2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Beyond “Hoopla”: Mitigating Drawbacks of Competitive Design in Engineering Design through Scenario-Based Learning

Presented at Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) Technical Session 7: Navigating Failure, Bias, and New Ideas

Engineering design courses often leverage competitions to boost engagement. However, this study argues that a high-stakes competition can inadvertently undermine core learning objectives by incentivizing students to prioritize points over process, reducing complex design decisions to mere gestures of justification. A common pedagogical challenge is that students often perceive these projects as exercises in building—applying skills to win—rather than as exercises in designing, which requires the synthesis and creation central to high-level engineering practice. This study investigates whether a Scenario-Based Learning (SBL) framework, “[redacted],” can bridge this gap by shifting student focus from a competition-centric mindset to a process-oriented, professional identity. The scenario was explicitly designed to counterbalance the competition’s pull by casting students as interns accountable to stakeholder needs, not just a scoreboard.
To facilitate this transformation, we implemented a rich SBL framework in our summer 2025 sophomore-level mechanical engineering course, casting students as interns at a design firm. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as a priori codes for analyzing end-of-course interview transcripts, we identified a stark dichotomy in student outcomes. Students who bought into the professional scenario demonstrated cognitive engagement at the create and evaluate levels, demonstrating an understanding of design tools as essential for synthesis and justification. Conversely, students who resisted the scenario operated at the apply level, dismissing the process as “a lot of hoopla stuff” and focusing narrowly on competition points. This correlation demonstrates that the scenario’s efficacy in achieving high-level learning objectives is directly mediated by the student’s psychological buy-in, which acts as the crucial catalyst for re-contextualizing abstract tools into desired engineering processes. Becoming a designer, not just a builder, requires this cognitive shift.
Our findings indicate that SBL must be deliberately designed to engineer the buy-in that re-contextualizes tasks from simple application to authentic creation. We introduce the concept of a “pedagogical container” to describe a robust SBL framework that manages, rather than eliminates, the tension between a competition and learning goals. We conclude that the critical task for educators is not to avoid competitions, but to deliberately engineer SBL experiences that foster the buy-in required to make the container effective, thereby ensuring the competition serves as a testbed for—rather than a distraction from—systematic design thinking. These results will help educators design SBL experiences that not only simulate professional environments but also effectively foster the cognitive shift necessary for students to internalize a designer’s mindset.

Authors

Dr. Jill Fennell Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Jill Fennell is the Frank K. Webb Chair in Communication Skills in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, where she leads the Webb Communication Program. She designs and implements communication instruction across the mechanical engineering curriculum, supporting over 2,000 undergraduate students annually and aligning faculty and graduate teaching assistants around shared frameworks for teaching and assessing engineering communication. Her work focuses on integrating communication into engineering coursework to support decision-making, particularly in contexts involving real-world constraints and stakeholder needs.

Her research examines how communication functions as a tool for shaping engineering judgment, especially in situations involving uncertainty and tradeoffs. She has led course redesign efforts in response to generative AI, including reorienting numerical methods instruction toward computational decision-making, and has developed scenario-based and storytelling interventions to support student learning. Her work has been published through the American Society for Engineering Education and recognized for contributions to communication and assessment in engineering education.
Dr. Amit Shashikant Jariwala http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3851-9161 Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Dr. Amit Jariwala is the Director of Design, Innovation, and Experiential Learning for the School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Dr. Jariwala leads interdisciplinary initiatives that embed entrepreneurial and experiential learning within the academic curriculum of the school. A Woodruff School Teaching Fellow and Georgia Tech Hesburgh Award Teaching Fellow, he advances education by designing courses, workshops, and events that immerse students in hands-on, collaborative experiences tackling real-world challenges. Dr. Jariwala oversees a vibrant ecosystem of makerspaces and design-build courses — where students transform ideas into reality through design, prototyping, and collaborative problem-solving. Dr. Jariwala cultivates industry partnerships that provide funding, mentorship, and real-world project-based learning opportunities. He directs the operations of the Institute-wide Georgia Tech Capstone Design Expo, one of the nation’s largest showcases with more than 2,000 graduating seniors each year. He serves as the faculty advisor for the student organization of over 100 student volunteers who all train, staff, and manage the operations of Georgia Tech’s Flowers Invention Studio – a volunteer student-run makerspace, open to all of the Georgia Tech community. Dr. Jariwala’s research interests are at the intersection of design, advanced manufacturing, and evidence-based engineering education. He has participated in and led several research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the State of Georgia, and Industry sponsors. He currently directs a cross-disciplinary Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) team, MATRIX, focused on research and development to enable the creation of intelligent systems to manage and maintain makerspaces. Through teaching, administration, and mentorship, Dr. Jariwala prepares the next generation of engineers to design with purpose, innovate fearlessly, and lead through service.
Lena Moller Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Lena Moller is a Lecturer at Georgia Institute of Technology focused on undergraduate experiential learning. As a former student leader at Georgia Tech, she is passionate about helping students understand the practicality of what they learn and assisting them in pursuing their passions within engineering.
Mr. Martin Conrad Jacobson Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]

Marty Jacobson joined Georgia Tech as faculty in 2010, teaching Engineering Design courses in the top-ranked Biomedical Engineering department at Georgia Tech and Emory University. While staying engaged in product development and innovation work across a range of industries from consumer products to medical devices, he taught thousands of students the process of human-centered design in the context of medical device development, and created several new courses covering design thinking, entrepreneurship, and medical device innovation & manufacturing. Since joining the G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2025, he teaches mechanical engineering design courses, combining his real-world product development knowledge with his deep Design for Manufacturing and hands-on prototyping expertise to teach students the process of engineering design. He mentors student organizations such as the Medical Robotics Club and Engineering World Health and coaches student design teams to success in innovation competitions and to create valuable hardware-based startups.

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