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Design courses and experiences in undergraduate engineering contexts are common at many universities. There is a significant amount of research aimed at understanding how to best support students working in teams in these complex problem-solving environments. Research teams use a variety of methods for measuring both behavioral and cognitive elements of effective teamwork behaviors. One approach is to examine the shared mental models - organized knowledge structures - that students create as they work through design problems. This literature review provides a short synthesis and comparison of the techniques that have been previously used to measure mental models in undergraduate design contexts. We identified and reviewed a set of 13 articles to draw insight and summarize how these measurement techniques have been implemented. In general, our findings aligned with previously published literature. We provide commentary comparing these techniques and explain why these results are helpful to engineering educators who teach design in their classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work-integrated learning (WIL) – a pedagogy that integrates academic studies with workplace experiences – presents an excellent opportunity for students to "deliberately practice" their design skills. To date there has been little investigation into the effect(s) of WIL experiences on developing novice designers' design skills. We performed a series of longitudinal interview case studies following three engineering students through the course of a 4-month work term. Interviews were semi-structured to gather rich contextual descriptions of participant experiences designing in WIL settings. Transcripts were analysed using an iterative thematic analysis approach. Results indicate specific areas where WIL helps develop novice designers' engineering design skills and mindsets beyond their early experiences in the engineering classroom. These include their experiences interacting with clients/users, the importance of project transition considerations, resource coordination, teamwork/collaboration, and the design process. We discuss how the structure of design tasks and their environment differ from the classroom experience, highlighting how WIL can supplement traditional design education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design courses and experiences in undergraduate engineering contexts are common at many universities. There is a significant amount of research aimed at understanding how to best support students working in teams in these complex problem-solving environments. Research teams use a variety of methods for measuring both behavioral and cognitive elements of effective teamwork behaviors. One approach is to examine the shared mental models - organized knowledge structures - that students create as they work through design problems. This literature review provides a short synthesis and comparison of the techniques that have been previously used to measure mental models in undergraduate design contexts. We identified and reviewed a set of 13 articles to draw insight and summarize how these measurement techniques have been implemented. In general, our findings aligned with previously published literature. We provide commentary comparing these techniques and explain why these results are helpful to engineering educators who teach design in their classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]