2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A typical engineering design pedagogy engages students in the design process, culminating in a presentation of their process and product to the class. While design is iterative and should include opportunities for revision and improvement, for beginning design students early stages of the design process may not develop clarity or traction that moves the design process forward. Instead, we are developing and testing an instructional approach called Learning by Evaluating (LbE) through funding by the NSF Division of Research on Learning. In LbE, students evaluate curated artifacts prior to beginning their design work in order to prime them for learning while designing. Class activities such as teacher modeling, individual practice, and a whole class discussion follow the process of cognitive apprenticeship and apply epistemic practices in engineering argumentation so that students can solidify ways of thinking about the project (design mindset), develop evaluation skills (critical thinking and reasoning), and improve performance in future designs.
The first several years of the project used a design-based approach to guide development of the LbE approach from our initial conjecture to a refined protocol which has been tested in 9th grade Introduction to Engineering classrooms. Validation of the approach has been based on classroom observations, feedback from partner teachers, and fundamental research related to students' critical thinking and reasoning during the LbE experience. We are disseminating several artifacts related to these efforts including an instructional design planning template and a library of artifacts for other instructors to use in their own teaching contexts.
At the time of submission our study is continuing into a fourth year (through a no-cost extension). Our paper and poster will report and build on the validated instructional approach. Research efforts this year are focused on studying two main aspects of LbE: 1) the adoption process of LbE with new teachers and new contexts; and 2) a more formal judgment of the effectiveness of the approach, using quasi-experimental research design. First, in response to challenges of participation in the project we have broadened participation criteria for the study. This has opened a line of inquiry into how LbE is experienced by teachers new to the approach, as well as how the approach translates to design-based contexts beyond the initial 9th grade course. Findings related to these processes may prove valuable to the development of other instructional interventions. Then, efforts to evaluate students’ design performance will be described as a step toward conclusions about the effectiveness of the LbE approach. By partnering with teachers who can teach with LbE in some sections and a control group in other sections we expect to gain insights into how the LbE approach directly impacts student learning.