Supporting engineering education with information technology: The case of instructional design experiences

Engineering education is changing—a wider variety of instructional practices are being used, and information technology is becoming pivotal. This research examines the problem of developing information technology to support instructional design experiences in engineering education. In an instructional design experience, students design solutions to open problems, often working in teams. The research involved the concurrent exploration of two questions: (1) what factors constrain the effectiveness and feasibility of instructional design experiences? and (2) how can information technology be used to support them? An initial study, carried out in the context of a mechanical engineering design experience, focused on student use of an existing computer-based discussion tool to support team communication. The paucity of student use of that tool led to a second study, an ethnographic investigation of team communication carried out in the context of an industrial engineering design experience. The results of the second study were used to characterize and identify problems with team communication. However, other observations concerning the students' activities led to a broadening of scope with the identification of more general problems concerning design and teamwork. The results from these studies concerning the diversity, quantity, and character of student problems led to the design the Reflective Learner. The Reflective Learner provides students with the opportunity to identify and resolve their own problems. In a naturalistic study of the Reflective Learner, students voluntarily used it and were able to identify and discuss their problems with the support of the tool. Collectively, these research efforts characterize some of the wide variety of problems that can arise with the use of instructional design experiences in practice and the unexpected strategies that students may use to complete the design experiences. This suggests the, need to be cautious when assuming that instructional design experiences are effective based on student products rather than process. Concerning design, information technology to support students should be able to promote successful process completion, help the students understand the importance of the process, respect student and instructor time constraints, and be adaptable to the different and changing needs of students in such design experiences.