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This paper describes the development and implementation of a survey instrument, based on Jonassen's design theory of problem solving, which characterizes educational design activities. The motivation behind this work is to determine the effectiveness of authentic problem solving activities - called Engineering Design Days - implemented in the University of Waterloo's 14 engineering programs. The instrument is a guided survey given to instructors which captures an activity's problem variation and representation. The survey was developed through a number of iterations. with refinements addressing observed shortcomings in the collected data. Its application is demonstrated with a case study of one design activity that was offered to first year software engineering students. The survey captures many of the elements of Jonassen's design theory of problem solving as they pertain to educational design activities. Future work will focus on applying the instrument to additional educational design activities, which may inform future evolutions to the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability and sustainable design have been a part of design discourse for over three decades, yet most designs today remain unsustainable. The size, complexity and at times redundancy of the literature on both sustainability and sustainable design have become barriers to the integration and acceptance of sustainable design within industry and education. This paper attempts to uncover an underlying structure to the literature and distill key concepts for engineering design educators interested in teaching sustainable design. The paper also synthesizes key attributes and skills common within sustainable design approaches to provide guidance for educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hackathons and hackathon-like events are gaining significant popularity as extra-curricular events among engineering undergraduate students. While not always explicitly promoted as such, these events provide participants with exposure to, and experience in design. Not surprisingly then, the hackathon format is slowly starting to be used as a novel design pedagogy in engineering, increasingly in curricular settings. In this paper we review several examples of hackathons as a teaching tool in engineering design education and provide a qualitative evaluation on their effectiveness. We further discuss the educational potential and limitations of hackathons and identify several related research directions in engineering design education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Canadian Design Workshop (CDW) is a new biennial workshop - held in partnership with the Clive L. Dym Mudd Design Workshop - that aims to investigate and share information on design education and research unique to Canadian institutions, focusing on elevating engineering design education and research within the Canadian context. The Canadian engineering education and research landscapes presently share commonalities and important differences from the landscape typically explored during the Clive L. Dym Mudd Design Workshops. This paper discusses the logistics of running the inaugural workshop (CDW 1), including challenges and opportunities afforded by the virtual offering. A thematic analysis of the presentations and ensuing discussions during the workshop reveals a number of recurring themes across all sessions, including transdisciplinarity, sustainability, the design studio pedagogy, teaching of design in the "middle years" of engineering programs, and challenges in design education. The paper concludes with a reflection on the first offering of the workshop and implications for the future of CDW. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent implementations of design review meetings in engineering design courses encourage student peers to provide feedback, in addition to the course instructor and industry client. The purpose of this investigation was to compare feedback provided by students and course instructors and to determine how student peers' feedback related to their own performance in the design course. We collected verbal feedback comments provided by the instructor and student peers in twelve design review meetings of a management engineering capstone design course. A total of 553 comments were coded along two dimensions: topic (design, project management, or communication) and function (comprehension, evaluation, or recommendation). Comments falling in the comprehension function were also further coded using an existing questiontype typology. A comparison of instructor and student feedback revealed that the instructor provided not only more feedback than individual students, but also distributed it better across the different topics and functions. Specifically, the instructor provides more feedback in the topics of design, communication and project management and is more likely to provide direct assessments and recommendations to student teams. Stronger student teams (i.e., those with better design outcomes) generally provide more feedback to their peers. Findings can help instructors promote better feedback-giving for themselves and students alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer review of design progress and artifacts is not very common in engineering design education. Yet, the broader educational literature suggests that the impact of peer (novice) review can be superior to instructor (expert) only review in various ways. This paper describes a systematic implementation of face-to-face peer review in progress update meetings (PU Ms) of a management engineering capstone design series of courses. In biweekly PU Ms the instructors met jointly with two teams at a time, paired based on topic similarity. Teams took turns presenting to and critiquing each other's presentations and design progress. The format was well-received by students and was successful in increasing the diversity and wealth of knowledge teams could draw from during the meetings. A student survey revealed that students perceived that the regular joint PU Ms encouraged them to maintain a steady progress in their design projects, facilitated peer-to-peer sharing of ideas, and were instrumental in helping teams improve on how they communicated their designs by providing multiple opportunities for revisions and refinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]