Teaching Human-centered Design to Engineers: Continuous Improvement in a Cornerstone Course

Abstract

This evidence-based paper describes the continuous improvement process of a first-year cornerstone (Project Based Learning) course which took place between 2014 and 2019 at an Engineering School. This improvement process has been based on data from the Department of Engineering Education, and the Instructor Evaluation Survey answered by students at the end of each semester. Cornerstone courses are engineering design courses that provide first-year students with an early introduction to competences for solving real-world problems (Dringenberg, E., & Purzer, S., 2018). This type of course is usually taught using project-based learning (PBL) methodology, which introduces students at early stages to ill-structured problems. PBL methodology has proven to have several benefits for students by enabling them to generate original opinions and express individual standpoints, improve their active participation in self-learning processes, enhance communication skills, and promote critical thinking (Wengrowicz N., Dori Y.J., & Dori D., 2017). In this course, each semester, students follow a human-centered design process to understand a particular topic, find an opportunity for innovation, develop a solution, a prototype, and test it. This iterative process takes place during the first semester of engineering studies. Students need to identify a challenge from a particular topic. Topics vary each semester and go from Health to Firefighters. Based on students’ performance through the years a three point criteria has been developed in order to determine the research topic for each semester. The article focuses on the continuous improvements made to a cornerstone course. These improvements are related to how to determine work topic, team composition, and team assessment methods for each semester. The final purpose of this article is to deliver guidelines to those who are interested in cornerstone courses.