Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T16:48:21.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

COMPARING ACADEMICS AND PRACTITIONERS Q & A TUTORING IN THE ENGINEERING DESIGN STUDIO

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Ada Hurst ,
Shirley Lin ,
Claire Treacy ,
Oscar G. Nespoli  and
John S. Gero
Ada Hurst*
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo;
Shirley Lin
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo;
Claire Treacy
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo;
Oscar G. Nespoli
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo;
John S. Gero
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Charlotte
*
Hurst, Ada, University of Waterloo, Canada, adahurst@uwaterloo.ca

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

In the design studio, academic (professor) and practitioner tutors provide individual mentoring to students as they progress in their design projects. Prior studies suggest that design practitioners may follow a different design process compared to academics, but little is known about how this difference relates to their design tutoring. This study explores the similarities and differences in tutoring by academics and practitioners. We use a question-asking lens to characterize the tutoring styles of four tutors - two academics and two practitioners - over a five-week design project in an engineering design studio. We find that academic tutors ask questions at a significantly higher rate than practitioner tutors, suggesting a more question-centred tutoring style. We also find that proportionally more of practitioner tutors’ questions are generative in nature, while the academic tutors employ more convergent thinking in their questioning. This may be an indicator of the practitioners' own design thinking, which might be more solution-focused than that of academics. These preliminary findings motivate future investigations of the relationship between differences in tutoring and impact on student design learning.

Keywords

Design learningDesign cognitionDesign practiceDesign studioQuestion asking
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 3: ICED23 , July 2023 , pp. 997 - 1006
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

Ahmed, S., Wallace, K.M. and Blessing, L.T. (2003), “Understanding the differences between how novice and experienced designers approach design tasks”, Research in Engineering Design, Vol. 14, pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-002-0023-z.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akdur, D. (2021), “Skills gaps in the industry: Opinions of embedded software practitioners”, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Vol. 20, No. 5, pp. 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1145/3463340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akili, W. (2006),“Work in progress: The contribution of an adjunct faculty in addressing the practice in a geotechnical engineering class,” Proceedings. Frontiers in Education. 36th Annual Conference, pp. 25–26. https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2006.322478.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atman, C. J., Adams, R.S., Cardella, M.E., Turns, J., Mosborg, S. and Saleem, J. (2007), “Engineering design processes: A comparison of students and expert practitioners”, Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 96, No. 4, pp. 359–379. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2007.tb00945.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baukal, C., Colannino, J., Bussman, W. and Price, G. (2010), “Industry instructors for a specialized elective course”, 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--15676.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baukal, C.E., Price, G. L., Matsson, J.E., Bussman, W. and Olson, S. M. (2011), “Industry adjuncts: Lessons learned”, 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, British Columbia. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--18144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Björklund, T.A. (2016), “Initial mental representations of design problems: Differences between experts and novices”, Design Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 135–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2012.08.005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, K.E., Phillips, R., Ingram, A., Ha, E.Y., Wallis, M., Vouk, M. and Lester, J. (2010), “Characterizing the effectiveness of tutorial dialogue with hidden Markov models”, International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13388-6_10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brennan-Pierce, E.P., Nugyen-Truong, M., Tobet, S.A. and Popat, K.C. (2020), “Biomedical engineering capstone design virtual senior showcase and evaluation”, Advances in Engineering Education, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 1–8.Google Scholar
Cardoso, C., Eriş, Ö., Badke-Schaub, P. and Aurisicchio, M. (2014), “Question asking in design reviews: how does inquiry facilitate the learning interaction?”, 2014 Design Thinking Research Symposium, Purdue University, Layafayette, Indiana.Google Scholar
Cardoso, C., Hurst, A. and Nespoli, O.G. (2020), “Reflective inquiry in design reviews: The role of question-asking during exchanges of peer feedback”, International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 614–622.Google Scholar
Cash, P.J., Hicks, B.J. and Culley, S.J. (2012), “A comparison of the behaviour of student engineers and professional engineers when designing”, DS 70: Proceedings of DESIGN 2012, the 12th International Design Conference, Dubrovnik, Croatia, pp. 757–766.Google Scholar
Crowther, P. (2013), “Understanding the signature pedagogy of the design studio and the opportunities for its technological enhancement”, Journal of Learning Design, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 18–28. https://doi.org/10.5204/jld.v6i3.155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eris, O. (2004), Effective inquiry for innovative engineering design, Kluwer Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8943-7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fairweather, J. and Paulson, K. (1996), “Industrial experience: Its role in faculty commitment to teaching”, Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 85, No. 3, pp.209–215. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.1996.tb00235.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Georgilas, I., Dekoninck, E., Dhokia, V., Flynn, J. and Elias, E. (2019), “Comparing different types of professional practitioner engagement in an integrated design engineering degree”, DS 95: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2019), University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. https://doi.org/10.35199/epde2019.21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graesser, A.C. and Person, N.K. (1994), “Question asking during tutoring”, American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 31, No.1, pp. 104–137. https://doi.org/10.1037/e665402011-530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurst, A. and Nespoli, O.G. (2019), “Comparing instructor and student verbal feedback in design reviews of a capstone design course: Differences in topic and function”, International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 221–231.Google Scholar
Hurst, A., Duong, C., Flus, M., Litster, G., Nickel, J. and Dai, A. (2021), “Evaluating peer-led feedback in asynchronous design critiques: A question-centered approach”. 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. https://peer.asee.org/37103CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurst, A., Nespoli, O.G., Abdellahi, S. and Gero, J.S. (2021),“A comparison of design activity of academics and practitioners using the FBS ontology: a case study”, Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design (Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1323–1332). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.138CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knox, R.C., Sabatini, D.A., Sack, R.L., Haskins, R.D., Roach, L.W. and Fairbairn, S.W. (1995), “A practitioner-educator partnership for teaching engineering design”, Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 84, No. 1, pp. 5–11. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.1995.tb00139.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koehn, E. (1995), “Practitioner and student recommendations for an engineering curriculum”, Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 84, No. 3, pp. 241–248. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.1995.tb00173.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, J., Singh, S., Sha, L., Tan, W., Lang, D., Gašević, D. and Chen, G. (2022), “Is it a good move? Mining effective tutoring strategies from human–human tutorial dialogues”, Future Generation Computer Systems, Vol. 127, pp. 194–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2021.09.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawson, B. and Dorst, K. (2013), Design Expertise, Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315072043.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meuth, R., Hampton, D., Kozicki, M. N. and Lichtenstein, G. (2020), “Capstone showcase-transitioning an onsite tradition to an Interactive online experience”, Advances in Engineering Education, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 1–7.Google Scholar
Nespoli, O.G., Hurst, A. and Gero, J.S. (2021), “Exploring tutor-student interactions in a novel virtual design studio”, Design Studies, Vol. 75, No. 101019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2021.101019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perisic, M.M., Martinec, T., Storga, M. and Gero, J.S. (2019), “A computational study of the effect of experience on problem/solution space exploration in teams”, Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 11–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pilcher, N., Forster, A., Tennant, S., Murray, M. and Craig, N. (2017), “Problematising the ‘Career Academic’ in UK construction and engineering education: does the system want what the system gets?”, European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 42, No. 6, pp.1477–1495. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2017.1306487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rajan, S., Craig, S.D., Gholson, B., Person, N.K. and Graesser, A.C. (2001), “AutoTutor: Incorporating back-channel feedback and other human-like conversational behaviors into an intelligent tutoring system”, International Journal of Speech Technology, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.117–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-47987-2_82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ronalds, B.F. (1999), “Involving industry in university education: The master of oil and gas engineering”, European Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 395–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043799908923574.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuel, G., Donovan, C. and Lee, J. (2018), “University–industry teaching collaborations: a case study of the MSc in Structural Integrity co-produced by Brunel University London and The Welding Institute”, Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp. 769–785. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1199542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schön, D.A. (1985), The design studio: An exploration of its traditions and potential, International Specialized Book Service Incorporated. https://doi.org/10.1080/10464883.1989.10758549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singh, H., Cascini, G. and McComb, C. (2021), “Comparing design outcomes achieved by teams of expert and novice designers through agent-based simulation”, Proceedings of the Design Society, Vol. 1, pp. 661–670. https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Symons, J. and Rohl, K. (2020), “Faculty perceptions of industry sponsorships in capstone design courses”, 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tavakoli, M.S. (2000), “Total design studio”, 2000 ASEE Annual Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--8779CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, A., Mason, K., Starling, A.L.P., Allen, T. and Peirce, S. (2010), “Impact of team and advisor demographics and formulation on the success of biomedical engineering senior design projects”, 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--15947.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, B.E. (2002), “Studio pedagogy for engineering design”, International Journal of Engineering Design, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 29–49. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.1998-2794.Google Scholar
Tocco, J.V. and Mata, L.A. (2012), “The mentor initiative: A framework for industry involvement in the capstone”, Capstone Design Conference - 2012, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.Google Scholar
Vail, A.K. and Boyer, K.E. (2014), “Identifying effective moves in tutoring: On the refinement of dialogue act annotation schemes”, International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Springer, Cham, pp. 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07221-0_24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vrcelj, Z. and Attard, M. (2007), “Design studios in civil engineering education”, ConnectED 2007 International Conference on Design Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar