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Design interviews with stakeholders are an important source of information that engineering designers can use to identify stakeholder needs and develop solutions that meet stakeholder requirements. However, engineering students often struggle to conduct effective design interviews. In this study, we investigated changes in engineering students' interview approaches after engaging with a novel pedagogical intervention called the Hybrid Learning Block model. We identified specific differences in student interviewing behaviors between pre-block and post-block interview tasks with proxy stakeholders. Compared to pre-block interview tasks, participants' post-block interviewing behaviors and approaches aligned more closely with recommended interviewing practices from literature. Participants more frequently exhibited interviewing behaviors related to deep exploration of stakeholder perspectives and demonstrated more advanced phrasing of questions. In addition, participants structured their post-block interview tasks in ways that more closely aligned with recommended practices, for instance by including more comprehensive interview introductions and employing a more diverse array of questioning techniques. Our findings also suggest improvements for future iterations of the hybrid learning blocks, such as including content more specifically tailored to common student interviewing mistakes. Students can benefit from scaffolded, evidence-based ways to improve their design interviewing skills, such as the hybrid learning blocks, that can ultimately support them in developing more appropriate design solutions.

Information gathering activities in engineering design projects play an important role in the identification and definition of stakeholder needs and requirements. However, few studies have explored how students gather information from stakeholders and domain experts in capstone design settings. In this study, we analyzed audio recordings from 19 information gathering meetings submitted by six capstone design teams to investigate how student designers gathered information during these meetings. Our findings include 22 information gathering behaviors that student design teams exhibited during their meetings, half of which were more similar to recommended best practices for information gathering and half of which were less similar. Our findings, including the list of behaviors and associated examples, may be used to guide student designers in employing effective information gathering approaches.

Design interviews with stakeholders are an important source of information that engineering designers can use to identify stakeholder needs and develop solutions that meet stakeholder requirements. However, engineering students often struggle to conduct effective design interviews. In this study, we investigated changes in engineering students' interview approaches after engaging with a novel pedagogical intervention called the Hybrid Learning Block model. We identified specific differences in student interviewing behaviors between pre-block and post-block interview tasks with proxy stakeholders. Compared to pre-block interview tasks, participants' post-block interviewing behaviors and approaches aligned more closely with recommended interviewing practices from literature. Participants more frequently exhibited interviewing behaviors related to deep exploration of stakeholder perspectives and demonstrated more advanced phrasing of questions. In addition, participants structured their post-block interview tasks in ways that more closely aligned with recommended practices, for instance by including more comprehensive interview introductions and employing a more diverse array of questioning techniques. Our findings also suggest improvements for future iterations of the hybrid learning blocks, such as including content more specifically tailored to common student interviewing mistakes. Students can benefit from scaffolded, evidence-based ways to improve their design interviewing skills, such as the hybrid learning blocks, that can ultimately support them in developing more appropriate design solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]