Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 481 de 957
The student context map (Figure 1) represented both semantic knowledge and personal
experiences. The words, “Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Test, Improve” were all considered to
be semantic knowledge since they are the steps of the engineering design process
(Cunningham, 2009) and this information was formally taught during the engineering
class. The remaining words all represented personal experiences with engineering.
Phrases like “what is the design” provided an indication of what the student thought about
when approaching a design task, and words such as “decide” and “communicate” told a
story about this student’s experience with teamwork during the design process.
The second research question, “How did the students’ expressed engineering meaning
relate to the engineering intervention objectives” was best answered by examining the
interpretive frameworks the students used to create their context maps. Four interpretive
frameworks emerged from the students’ context maps: General Engineering (GE),
Engineering Design (ED), Class Projects (CP), and Engineering Design Process (EDP). Some
students expressed two interpretive frameworks (e.g., EDPGE). The interpretive
framework frequencies are presented in Table 4.
Table 4: Interpretive Framework Frequencies
Overall, the most common interpretive framework was General Engineering. When
students used a General Engineering interpretive framework, they included several
different ideas about many aspects of engineering, however, they did not go into great
depth (i.e., at least three ideas with an additional 2+ ideas extending from each of the three
ideas) on any one engineering facet. Many students also used the interpretive framework
of engineering disciplines, meaning they focused the content of their context maps on the
various types of engineers (e.g., Civil, Environmental, Electrical). Students who used the
interpretive framework of Class Projects focused primarily on the activities completed
during engineering class. Finally, those students who chose to use the engineering design
process as their interpretive framework organized their context maps around the steps of
the design process. The student whose context map is featured in Figure 1 used this
interpretive framework. The objectives of the engineering intervention were to help
students become more engineering literate by providing opportunities for engineering
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011