STUDENTS'MODELING THROUGH VISUAL AND VERBAL REPRESENTATIONS

Design Studies, 2010

Using verbal protocol analysis, we report how model building has the potential to aid engineering students in solving a design task. From our analysis of 8 students in varying engineering disciplines, we found that physical construction of a model during an open-ended design task helped students generate and evaluate ideas, better visualize their ideas, and helped students uncover differences between real behavior and the conceptual model used to predict that behavior. Model building also enhanced creative thinking and helped students become more aware of their own meta-cognitive design strategies. We also found that, regardless of when they began sketching or building, the process was fairly similar in length for most of these students.

International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering, 2019

Technology plays a major role in the easement of teaching and learning in engineering education. Novel techniques adopted in the recent days, have resulted in a huge success on the part of educators. These techniques create a great difference in the instructional delivery, with real-time impact on the understanding and learning of students. In this context, Model Based Teaching and Learning (MBTL) is identified as one such resourceful method to teach certain educational concepts which require imagination. Use of models within the pedagogy of engineering education promotes meta cognitive thinking skills of students. The purpose of this research was to examine the advantages of adopting model-based teaching and learning for the course, Engineering Drawing for first year engineering students. A class of 120 Engineering students during the second semester participated in the research. The students were randomly grouped into two groups of each 60 in order to receive different treatments. The first group was identified as the Control group (CG) which was taught concepts of Engineering Drawing using traditional lecture method, while the second group, the Experimental Group (EG) was facilitated with models related to projection of lines and orthographic projections. The results revealed that using models had a significant impact on the academic achievement of the students. Based on their performance in the continuous assessment, it was concluded that models were very helpful in improving the marks, and also played an effective role in the comprehension of concepts.

ineer.org

This article argues for a future-oriented, inclusion of engineering modeling activities in introductory engineering courses at the university level. Engineering modeling activities provide a rich source of meaningful engineering problem situations that capitalise on and extend students' ...

2010

This study used Verbal Protocol Analysis (VPA) to investigate the cognitive process of 8 undergraduate engineering students during a hands-on model building design task. The present paper will focus on one aspect that emerged from this research: the paramount importance of correctly interpreting the problem. Although this may seem simplistic, correctly framing or interpreting the problem (which is distinct from identifying the problem) was a crucial and pivotal point for these students. Without it, the developmental process stalled and the design path became more haphazard. Once students were able to correctly interpret the problem, their path to a viable solution progressed much more smoothly and efficiently.

2010

Engineering capstone design is a culminating experience that is intended to provide an opportunity for students to apply their previous engineering knowledge to develop solutions to open-ended problems. Capstone design problems are often analytically complex, and their solutions integrate several disciplinary fundamentals, as well as more general design process knowledge. Often, the expectation is that a thorough or rigorous solution to a capstone level problem would include some type of computational or mathematical analysis appropriate to that discipline. However, engineering students often struggle in recognizing when and how disciplinary knowledge (e.g. mathematical analysis inherent in many engineering fundamentals) applies to their particular design solutions. This paper describes the strategy for and initial results of a study exploring how students use mathematical reasoning when developing design solutions. Specifically, we want to understand where students struggle in the ...

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

Tec de Monterrey; and a M.S. in Educational Technology and a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Her research is focused on identifying how model-based cognition in STEM can be better supported by means of expert technological and computing tools such as cyber-physical systems,visualizations and modeling and simulation tools.

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

Computational tools are becoming more useful pedagogical tools because of their ability to create and display multiple representational forms, often interactively, and as a function of time. Specifically, representational artifacts such as graphs, visual models, and simulations of physical or non-physical phenomena can serve as tools in guiding inquiry and constructing solutions in engineering design. However, there is a limited amount of research that describes the computational practices of engineering students. In particular, there is a need to investigate the way engineering students use computational tools for developing solutions to complex design problems beyond the first year of engineering. This study investigates graduate students' computational practices that inform their problem-solving processes to accomplish a design task. In this paper we define computational practices as a system of activities carried out to create symbolic representations. These representations refer to simplifications of systems or artifacts that delete, maintain and distort aspects of a phenomenon in order to support scientific inquiry and design activity. The research question from this study is: How do graduate students engage modeling and computational practices towards problem solving in a material science rechargeable battery design course? A theoretical framework based on Lev Vygostky's Activity theory was used for understanding and describing the role of computational resources used by lower level graduate students for problem solving. In particular, the study investigated two groups of participants that were tasked to utilize different computational resources: analytical or computational. A qualitative analysis was used to perform an in-depth examination of students' solutions consisting of three elements; the subject, mediating tools and the task objectives. The results of this study will be beneficial in expanding the current work in investigating the role of representations for conceptual change in engineering and provide insights into how students process knowledge when provided with simulation tools and computational methods for solving design problems.

Mathematical Modelling for Engineering Diploma Students: Perspectives on Visualisation, 2017

This inquiry aims to determine the influence of mathematical modelling on engineering diploma students' visualisation when solving differential equations (DE) with a computer algebra system (CAS). In CAS environments, students usually struggle to interpret numerical tables and computer graphs derived from symbolic DEs and often leave interpretative questions unanswered. Participants comprised 80 second year vocational engineering diploma students at a comprehensive university. Students' abilities to make contextual connections between different representations through a model-eliciting task were assessed using content analysis. By reversing the curricular approach, most participants constructed a meaningful DE that deepened understandings of the world in which they modelled. The modelling environment stimulated development of adequate schema through experimentation with paper-and-pen and CAS technologies.

2011

Engineering design involves insightful identification of factors influencing a system and systematic unpacking of specifications/requirements from goals. However, many engineering students are slow to articulate the major problems to be solved and the sub problems associated with achieving the main design goals and constraints. Prior research in design describes students" premature termination of solution finding to select a single idea. Then all other design decisions are constrained by this initial decision [1]. In this paper, we report how first-year engineering (FYE) students attempted to translate given design goals into sub-problems to be solved or questions to be researched. We found that, instead of decomposing the problem through further analysis and sense making, many FYE students tended to "restate" the goal, identify one major function, and then use hands on building as the central creative process. Further, students claimed they used a systematic design process, but observations of their problem solving process and teaming skills indicated a different behavior. Further investigation indicated that many FYE students could identify the superficial features from the problem statement, but they were not able to identify the implicit logical steps or deep structure of the problem. Our current data provided the baseline of how FYE students abstract and interpret information from a design goal to generate a specific problem statement. We are interested in treatments to improve students" ability to recognize critical features of a given context and encourage taking multiple perspectives to identify alternative solutions. We are combining the use of graphical representational tools as organizational tools to support teams collaboration and we encourage opportunities to reflect and refine their design process. This research is relevant to engineering instructors/researchers who want to develop students" ability to deal with complex design challenges and efficiently decompose, analyze and translate the problem statements into meaningful functional specifications, stakeholder requirements and a plan of action.

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

Engineering design involves insightful identification of factors influencing a system and systematic unpacking of specifications/requirements from goals. However, many engineering students are slow to articulate the major problems to be solved and the sub problems associated with achieving the main design goals and constraints. Prior research in design describes students" premature termination of solution finding to select a single idea. Then all other design decisions are constrained by this initial decision [1]. In this paper, we report how first-year engineering (FYE) students attempted to translate given design goals into sub-problems to be solved or questions to be researched. We found that, instead of decomposing the problem through further analysis and sense making, many FYE students tended to "restate" the goal, identify one major function, and then use hands on building as the central creative process. Further, students claimed they used a systematic design process, but observations of their problem solving process and teaming skills indicated a different behavior. Further investigation indicated that many FYE students could identify the superficial features from the problem statement, but they were not able to identify the implicit logical steps or deep structure of the problem. Our current data provided the baseline of how FYE students abstract and interpret information from a design goal to generate a specific problem statement. We are interested in treatments to improve students" ability to recognize critical features of a given context and encourage taking multiple perspectives to identify alternative solutions. We are combining the use of graphical representational tools as organizational tools to support teams collaboration and we encourage opportunities to reflect and refine their design process. This research is relevant to engineering instructors/researchers who want to develop students" ability to deal with complex design challenges and efficiently decompose, analyze and translate the problem statements into meaningful functional specifications, stakeholder requirements and a plan of action.