The benefits of model building in teaching engineering design
Kathleen Mcloughry2010, Design Studies
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Abstract
Using verbal protocol analysis, we report how model building has the potential to aid engineering students in solving a design task. From our analysis of 8 students in varying engineering disciplines, we found that physical construction of a model during an open-ended design task helped students generate and evaluate ideas, better visualize their ideas, and helped students uncover differences between real behavior and the conceptual model used to predict that behavior. Model building also enhanced creative thinking and helped students become more aware of their own meta-cognitive design strategies. We also found that, regardless of when they began sketching or building, the process was fairly similar in length for most of these students.
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John S Gero* Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study George Mason University Fairfax, VA, 22030 Email: [email protected] ... Hao Jiang Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study George Mason University Fairfax, VA, 22030 Email: [email protected] ... Christopher B Williams Dept. of Engineering Education Dept. of Mechanical Engineering Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA, 24060 Email: [email protected] ... ABSTRACT This paper presents the preliminary results of protocol studies to determine the effects of teaching different concept generation ...
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