International Journal of Technology and Design Education最新文献

This article presents findings from an instructional-based inquiry, aimed to evaluate the critiquing characteristics of an accredited interior design program, and to optimize the experience of studio-based feedback practices for contemporary students. This investigation pre-dates the unprecedented shift to remote instruction due to the global pandemic, providing a unique snapshot of Generation Z emergent designers at a time when in-person feedback reigned. Data was collected through an anonymous, voluntary survey which invited students to share their experiences and perceptions of various modalities of project feedback. The findings are four-fold. First, students view critique not merely as a validation or gatekeeping function but as an interactive form of guidance, underscoring the necessity of harmonizing directive discourse with empowering feedback. Second, methods like peer reviews, desk crits, and illustrative feedback are seen as particularly beneficial, being both personalized and intimate, and are valued equally in both in-studio and out-of-studio settings. Third, 1–2 weekly contact hours with instructors is preferred for project feedback, pointing to a possible disparity between student expectations and prevailing practices. Finally, students recognized the potential benefits of using online critiquing tools for project feedback, even prior to the extensive uptake of online platforms during the pandemic in which students had little experience using them. This study contributes valuable context to the future of interior design education, and illustrates areas in which research concerning modern students and instructional practices can be further developed.

Abstract

This paper explores the possible relationships between students’ positive attitudes and interest toward technology and teachers’ approaches. The study was conducted with a sample of students (N = 2312) from 5 to 8th grade of primary school in Croatia. Reduced descriptions of teachers’ approaches were used as predictors of students’ positive attitudes and interest. Multiple regression was used to determine correlations between teachers’ approaches and students’ attitudes. The results show a weak but positive correlation between students’ attitudes and interests and teachers’ approaches typical of the flexible teacher profile. This refers to approaches in which teachers ensure that they understand the purpose of learning, implement activities that are useful from the students’ perspective, and allow students to do what they are successful at. Although the characteristics of Croatian technology teachers fit the flexible teacher profile, the correlated approaches identified here do not dominate. Despite the results, due to the complexity of the influence on students’ interests and attitudes, further research is needed that considers other possible predictors and their interactions.

In design courses, reviewing how others have solved design problems or completed projects is common practice and often encouraged by educators. Using student work as examples can provide context for assessment criteria and help students approach new design problems. While studies have explored the use of exemplars in various disciplines, little research has focused on which exemplars to use (e.g., high-quality, low-quality) in design, technology, and engineering fields. To address this gap, researchers conducted a literature review of 33 articles on exemplar use in secondary and post-secondary education. The analysis revealed nine themes related to exemplar use and their impact on student learning, including (1) Clarity of instruction, (2) Learner focus, (3) Motivation for learning, (4) Student reflection on learning, (5) Building student self-efficacy, (6) Identifying instructional challenges, (7) Providing contrasting cases, (8) The relationship between exemplar quality and student work quality, and (9) Raising the bar for learning outcomes. Findings suggest that simply providing an exemplar is not enough and that the selection of an exemplar can have positive or negative impacts on student motivation, understanding, and application. Carefully selecting exemplars and engaging in dialogue with students can help them identify expectations, recognize quality work, and identify potential misconceptions. These findings have implications for those involved in design, technology, and engineering education. Educators can use these findings to guide their selection of exemplars and engage students in meaningful dialogue to aid their learning. Researchers can also use these findings to further investigate the use of exemplars in these fields.

The present study focuses on assessing first-year architecture students’ creative skills by examining the changes in their cognitive skills due to curricular intervention and revealing the possible effects of personality and motivation factors. An experimental research design with related groups pre-and post-test approach was adopted, and a multiple-assessment test battery was developed based on the literature. The pre-and post-test approach was used to evaluate whether (1) the curricular intervention in the first-semester basic design course affected the cognitive skills of the students, (2) there was a significant change in personality and motivation factors of the students, and (3) the effects of the curricular intervention could be isolated from the changes in personality and motivation factors. The responses to the pre-and post-test were statistically analyzed, and findings indicated that the curricular intervention in the first-semester basic design course enhanced the fluency and flexibility dimensions in students’ divergent thinking skills to a greater extent and originality to a lesser extent in visual and verbal stimuli tasks. Such increase was found to be independent of the changes in personality and motivation factors. Rather, it was related to the curricular tasks provided to the students throughout the semester.

Understanding the reasoning in the design process is essential to comprehend design practice and promote students’ learning. Followingly, to effectively support students through the design process, it is crucial to pay attention to their reasoning. Therefore, in this study, we have built a model for students’ reasoning in the design process in technology education to be used as a utility in further research. Here, reasoning is viewed as the process of using premises to reach a conclusion. Drawing from philosophy of technology and philosophy of technology education, the model introduces relevant concepts that are particularly useful in technology education. The model incorporates two types of reasoning: means-end reasoning and cause-effect reasoning. Means-end reasoning involves identifying actions to achieve a desired end. While cause-effect reasoning leads to conclusions in the form of beliefs about causes, effects, consequences, and side-effects, which is important when predicting and evaluating in the design process. The model highlights the interplay between these two types of reasoning, where students would constantly move between them in the design process. The model involves a holistic view of the reasoning and the design process, rather than taking a purely instrumental approach. That the model fuse two types of reasoning, makes it applicable at any point in the design process and across different contexts in technology education. Overall, the model provides a comprehensive view of reasoning in the design process in technology education.

Classroom research has demonstrated the capacity for significantly influencing student learning by engaging students in evaluation of previously submitted work as an intentional priming exercise for learning; we call this experience Learning by Evaluating (LbE). Expanding on current LbE research, we set forth to investigate the impact on student learning by intentionally differing the quality of examples evaluated by the students using adaptive comparative judgement. In this research, university design students (N = 468 students) were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups; while each group evaluated previously collected student work as an LbE priming activity, the work evaluated by each group differed in quality. Using a three-group experimental design, one group of students only evaluated high quality examples, the second only evaluated low quality examples, and the third group of students evaluated a set of mixed-quality examples of the assignment they were about to work on. Following these LbE priming evaluations, students completed the assigned work and then their projects were evaluated to determine if there was a difference between student performance by treatment condition. Additional qualitative analysis was completed on student LbE rationales to explore similarities and differences in student cognitive judgments based on intervention grouping. No significant difference was found between the groups in terms of achievement, but several differences in group judgement approach were identified and future areas needing investigation were highlighted.

This study aims to understand how students manage higher technical education and contribute to research on institutional culture, STEM education, and students’ educational strategies by identifying patterns of how students navigate within one university’s engineering education. To achieve this, we define and use the concept of technical science capital and habitus reconstruction. We collected data through a survey sent to engineering students who have followed an engineering program’s intended linear progression and those who have taken a ‘detour’ within the same cohort at one specific Swedish university. The survey had a high number of qualitative questions, including free text answers that captured students’ narratives. The results indicate that having a large amount of technical science capital alone is not enough for students to be successful in their studies. The university culture has its own structure, which can be intolerant. Within this culture, specific social skills and experiences are desirable, which provides students from a particular background with a greater opportunity for success. Despite possessing high technical science capital, students from other social groups or cultures face challenges. We discuss various measures that could make higher technical education more engaging. This study is limited to one Swedish university, and future studies could include a broader sample that represents several universities.

This work aims to identify teaching and learning practices in practical classes of Computer Network Technology courses, which promote the use of the Physical Laboratory (PL) as an epistemic tool to improve learning in epistemic terms. Content analysis of Multimodal Narrations (MN) of three classes by two teachers were used. An MN aggregates and organizes the data collected in the PL environment. Based on the results, we infer that the student and the teacher, under certain conditions, use the physical laboratory as an epistemic tool since the physical interactions prove its use and reuse. In addition, this study allows, in the context of work in the physical laboratory of networks, to identify that the orchestrations of mediation patterns adopted by the teacher influence the students’ epistemic practices and the use of the laboratory as a tool to produce new knowledge. The following contributions are presented: (1) The quality of the students’ epistemic practices is increased if, in the teacher’s dynamics of mediation, the control of the students’ action is reduced; (2) The orchestration of the teacher’s mediation patterns is essential to achieve beneficial results in student learning with the use of artifacts from the physical laboratory of Computer Networks; (3) For the physical laboratory to become an epistemic tool, it is necessary that the mediation standards allow students to develop epistemic practices to a high or very high degree and there is a certain mediation orchestration.

This study explores a design fiction approach in an educational context by applying it to a third-year industrial design studio class. The Food Futures project is conducted with thirty students in the design studio. We approached the future of food using a design fiction approach since the combination of food and design is a highly complex and social issue that requires a systems-level change. The project started with a design fiction workshop to adapt the approach to the class. After the students had written their briefs in the context of the future storyworlds, the project continued with weekly critique sessions. The data is collected through the project outcomes, recordings, and questionnaires. A methodological discussion about using this approach in the educational context is presented based on the collected reflections. We argue that design fiction can be used in studio projects for research and idea-generation phases to support divergence processes through building storyworlds. Furthermore, we examined how this approach can be integrated into design education based on how students defined their limitations considering their visualisation techniques and design intervention levels (product, product-service-system, spatio-social) within future storyworlds. Imbued with the ability to envision socio-technical environments, we see design fiction as a useful tool for adapting industrial design education to emerging approaches such as systemic design and transition design.