Transfer of Design Thinking in Undergraduate Bioengineers

• In Event: Dynamic Integration of Identity, Learning, and Motivation Across Various Social-Cultural Contexts

Abstract

Whereas a central goal in engineering education is developing students’ design thinking for creative real-world problem solving, decades of research have demonstrated that students commonly fail to transfer design thinking strategies they learned in undergraduate courses to their capstone projects and to their engineering jobs. The research question guiding this project is: how can engineering instructors enhance transfer of design thinking strategies among bioengineering undergraduate students? This project builds on contemporary theories of role identity, motivation, learning, and transfer to develop a theoretical framework and theory-informed pedagogical principles to teach design thinking strategies in a manner that supports their transfer across contexts and tasks. The project involves a collaboration between a bioengineering professor, an engineering doctoral student, and an educational psychology professor who adapt the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) to a conceptual framework of engineering students’ transfer of design thinking strategies across context-based role-identities, and the formulation of pedagogical design principles to promote such transfer in engineering undergraduate courses. The theoretical framework and pedagogical design principles guide this design-based research that involves the design of transfer-promoting activities focused on design thinking strategies into a Biodesign undergraduate course. The project focuses on implementing activities and investigating students’ engagement in these activities and their degree and type of transfer of the design thinking strategies into their capstone project. Efforts are also focused on using findings to reformulate the conceptual framework and pedagogical principles, redesigning the activities, implementing them, and investigating students’ engagement and transfer.

Author

• Ruth Ochia, Temple University