ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT LEARNING OF DESIGN SKILLS FROM A FIRST-SEMESTER DESIGN PROJECT

Students are known to be motivated by course activities that are relevant to their careers. Design projects offer this type of real-life experience and have the potential to provide a rich environment for learning engineering design skills. The objective of this study was to assess student learning of the design process resulting from a first-semester course organized around a team design project. Biological and agricultural engineering (BAE) and agricultural technology management (ATM) students prepared a functional layout design for one of eight BAE/ATM student spaces within Seaton Hall. The development of the layout design followed a design process, culminating in a presentation to the client (department head) and other constituents. Students were assessed using multiple instruments: self-assessment, assessment of the presentation, and a short-answer exam. Results were classified according to seven elements of the design process: (1) teamwork, (2) information gathering, (3) problem definition, (4) idea generation, (5) evaluation and decision making, (6) implementation, and (7) communication. Students appeared to learn in proportion to their perceived level of class emphasis in the problem-definition element and the teamwork element. Students both learned the problem-definition element and recognized this progress, which was considered a critical advance for first-semester engineers. Higher levels of understanding were demonstrated in the communication element and the information-gathering element despite a perceived lesser class emphasis. Further work is needed to control for student prior knowledge of the design process elements and to train students in self-assessment.