2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work in progress paper explains modifications made to the senior-level Multidisciplinary Design Capstone (MDC) course based on student learning theories and strategies at The Ohio State University. In the summer of 2022, the MDC instructional team attended a 3-day departmental workshop to evaluate and discuss improvements to the course based on several different student learning strategies and theories. The workshop included reviewing learning theories and developing modifications to the current MDC curriculum to enhance student learning. There were four major learning strategies and theories that were focused on for the 2022-23 academic year. These strategies and theories included sense of belonging, stereotype threat, calibration and retrieval. MDC course assignments and activities were developed or modified to support student learning based on these strategies and theories.

One of the focuses was to increase a sense of belonging and reduce stereotype threats within the student capstone teams. This is very important due to having diverse student teams involving both engineering and non-engineering majors with diverse backgrounds and experiences from across the university. The MDC instructional team incorporated the value affirmation strategy by requiring student teams to develop team values that are related to each individual student’s values. In addition to team values in their team charter, the instructors incorporated empathic decision making into the design process. The intent of this process is to increase team inclusivity and efficiency.

Calibration is the relationship between a student’s perceived performance and their actual knowledge of cognitive level. In the MDC capstone projects, students tend to identify a solution to a given problem early in the design process. In fact, some students tend to “jump” to a solution before completely understanding the problem that has been proposed to them. In the MDC course, the instructors have the students spend 4 weeks at the beginning of the project identifying the problem and root causes before jumping to possible solutions. This process was emphasized for students to reflect and modify their problem identification as they gain knowledge progressing through the design process. The instructors reinforced this relationship between their performance and knowledge gained through revisions to past written reports that were used to build on their project.

Retrieval practice helps students to monitor their learning by encouraging them to retrieve prior knowledge. The MDC instructional team implemented this practice by giving written feedback to students on their written reports and oral presentations and allowing them to incorporate this feedback on future extensions of the report to improve their communication skills.

The MDC instructional team employed a triangulation method of feedback to review impacts of these changes. This method included receiving responses from students, student peers, MDC instructors, faculty advisors, and capstone project sponsors. This information was used to evaluate these changes.

This work in progress paper will review the learning strategies and theories and the assignments/activities that were implemented and the impacts of these modifications.