An Experiential Learning Framework for Improving Engineering Design, Build, and Test Courses

We assert a need for the incorporation of educational theory into engineering design, build, and test (DBT) courses, particularly in terms of how that theory can be used to improve such courses incrementally. In our course AME4163 – Principles of Engineering Design, a senior-level engineering DBT course, we have incorporated David Kolb’s experiential learning construct into the fabric of course activities, assignments, and structured exercises. We now seek to additionally leverage Piaget’s cognitive constructivism and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory into structured learning exercises. One such exercise is the ‘Learning Statement,’ (LS) a reflective exercise in which students directly translate experience into learning and articulate expected future value from that learning. In employing the LS as an instrument for a formative assessment, we attempt to identify the students’ Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD). Further, as we continually share LS ‘best practices’ in AME4163 we create opportunities for social knowledge construction through interactions to come into play. We posit that engineering design education stands to benefit from the incorporation of robust learning theories pioneered in other disciplines. In this paper, we leverage a text-mining approach to demonstrate a framework for interpreting LS data collected from students in the course, AME4183, through the lens of educational theories. Specifically, we identify each student’s ZPD by text-mining students’ LSs over the course of a DBT project and examine the differences between the LSs students prepare. We find that, for many students, reflecting on authentic immersive activities in a DBT course and writing LSs facilitates their acquisition of new knowledge and enhances their ability to apply it unaided (per the ZPD) areas important to forming and planning with a team, developing concepts, and critically analyzing the design process, though for most, this transition occurs late in the DBT course.