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…

Various theories and models have implicitly discussed the role of interaction when using learning technologies. Indeed, interaction is described as being important as it relates to technology adoption, cognitive load, and usability. While each of these perspectives describe elements of interaction, they fail to comprehensively detail how educators…

One of the characteristics of the twenty-first century is the increase in the information sources available to designers to make their design decisions. However, current verbal protocol analysis methods and theoretical frameworks do not explain how internal and external information sources contribute to novice designers' moment-to-moment thought…

This research focused on first-year university students' visuospatial cognition in terms of producing three-dimensional (3D) representations of objects from two-dimensional (2D) views. The research was important since students often had difficulty with 2D to 3D transition activities. A synthesis from the literature established a 2D to 3D…

Design within primary and secondary schools has been increasingly emphasized over the past decade. As a response to this increased interest, qualitative research examining students' cognitive processes involved in the practices of design has been on the rise. These studies have commonly employed the concurrent think-aloud research methodology to…

In this article, we explore the cognitive process and resources drawn upon when moderating artwork. The cognitive processes involved in the external moderation of non-exam assessments has received little attention; the few research studies that exist investigated moderation where the candidates' submissions were in mostly written form. No studies…

Cultivating students' design abilities can be highly beneficial for the learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts, and development of higher-order thinking capabilities (National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council in STEM integration in k-12 education: status, prospects, and an agenda for…

Framing design problems and solutions has been recognised in design studies as a central designerly activity. Some recent findings with expert designers relate framing practices to problem-solution co-evolution and analogy use, two further widely recognised design strategies. We wanted to understand if interaction design novices also use…

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…

Empirical evidence on the way in which expert designers from different domains cognitively connect their internal processes with external resources is presented in the context of an extended cognition model. The article focuses briefly on the main trends in the extended design cognition theory and in particular on recent trends in information…

The internal design thinking behaviour of designers in the concept development has been an important issue of cognitive psychology. In this study, the design thinking process designers have in applying digital media and traditional paper in the early concept development stage was explored. Special focus was made on the structure and procedure of…

The objective of this research was to explore design thinking among teams of high school students. This objective is encompassed in the research question driving this inquiry: How do teams of high school students allocate time across stages of design? Design thinking on the professional level typically occurs in a team environment. Many…

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…

Since the publication of the Standards for Technological Literacy in 2000 (ITEA), there have been a number of new programs developed that are designed to teach pre-engineering. Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is one such program. Project Lead the Way boasts serving over 1250 schools in 44 states and teaching over 160,000 students. Another program is…

A comparative study was conducted to compare two approaches to engineering design curriculum between different schools (inter-school) and between two curricular approaches, "Project Lead the Way" (PLTW) and "Engineering Projects in Community Service" (EPIC High) (inter-curricular). The researchers collected curriculum…