A Multidimensional Approach to Understanding the Development of Design Skills, Knowledge, and Self-Efficacy

This complete research paper reports on how realistic design challenges might support first year students to develop knowledge, capacity, and self-efficacy in designing. Theory suggests self-efficacy and learning are linked, and importantly, that implicit knowledge (i.e., knowing how) and explicit forms of knowledge (i.e., knowing that) develop differently. While many first year courses include design challenges, not all challenges support students to develop knowledge about, capacity to, and self-efficacy for designing. We sought to investigate how realistic design challenges might support growth in these areas, compared to a baseline group in a first-year chemical engineering course at a Hispanic-serving research university in the southwest United States. Students completed measures of design self-efficacy, explicit design knowledge, and implicit design framing knowledge as a pre/post course measure. Using exploratory factor analysis, we identified two explicit design knowledge factors illstructuredness and framing. Using repeated measures ANOVA, we found that students in both baseline and implementation groups reported moderate design self-efficacy, with post-course scores slightly but significantly higher. No difference was found by group or timepoint on students’ explicit knowledge of design. Compared to the baseline, the implementation group showed more growth in implicit design knowledge. Taken together, this could suggest differences in the rates of change in implicit and explicit growth. The results suggest first-year students can learn to design before they acquire knowledge about design.