Evidence-Based Analysis of the Design of Collaborative Engineering Tasks

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Collaborative STEAM Opportunities to Learn

Abstract

Ill-structured tasks are important in engineering courses because they are similar to the problems that students will encounter in their future work. These types of tasks are motivating and require collaboration because they stimulate problem-centered interactional activity. Four problem-solving processes have been identified in the literature for effective collaborative ill-structured problem solving: problem representation, proposing solutions, making justifications, and monitoring and evaluation. This study compared the design of three ill-structured engineering tasks to identify how the elements of the task design can influence how groups employed the four processes. Findings indicated that explicit scaffolding prompts are necessary for groups to participate more evenly in the processes, which in turn can improve the quality of the groups’ final task solutions.

Authors

• Taylor Tucker, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Saadeddine S. Shehab, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Emma M. Mercier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Mariana Silva, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign