2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering Design Process through Game-Based Learning for Freshmen Engineering Students

Presented at Educational Research and Methods Division (ERM) Technical Session 25

Integrating lectures related to the fundamentals of engineering design process into the freshmen engineering curriculum has been the focus of several academic institutions. This is in response to the call from industry and academic practitioners to improve the quality of engineering education. Engineering design process is introduced into the curriculum to help students develop analytical and problem-solving skills. Furthermore, the course is often designed in such a way that students are able to identify potential societal problems, synthesize new solutions or explore multiple solutions to a particular problem. Since design is one of the main focal points of most engineering professions, it is important for students to understand the fundamental design theory and principles. However, teaching engineering design to freshmen is often challenging. Most students often lose interest due to the rigor of creativity and analytical skills required in engineering design classes. Game-based learning has been proposed as a potential solution in teaching engineering design process.

This study focuses on examining whether game-based learning could serve as a potential tool to improve the quality of teaching engineering design process. Data from relevant literature related to game-based learning in engineering design will be collected and analyzed independently. After which inclusion and exclusion criteria will be employed to screen and select the most relevant article for further analysis. The articles meeting the inclusion criteria will be rigorously reviewed to identify the progress and research gaps. The data for this paper will be obtained from the following databases: Scopus, Google Scholar, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore Library, Compendex, Wiley Online Library, and ERIC. The keywords used to retrieve the articles from the databases include game-based learning + engineering design + freshman; game-based learning + engineering design + first year student; game-based learning + engineering design + engineering; game-based learning + engineering design + undergraduate; game-based learning + engineering design + freshmen courses; and game-based learning + engineering design + introductory courses. The exclusion criteria to be used in screening process are: EC1: Articles published before 2013, EC2: Articles not in English, EC3: Articles that do not use game-based learning, EC4: Articles that do not use engineering design, EC5: Articles that do not focus on engineering population, EC6: Articles that do not focus on higher education, EC7: Articles that have a small sample size, EC8: Articles that mention video game based learning or video based learning, EC9: Articles that mention angry birds or simple games, and EC10: Articles that do not have full access.

The articles have currently been retrieved from all databases, and we are in the process of evaluating them in terms of their abstract and full text by reviewing them with the ten exclusion criteria. In the full paper, we will provide the breakdown of articles from each database for every search term, articles excluded by abstract and full text. Additionally, the preliminary findings and the themes emerging from the synthesis of the information retrieved from the articles will be presented.

Authors

Ms. Laura Ngoc Nhi Nguyen University of Oklahoma [biography]

2nd-year Computer science major at the University of Oklahoma with a passion for stimulating more progression in education with the help of technology!
Dr. Javeed Kittur http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6132-7304 University of Oklahoma [biography]

Dr. Kittur is an Assistant Professor in the Gallogly College of Engineering at The University of Oklahoma. He completed his Ph.D. in Engineering Education Systems and Design program from Arizona State University, 2022. He received a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and a Master’s in Power Systems from India in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He has worked with Tata Consultancy Services as an Assistant Systems Engineer from 2011–2012 in India. He has worked as an Assistant Professor (2014–2018) in the department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, KLE Technological University, India. He is a certified IUCEE International Engineering Educator. He was awarded the ’Ing.Paed.IGIP’ title at ICTIEE, 2018. He is serving as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Engineering Education Transformations (JEET).

He is interested in conducting engineering education research, and his interests include student retention in online and in-person engineering courses/programs, data mining and learning analytics in engineering education, broadening student participation in engineering, faculty preparedness in cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains of learning, and faculty experiences in teaching online courses. He has published papers at several engineering education research conferences and journals. Particularly, his work is published in the International Conference on Transformations in Engineering Education (ICTIEE), American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Computer Applications in Engineering Education (CAEE), International Journal of Engineering Education (IJEE), Journal of Engineering Education Transformations (JEET), and IEEE Transactions on Education. He is also serving as a reviewer for a number of conferences and journals focused on engineering education research.
Jude Okolie http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-7506-551X University of Oklahoma [biography]

Dr. Jude A. Okolie is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Pathways at the University of Oklahoma.
Mr. Moses Olayemi http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-1396-280X The University of Oklahoma [biography]

Moses Olayemi is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Pathways at the University of Oklahoma. He is a graduate of Chemical Engineering from the University of Lagos. He was awarded the 2022/2023 Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship by Purdue's School of Engineering Education and he has a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from the same university.

For his dissertation, he employed an embedded sequential explanatory mixed methods design to understand culturally relevant engineering education in multiple settings, focusing on the Federal Republic of Nigeria as the Case Study. For his work, his paper, "Telling half a story: A mixed methods approach to understanding culturally relevant engineering education in Nigeria" was awarded the best DEI paper in the International Division of ASEE at the 2023 Conference.

He is the Founding President of the African Engineering Education Fellows in the Diaspora, a non-governmental organization that leverages the experiences of African scholars in engineering education to inform and support engineering education policy, practice, and pedagogies in Africa.

His research revolves around the professional development of STEM educators and researchers in low-resource contexts for which he employs culturally relevant pedagogy and the contextualization and validation of measurement instruments with a keen interest in sub-Saharan Africa.

Download paper (1.82 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session