing behavior of children indicates that iteration fits in…

This study presents the case of development and evaluation of a STEM-oriented 30-h robotics course for junior high school students (n = 32). Class activities were designed according to the P3 Task Taxonomy, which included: (1) practice-basic closed-ended tasks and exercises; (2) problem solving--small-scale open-ended assignments in which the…

Assessments of new pedagogical practices usually rely on instructor oriented surveys and questionnaires to measure student perceptions of teaching methods; however, fixed response categories in structured questionnaires might bias results. This paper demonstrates a mixed methods approach using open and multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) for a…

Human-centered design is of growing importance for professional designers and in the past two decades a series of techniques for designers to develop understanding of and empathy with a diversity of users has been developed within this field. In the second half of the twentieth century, intended users were involved late in the design process, i.e.…

With the rapid advances in civilization, technological breakthroughs, and a globally growing workforce, there is a strong need for engineers capable of working in the 21st century environment (Galloway, "The 21st century engineer: A proposal for engineering education reform." ASCE, Washington DC 2008). To help increase the quality and quantity of…

This paper proposes a compensative model for self-regulated learning in technology education (SRLT) comprised of cognitive, metacognitive and motivational domains. Discussion of the cognitive domain centers on problem-solving and creativity, with a focus on the need to engage students in open-ended assignments in informal contexts and to teach…

This paper will describe an inquiry into the case of a design & technology one-year Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) trainee's interpretation of their school-based experience in England using the DEPTH approach of subject knowledge, pedagogic knowledge and school knowledge. The following research questions drove the study: (a) What…