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Engineering Design Process

The engineering design process emphasizes open-ended problem solving and encourages students to learn from failure . This process nurtures students’ abilities to create innovative solutions to challenges in any subject!

The engineering design process is a series of steps that guides engineering teams as we solve problems. The design process is iterative , meaning that we repeat the steps as many times as needed, making improvements along the way as we learn from failure and uncover new design possibilities to arrive at great solutions.

Overarching themes of the engineering design process are teamwork and design . Strengthen your students’ understanding of open-ended design as you encourage them to work together to brainstorm new ideas, apply science and math concepts, test prototypes and analyze data—and aim for creativity and practicality in their solutions. Project-based learning engages learners of all ages—and fosters STEM literacy.

Browse all K-12 engineering design process curriculum

Ask: identify the need & constraints.

Engineers ask critical questions about what they want to create, whether it be a skyscraper, amusement park ride, bicycle or smartphone. These questions include: What is the problem to solve? What do we want to design? Who is it for? What do we want to accomplish? What are the project requirements? What are the limitations? What is our goal?

Research the Problem

This includes talking to people from many different backgrounds and specialties to assist with researching what products or solutions already exist, or what technologies might be adaptable to your needs.

Imagine: Develop Possible Solutions

You work with a team to brainstorm ideas and develop as many solutions as possible. This is the time to encourage wild ideas and defer judgment! Build on the ideas of others! Stay focused on topic, and have one conversation at a time! Remember: good design is all about teamwork! Help students understand the brainstorming guidelines by using the TE handout and two sizes of classroom posters .

Plan: Select a Promising Solution

For many teams this is the hardest step! Revisit the needs, constraints and research from the earlier steps, compare your best ideas, select one solution and make a plan to move forward with it.

Create: Build a Prototype

Building a prototype makes your ideas real! These early versions of the design solution help your team verify whether the design meets the original challenge objectives. Push yourself for creativity, imagination and excellence in design.

Test and Evaluate Prototype

Does it work? Does it solve the need? Communicate the results and get feedback. Analyze and talk about what works, what doesn't and what could be improved.

Improve: Redesign as Needed

Discuss how you could improve your solution. Make revisions. Draw new designs. Iterate your design to make your product the best it can be. And now, REPEAT!

Check out our high school engineering design unit

Engineering-Design Aligned Curricula

The TeachEngineering hands-on activities featured here, by grade band, exemplify the engineering design process.

Students investigate what causes them to become sick during the school year. They use the engineering design process to test the classroom lab spaces for bacteria. After their tests, they develop ideas to control the spread of germs within the classroom.

A unique activity for young learners that combines engineering and biology, students design an optimal environment for red wiggler worms in a compost bin.

In this maker challenge, students use the engineering design process to design a covering for a portable wheelchair ramp for their school. The design must be easy to use, and allows people to move up the ramp easily and go down slowly.

Students employ the engineering design process to create a device that uses water-absorbing crystals for use during a flood or storm surge. They use (or build) a toy house, follow the engineering design process to build their device, and subject the house to tests that mimic a heavy flood or rising ...

Students use the engineering design process to design a bridge out of silkworm cocoons that can hold at least 50 grams. Students can use other materials to supplement the silk bridge, but have a $10 budget.

In this multi-day activity, students explore environments, ecosystems, energy flow and organism interactions by creating a scale model biodome, following the steps of the engineering design process.

Build a model race car out of lifesaver candies, popsicle sticks, straws, and other fun materials! Have students learn about independent, dependent, and control variables, and find out who can make the fastest car given their new knowledge.

Design and construct a bridge for a local city that will have a high strength-to-weight ratio and resist collapse. Have students use their understanding of the engineering design process—and a lot of wooden craft sticks—to achieve their goals.

In this two-part activity, students design and build Rube Goldberg machines. This open-ended challenge employs the engineering design process and may have a pre-determined purpose, such as rolling a marble into a cup from a distance, or let students decide the purposes.

Students are challenged to design and build rockets from two-liter plastic soda bottles that travel as far and straight as possible or stay aloft as long as possible. Guided by the steps of the engineering design process, students first watch a video that shows rocket launch failures and then partic...

Students explore how mass affects momentum in head-on collisions and experience the engineering design process as if they are engineers working on the next big safety feature for passenger cars. They design, create and redesign impact-resistant passenger vehicle compartments for small-size model car...

Students work as teams of engineers to design and build their own trebuchets. They research how to build and test their trebuchets, evaluate their results, and present their results and design process to the class.

Grades 9-12

Student teams follow the steps of the engineering design process as they design and build architecturally inspired cardboard furniture. Given a list of constraints, including limited fabrication materials and tools, groups research architectural styles, brainstorm ideas, make small-scale quick proto...

Students follow the steps of the engineering design process as they design and construct balloons for aerial surveillance. Applying their newfound knowledge, the young engineers build and test balloons that fly carrying small flip cameras that capture aerial images of their school.

Student teams design, build and test small-sized gliders to maximize flight distance and an aerodynamic ratio, applying their knowledge of fluid dynamics to its role in flight. Students experience the entire engineering design process, from brainstorming to CAD (or by hand) drafting, including resea...

Students learn about human proteins, how their shapes are related to their functions and how DNA protein mutations result in diseases. Then, in a hypothetical engineering scenario, they use common classroom supplies to design and build their own structural, transport and defense protein models to he...

Students develop an app for an Android device that utilizes its built-in internal sensors, specifically the accelerometer. The goal of this activity is to teach programming design and skills using MIT's App Inventor software (free to download from the Internet) as the vehicle for learning.

Welcome to TeachEngineering’s Engineering Design Process curricula for Grade K-2 Educators!

Create popsicles using the engineering design process! In this activity, students work to solve the problems of a local popsicle shop while learning how scientific and engineering concepts play a part in behind-the-scenes design.

In this maker challenge, students follow the engineering design process and use water-absorbing crystals to create a bandage that can be used in a traumatic situation, like a car accident or hiking accident.

Maker Challenge

Students perform research and design prosthetic prototypes for an animal to use for its survival. They research a set of pre-chosen animals and their habitats. They then create habitats for their animals to live and model 3D prosthetics for the animals to use with modeling clay.

Given scrap cardboard, paper towel tubes, scissors, and glue, how could a student invent their own backscratcher? Engage in the process of how real engineers design products to meet a desired function.

Students design a way for mint plants to keep a constant moisture level for 72 hours. The mint plants must be kept moist since they are young and just starting to establish growth.

Design a customized table top supply organizer inspired by the natural home of a ladybug—or any other insect of a student's choosing—to hold all of their classroom supplies! By the end of this activity, students will understand the properties of biomimicry and the engineering design process.

Welcome to TeachEngineering’s Engineering Design Process curricula for Grade 3-5 Educators!

As students learn about the creation of biodomes, they are introduced to the steps of the engineering design process, including guidelines for brainstorming. They learn how engineers are involved in the design and construction of biodomes and use brainstorming to come up with ideas for possible biod...

Students learn about providing healthcare in a global setting and the importance of wearing protective equipment when treating patients with infectious diseases like Ebola. They learn about biohazard suits, heat transfer through conduction and convection and the engineering design cycle. Student tea...

Working as if they are engineers who work for (the hypothetical) Build-a-Toy Workshop company, students apply their imaginations and the engineering design process to design and build prototype toys with moving parts. They set up electric circuits using batteries, wire and motors. They create plans ...

Whether on Earth or in space, life-threatening illnesses may occur if the water we drink is of poor quality. It’s up to your students to design and build a filtration system for the International Space Station so they can guarantee astronauts get the safe and clean water they need.

Your students have been hired to build a pop rocket, but on a tight budget. Engineering design usually has some constraints and you won’t always have access to the materials you think you might need. But through brainstorming and trial and error, a viable rocket launch is definitely possible!

In this activity, students design and build model houses, then test them against various climate elements, and then re-design and improve them. Using books, websites and photos, students learn about the different types of roofs found on various houses in different environments throughout the world....

Students pretend they are agricultural engineers during the colonial period and design a miniature plow that cuts through a "field" of soil. They are introduced to the engineering design process and learn of several famous historical figures who contributed to plow design.

Students learn how to use wind energy to combat gravity and create lift by creating their own tetrahedral kites capable of flying. They explore different tetrahedron kite designs, learning that the geometry of the tetrahedron shape lends itself well to kites and wings because of its advantageous str...

Students learn the basics of engineering sneakers and shoes. They are challenged to decide on specific design requirements, such as heavy traction or extra cushioning, and then use different materials to create working prototype shoes that meet the design criteria. Includes worksheets.

For this maker challenge, students decide on specific design requirements (such as good traction or deep cushioning), sketch their plans, and then use a variety of materials to build prototype shoes that meet the design criteria.

Students design a temporary habitat for a future classroom pet—a hingeback tortoise. The students investigate hingeback tortoise habitat features as well as the design features of such a habitat. Each group communicates and presents this information to the rest of the class after they research, brai...

When a person gets injured in the wilderness and needs medical attention, rescuers might use a device called a mountain rescue litter specifically designed for difficult evacuations. Design and build a small-sized prototype to save some (potatoes’) lives!

Student teams are challenged to navigate a table tennis ball through a timed obstacle course using only the provided unconventional “tools.” Teams act as engineers by working through the steps of the engineering design process to complete the overall task with each group member responsible to accomp...

Students explore the engineering design process within the context of Dr. Seuss’s book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck. Students study a sample of aloe vera gel (the oobleck) in lab groups. After analyzing the substance, they use the engineering design process to develop and test other substances to ma...

Students explore the use of wind power in the design, construction and testing of "sail cars," which, in this case, are little wheeled carts with masts and sails that are powered by the moving air generated from a box fan. The scientific method is reviewed and reinforced with the use of controls and...

Students engage in the second design challenge of the unit, which is an extension of the maze challenge they solved in the first lesson/activity of this unit. Students extend the ideas learned in the maze challenge with a focus more on the robot design. Specifically, students learn how to design the...

Student groups are challenged to program robots with color sensors to follow a black line. Learning both the logic and skills behind programming robots for this challenge helps students improve their understanding of how robots "think" and widens their appreciation for the complexity involved in pro...

As part of a design challenge, students learn how to use a rotation sensor (located inside the casing of a LEGO® MINDSTORMS ® EV3 motor) to measure how far a robot moves with each rotation. Through experimentation and measurement with the sensor, student pairs determine the relationship between the ...

As the first engineering design challenge of the unit, students are introduced to the logic for solving a maze. Student groups apply logic to program LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 robots to navigate through a maze, first with no sensors, and then with sensors.

Student pairs experience the iterative engineering design process as they design, build, test and improve catching devices to prevent a "naked" egg from breaking when dropped from increasing heights. To support their design work, they learn about materials properties, energy types and conservation o...

Students apply what they have learned about the engineering design process to a real-life problem that affects them and/or their school. They choose a problem as a group, and then follow the engineering design process to come up with and test their design solution.

Working individually or in pairs, students compete to design, create, test and redesign free-standing, weight-bearing towers using Kapla® wooden blocks. The challenge is to build the tallest tower while meeting the design criteria and minimizing the amount of material used—all within a time limit.

Students experience the engineering design process as they design and build accurate and precise catapults using common materials. They use their catapults to participate in a game in which they launch Ping-Pong balls to attempt to hit various targets.

Students employ the full engineering design process to research and design prototypes that could be used to solve the loss of sea turtle life during a hurricane. Students learn about sea turtle nesting behaviors and environmental impacts of hurricanes. Students work collaboratively to build structur...

Students learn how engineering design is applied to solve healthcare problems by using an engineering tool called simulation. While engineering design is commonly used to study and design everything from bridges, factories, airports to space shuttles, the use of engineering design to study healthcar...

Students learn about civil engineers and work through each step of the engineering design process in two mini-activities that prepare them for a culminating challenge to design and build the tallest straw tower possible, given limited time and resources. In the culminating challenge (tallest straw t...

Students apply their knowledge of constructing and programming LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots to create sumobots—strong robots capable of pushing other robots out of a ring. To meet the challenge, groups follow the steps of the engineering design process and consider robot structure, weight and gear ratio...

Students learn about health risks caused by cooking and heating with inefficient stoves inside homes. They simulate the cook stove scenario and follow the engineering design process steps, including iterative trials, to increase warmth inside a building while reducing air quality problems. A student...

Students work together in small groups, while competing with other teams, to explore the engineering design process through a tower building challenge. They are given a set of design constraints and then conduct online research to learn basic tower-building concepts. During a two-day process and usi...

Students are introduced to the engineering design process, focusing on the concept of brainstorming design alternatives. They learn that engineering is about designing creative ways to improve existing artifacts, technologies or processes, or developing new inventions that benefit society.

Students' understanding of how robotic ultrasonic sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 robots and ultrasonic sensors. Student groups program their robots to move freely without bumping into obstacles (toy LEGO people).

Student pairs design and construct small, wind-powered sail cars using limited quantities of drinking straws, masking tape, paper and beads. Teams compete to see which sail car travels the farthest when pushed by the wind (simulated by the use of an electric fan). Students learn about wind and kinet...

Welcome to TeachEngineering’s Engineering Design Process curricula for Grade 6-8 Educators!

Student teams are challenged to design assistive devices that modify crutches to help people carry things such as books and school supplies. Given a list of constraints, including a device weight limit and minimum load capacity, groups brainstorm ideas and then make detailed plans for their best sol...

Students gain experience with the software/system design process, closely related to the engineering design process, to solve a problem. The lesson culminates in a hands-on experience with the design process as students simulate the remote control of a rover.

Students design, build and test looping model roller coasters using foam pipe insulation tubing. They learn about potential and kinetic energy as they test and evaluate designs, addressing the task as if they are engineers. Winning designs have the lowest cost and best aesthetics. Three student work...

Students design and develop a useful assistive device for people challenged by fine motor skill development who cannot grasp and control objects. In the process of designing prototype devices, they learn about the engineering design process and how to use it to solve problems.

Students learn more about assistive devices, specifically biomedical engineering applied to computer engineering concepts, with an engineering challenge to create an automatic floor cleaner computer program. Following the steps of the design process, they design computer programs and test them by pr...

Students groups use balsa wood and glue to build their own towers using some of the techniques they learned from the associated lesson.

Student teams are challenged to design models of Egyptian funerary barges for the purpose of transporting mummies through the underworld to the afterlife. Students design and build prototypes using materials and tools like the ancient Egyptians had at their disposal.

Students become product engineers in a bouncy ball factory as they design and prototype a polymer bouncy ball that meets specific requirements: must be spherical in shape, cannot disintegrate when thrown on the ground, and must bounce.

Students are introduced to the concept and steps of the engineering design process and taught how to apply it. In small groups, students learn of their design challenge (improve a cast for a broken arm), brainstorm solutions, are given materials and create prototypes.

Students become familiar with the engineering design process as they design, build, and test chair prototypes.

In this activity, students undertake a similar engineering challenge as they design and build a filter to remove pepper from an air stream without blocking more than 50% of the air.

Following the steps of the engineering design process and acting as biomedical engineers, student teams use everyday materials to design and develop devices and approaches to unclog blood vessels. Through this open-ended design project, they learn about the circulatory system, biomedical engineering...

Students design and build small doghouses to shelter a (toy) puppy from the heat—and create them within constraints. They apply what they know about light energy and how it travels through various materials, as well as how a material’s color affects its light absorption and reflection. They test the...

Students learn about convection, conduction, and radiation in order to solve the challenge of designing and building a small insulated cooler with the goal of keeping an ice cube and a Popsicle from melting. This activity uses the engineering design process to build the cooler as well as to measure ...

Students are given a biomedical engineering challenge, which they solve while following the steps of the engineering design process. In a design lab environment, student groups design, create and test prototype devices that help people using crutches carry things, such as books and school supplies.

Students build an electric racer vehicle using Tinkercad to design blades for their racers. Students print their designs using a MakerBot printer. Students race their vehicles to see which design travels the furthest distance in the least amount of time.

Students use the engineering design process to design, create, and test a pedometer that keeps track of the number of steps a person takes. This maker challenge exposes students to basic coding, micro:bit processor applications, and how programming and engineering can be used to solve health problem...

Students learn how to engineer a design for a polymer brush—a coating consisting of polymers that represents an antifouling polymer brush coating for a water filtration surface.

Students program the drive motors of a SparkFun RedBot with a multistep control sequence—a “dance.” Doing this is a great introduction to robotics and improves overall technical literacy by helping students understand that we use programs to control the motion and function of robots, and without the...

Students gain an understanding of the factors that affect wind turbine operation. Following the steps of the engineering design process, engineering teams use simple materials (cardboard and wooden dowels) to build and test their own turbine blade prototypes with the objective of maximizing electric...

Students further their understanding of the engineering design process (EDP) while applying researched information on transportation technology, materials science and bioengineering. Students are given a fictional client statement (engineering challenge) and directed to follow the steps of the EDP t...

Students learn about the process of reverse engineering and how this technique is used to improve upon technology. Students analyze push-toys and draw diagrams of the predicted mechanisms inside the toys. Then, they disassemble the toys and draw the actual inner mechanisms.

Students design, build, and test model race cars made from simple materials (lifesaver-shaped candies, plastic drinking straws, Popsicle sticks, index cards, tape) as a way to explore independent, dependent and control variables.

Students use the engineering design process to solve a real-world problem—shoe engineering! Working in small teams, they design, build and test a pair of wearable platform or high-heeled shoes, taking into consideration the stress and strain forces that it will encounter from the shoe wearer.

Students' understanding of how robotic color sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots and light sensors. Working in pairs, students program LEGO robots to follow a flashlight as its light beam moves around.

Students further their understanding of the engineering design process while combining mechanical engineering and bioengineering to create an automated medical device.

Students apply the concepts of conduction, convection and radiation as they work in teams to solve two challenges. One problem requires that they maintain the warm temperature of one soda can filled with water at approximately human body temperature, and the other problem is to cause an identical so...

Students design and build a mechanical arm that lifts and moves an empty 12-ounce soda can using hydraulics for power. Small design teams (1-2 students each) design and build a single axis for use in the completed mechanical arm.

Using ordinary classroom materials, students act as biomedical engineering teams challenged to design prototype models that demonstrate semipermeability to help medical students learn about kidney dialysis. A model consists of two layers of a medium separated by material acting as the membrane. Grou...

Students brainstorm, design, and build a cooler and monitor its effectiveness to keep a bottle of ice water cold in comparison to a bottle of ice water left at room temperature. Students engage in design by choosing from a range of materials to build their prototype.

Students learn about how biomedical engineers create assistive devices for persons with fine motor skill disabilities. They do this by designing, building and testing their own hand "gripper" prototypes that are able to grasp and lift a 200 ml cup of sand.

Based on their experience exploring the Mars rover Curiosity and learning about what engineers must go through to develop a vehicle like Curiosity, students create Android apps that can control LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots, simulating the difficulties the Curiosity rover could encounter. The activity go...

Acting as biomedical engineers, students design, build, test and redesign prototype heart valves using materials such as waterproof tape, plastic tubing, flexible plastic and foam sheets, clay, wire and pipe cleaners. They test them with flowing water, representing blood moving through the heart.

Students further their understanding of the engineering design process (EDP) while being introduced to assistive technology devices and biomedical engineering. They are given a fictional client statement and are tasked to follow the steps of the EDP to design and build small-scale, off-road wheelcha...

Student groups create and test oil spill cleanup kits that are inexpensive and accessible for homeowners or for big companies to give to individual workers—to aid in home, community or environmental oil spill cleanup process.

Using paper, paper clips and tape, student teams design flying/falling devices to stay in the air as long as possible and land as close as possible to a given target. Student teams use the steps of the engineering design process to guide them through the initial conception, evaluation, testing and r...

Students learn how biomedical engineers work with engineers and other professionals to develop dependable medical devices. Student teams brainstorm, sketch, design and create prototypes of suction pump protection devices to keep fluid from backing up and ruining the pump motors.

Students experience the steps of the engineering design process as they design solutions for a real-world problem that negatively affects the environment. They use plastic tubing and assorted materials such as activated carbon, cotton balls, felt and cloth to create filters with the capability to re...

Students design and create sensory integration toys for young children with developmental disabilities—an engineering challenge that combines the topics of biomedical engineering, engineering design and human senses. Students learn the steps of the engineering design process (EDP) and how to use it ...

Students are asked to design a hockey stick for a school’s new sled hockey team. Using the engineering design process, students act as material engineers to create hockey sticks that have different interior structures using multiple materials that can withstand flexure testing.

Working as if they were engineers, students design and construct model solar sails made of aluminum foil to move cardboard tube satellites through “space” on a string. Working in teams, they follow the engineering design thinking steps—ask, research, imagine, plan, create, test, improve—to design an...

Students follow the steps of the engineering design process to create their own ear trumpet devices (used before modern-day hearing aids), including testing them with a set of reproducible sounds.

Student pairs design, build, and test model vehicles capable of rolling down a ramp and then coasting freely as far as possible. The challenge is to make the vehicles entirely out of dry pasta using only adhesive (such as hot glue) to hold the components together.

Students are challenged to design, build and test small-scale launchers while they learn and follow the steps of the engineering design process. For the challenge, the "slingers" must be able to aim and launch Ping-Pong balls 20 feet into a goal using ordinary building materials such as tape, string...

Students act as engineers to solve a hypothetical problem that has occurred in the Swiss Alps due to a natural seismic disaster. Working in groups, they follow the engineering design process steps to create model sleds that meet the requirements to transport materials to people in distress that live...

Students learn more about how muscles work and how biomedical engineers can help keep the muscular system healthy. Following the engineering design process, they create their own biomedical device to aid in the recovery of a strained bicep.

In this activity, student groups design and build three types of towers (guyed or cable-supported, free-standing or self-standing, and monopole), engineering them to meet the requirements that they hold an egg one foot high for 15 seconds.

A classic engineering challenge involves designing and building devices that can deliver necessary goods to “Toxic Island.” Working within specific constraints, students design a device that must not touch the water or island, and must deliver supplies accurately and quickly.

Students are given a difficult challenge that requires they integrate what they have learned so far in the unit about wait blocks, loops and switches. They incorporate these tools into their programming of the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robots to perform different tasks depending on input from a sound sensor...

Students apply their knowledge of scale and geometry to design wearables that would help people in their daily lives, perhaps for medical reasons or convenience. Like engineers, student teams follow the steps of the design process, to research the wearable technology field (watching online videos an...

Students reinforce an antenna tower made from foam insulation so that it can withstand a 480 N-cm bending moment (torque) and a 280 N-cm twisting moment (torque) with minimal deflection.

Students further their understanding of the engineering design process while combining mechanical engineering and bio-engineering to create assistive devices. During this extended activity (seven class periods), students are given a fictional client statement and required to follow the steps of the ...

Welcome to TeachEngineering’s Engineering Design Process curricula for Grade 9-12 Educators!

Students experience the engineering design process as they design and construct lower-leg prostheses in response to a hypothetical zombie apocalypse scenario. Building on what they learned and researched in the associated lesson, they design and fabricate a replacement prosthetic limb using given sp...

In this culminating activity, student groups act as engineering design teams to derive equations to determine the stability of specific above-ground storage tank scenarios with given tank specifications and liquid contents. With their flotation analyses completed and the stability determined, studen...

Students apply the design process to the problem of hiding a message in a digital image using steganographic methods, a PictureEdit Java class, and API (provided as an attachment). They identify the problems and limitations associated with this task, brainstorm solutions, select a solution, and impl...

Students explore augmented reality programs, including muscle and bone overlays and body tracking recording program, using Unity and Microsoft Visual Studio and develop ways to modify, enhance, and redesign the program to meet a particular real-world need.

Student teams design their own booms (bridges) and engage in a friendly competition with other teams to test their designs. Each team strives to design a boom that is light, can hold a certain amount of weight, and is affordable to build.

Students use Arduino microcontrollers and light-sensitive resistors (photocells) to sense the ambient light levels in a room and turn LEDs on and off based on those readings. They are challenged to personalize their basic night-lights with the use of more LEDs, if/else statements and voltage divider...

Students gain practice in Arduino fundamentals as they design their own small-sized prototype light sculptures to light up a hypothetical courtyard. They program Arduino microcontrollers to control the lighting behavior of at least three light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to create imaginative light displ...

Students learn how to control an Arduino servo wirelessly using a simple phone application, Bluetooth module and an Android phone. This prepares them to wirelessly control their own projects.

Student teams design and build shoe prototypes that convert between high heels and athletic shoes. They apply their knowledge about the mechanics of walking and running as well as shoe design (as learned in the associated lesson) to design a multifunctional shoe that is both fashionable and function...

Students use servos and flex sensors to make simple, one-jointed, finger robots. They use Arduino microcontrollers, create circuits and write code to read finger flexes and send angle info to servos. They explore the constrain, map and smoothing commands. Can teams combine fingers to create an entir...

Student teams design, construct, test and improve small working models of water treatment plant processes to filter out contaminants and reclaim resources from simulated wastewater. They keep to a materials budget and earn money from reclaimed materials. They conduct before/after water quality tests...

Students are introduced to the biomechanical characteristics of helmets, and are challenged to incorporate them into designs for helmets used for various applications.

Students design and create their own nano-polymer smartphone case. Students choose their design, mix their nano-polymer (based in silicone) with starch and add coloring of their choice. While students think critically about their design, they embed strings in the nano-polymer material to optimize bo...

Student teams create laparoscopic surgical robots designed to reduce the invasiveness of diagnosing endometriosis and investigate how the disease forms and spreads. Using a synthetic abdominal cavity simulator, students test and iterate their remotely controlled, camera-toting prototype devices, whi...

Students learn about the mathematical characteristics and reflective property of ellipses by building their own elliptical-shaped pool tables. After a slide presentation introduction to ellipses, student “engineering teams” follow the steps of the engineering design process to develop prototypes, wh...

Following the steps of the iterative engineering design process, student teams use what they learned in the previous lessons and activity in this unit to research and choose materials for their model heart valves and test those materials to compare their properties to known properties of real heart ...

Students design, build and test small-sized vehicle prototypes that transfer various types of potential energy into motion. To complete the Go Public phase of the legacy cycle, students demonstrate their understanding of how potential energy may be transferred into kinetic energy.

Students explore how to modify surfaces such as wood or cotton fabric at the nanoscale. They create specialized materials with features such as waterproofing and stain resistance. The challenge starts with student teams identifying an intended user and developing scenarios for using their developed ...

Students apply their understanding of light polarization and attenuation to design, fabricate, test and refine their own prototype sunglasses that better reduce glare and lower light intensity compared to available sunglasses, and better protect eyes from UVA and UVB radiation. They meet the project...

High school students design, build, and test model race cars made from simple materials (lifesaver-shaped candies, plastic drinking straws, Popsicle sticks, index cards, tape) as a way to explore independent, dependent and control variables.

During this engineering design/build project, students investigate many different solutions to a problem. Their design challenge is to find a way to get school t-shirts up into the stands during home sporting events. They follow the steps of the engineering design process to design and build a usabl...

Students work as materials and chemical engineers to develop a bouncy ball using a select number of materials. They develop a plan of what materials they might need to design their product, and then create, test, and evaluate their bouncy ball.

Student pairs design, redesign and perform simple experiments to test the differences in thermal conductivity (heat flow) through different media (foil and thin steel). Then students create visual diagrams of their findings that can be understood by anyone with little background on the subject, appl...

Students follow the steps of the engineering design process to design an improved smartphone case. As if they are materials engineers, they evaluate how to build a smartphone case and study physical properties, chemical properties, and tessellations. They analyze materials, design and improve a prot...

Students learn how to connect Arduino microcontroller boards to computers and write basic code to blink LEDs. Provided steps guide students through the connection process, troubleshooting common pitfalls and writing their first Arduino programs. Then they independently write their own code to blink ...

Students control small electric motors using Arduino microcontrollers to make little spinning fans made with folded and glued paper sticky notes. They build basic circuits and modify code, before applying the principles to create their own more-complicated motor-controlled projects. Advanced project...

Students create a water bottle from common materials used in purification tools that can clean dirty water as an inexpensive alternative to a modern filter. Students may iterate upon their design based off their experiment and the designs of their classmates after initial testing.

Students take on the challenge of assembling a light sensor circuit in order to observe its readings using the Arduino Serial Monitor. They also create their own unique visualization through software called Processing. They learn how to use calibration and smoothing along the way to capture a better...

Students investigate Python and Jupyter Notebook to analyze real astronomical images in order to calculate the interstellar distance to a star cluster across the Milky Way from our own Solar System. They learn how to write Python code that runs in a Jupyter Notebook so they can determine the brightn...

Students design, build and evaluate a spring-powered mouse trap racer. For evaluation, teams equip their racers with an intelligent brick from a LEGO© MINDSTORMS© EV3 Education Core Set and a HiTechnic© acceleration sensor.

Students apply their knowledge of linear regression and design to solve a real-world challenge to create a better packing solution for shipping cell phones. They make composite material packaging containers using cardboard, fabric, plastic, paper and/or rubber bands to create four different-weight p...

Students learn how engineers harness the energy of the wind to produce power by following the engineering design process as they prototype two types of wind turbines and test to see which works best. Students also learn how engineers decide where to place wind turbines, and the advantages and disadv...

Students experience the engineering design process as they design, fabricate, test and redesign their own methods for encapsulation of a (hypothetical) new miracle drug. The objective is to delay the drug release by a certain time and have a long release duration—patterned after the timed release re...

In this hands-on activity, student groups design, build, test and improve devices to pump water as if they were engineers helping a rural village meet their drinking water supply. Students keep track of their materials costs, and calculate power and cost efficiencies of the prototype pumps.

Students practice human-centered design by imagining, designing and prototyping a product to improve classroom accessibility for the visually impaired. Student teams follow the steps of the engineering design process to formulate their ideas, draw them by hand and using free, online Tinkercad softwa...

Students write Arduino code and use a “digital sandbox” to create new colors out of the three programming primary colors: green, red and blue. They develop their own functions, use them to make disco light shows, and vary the pattern and colors of their shows.

Student teams each design, build and test a composite material for use as a concrete building block for shantytown use. The design challenge constraints include: using inexpensive and readily available materials, chemically resistant, physically durable, cost-effective and aesthetically pleasing. Th...

Students research and learn about simple machines and other mechanisms through learning about a Rube Goldberg machine. Student teams design and build their own Rube Goldberg devices that incorporate at least six simple machines. This project is open-ended with much potential for creativity and fun.

Students explore energy efficiency, focusing on renewable energy, by designing and building flat-plate solar water heaters. They calculate the efficiency of the solar water heaters during initial and final tests and compare the efficiencies to those of models currently sold on the market (requiring ...

Refreshed with an understanding of the six simple machines; screw, wedge, pully, incline plane, wheel and axle, and lever, student groups receive materials and an allotted amount of time to act as mechanical engineers to design and create machines that can complete specified tasks.

Students engineer a working pair of shin guards for soccer or similar contact sport from everyday materials. Since many factors go into the design of a shin guard, students follow the engineering design process to create a prototype.

Students work through an online tutorial on MIT's App Inventor to learn how to create Android applications. Using those skills, they create their own applications and use them to collect data from an Android device accelerometer and store that data to databases.

Students learn about the engineering design process and how products may be reinvented to serve new purposes. Working in groups, students design a type of slime. After creating their slime, the teacher turns out the lights and the students see that the slime they made actually glows in the dark!

Students are challenged to design and program Arduino-controlled robots that behave like simple versions of the automated guided vehicles engineers design for real-world applications. Using Arduino microcontroller boards, infrared (IR) sensors, servomotors, attachable wheels and plastic containers (...

Students imagine they are stranded on an island and must create the brightest light possible with the meager supplies they have on hand in order to gain the attention of a rescue airplane. In small groups, students create circuits using items in their "survival kits" to create maximum voltage, measu...

Students work within constraints to construct model trusses and then test them to failure as a way to evaluate the relative strength of different truss configurations and construction styles. Within each group, each student builds two exact copies of the team's truss configuration using his/her own ...

Students are challenged to find a way to get school t-shirts up into the stands during sporting events. They work with a real client (if possible, such as a cheerleading squad, booster club or band) to determine the requirements and constraints that would make the project a success, including a budg...

Biomedical engineers design, create, and test health technology that measure all sorts of physical functions in the body, including heartbeat. Students play the role of biomedical engineers in this activity and create a device that helps visualize heartbeats.

Students use a variety of common office and household supplies to design a boat. Their goal: to not only design the fastest boat, but also take into account how much mass or “cargo” the boat can carry, the stability of the boat in the water, the total mass of the boat, boat aesthetics, and how much ...

Students are challenged to design and build wind chimes using their knowledge of physics and sound waves, and under given constraints such as weight, cost and number of musical notes it must generate.

Students learn how to send signals (such as from buttons or sensors) from one system to another using XBee radio communication modules. By activity end, they are able to control LEDs and motors wirelessly using Arduino microcontrollers and XBee shields. Introduces the concept of the Internet of thin...

The Engineering Design Process

The engineering design process is a series of steps that engineers use to create solutions to problems. It is a structured approach to problem-solving that involves identifying a problem, defining the problem, generating potential solutions, evaluating those solutions, selecting the best solution, and implementing and testing that solution. The engineering design process is iterative, meaning that engineers often repeat some or all of the steps several times to refine their solution. It is a critical component of the field of engineering, as it allows engineers to solve complex problems and create new products and technologies. Effective use of the engineering design process requires a strong understanding of engineering principles, scientific methods, and mathematical analysis.

The engineering design process involves making a series of decisions. Each decision must be carefully considered and justified based on various factors such as function, safety, cost, and feasibility. Throughout the process, engineers must weigh the benefits and drawbacks of different options and choose the best course of action based on their knowledge, experience, and the available resources. Justifying decisions is an essential part of the design process as it helps to ensure that the final product meets the required specifications and functions as intended. By justifying each decision, engineers can also communicate their thought process to others involved in the project, such as clients, stakeholders, or team members, and gain their trust and support.

The engineering design process is nearly always iterative in nature. Retracing steps and going back to a previous decision is a common occurrence in the engineering design process. As new information is gathered or unforeseen challenges arise, engineers may realize that an earlier decision was not the best one. In such cases, it is important to reevaluate the decision, consider alternative options, and make a new decision based on the updated information. This process of reiteration and adjustment is a fundamental part of the design process, as it allows engineers to continually improve and refine their designs until they meet the desired specifications. Accepting that retracing steps is sometimes necessary can be challenging, but it is essential to maintain a flexible mindset and be willing to adapt as new information comes to light. By doing so, engineers can ensure that they are producing the best possible outcome for their project.

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the engineering design process, a typical process often includes the following steps:

• Define the problem : The first step in the design process is to clearly define the problem you are trying to solve. This involves understanding the needs and requirements of the user or customer, identifying any constraints or limitations, and setting specific goals and objectives.
• Conduct research : Once the problem has been defined, engineers typically conduct research to gain a deeper understanding of the problem and potential solutions. This may involve reviewing existing products or technologies, conducting experiments, or gathering data through surveys or other methods.
• Develop potential solutions : Using the information gathered during the research phase, engineers develop a range of potential solutions to the problem. This may involve brainstorming, sketching, or creating computer models of different designs.
• Evaluate potential solutions : Engineers then evaluate each potential solution based on a set of criteria, such as cost, performance, safety, and ease of use. This may involve creating prototypes, conducting simulations, or performing experiments to test each design.
• Select the best solution : After evaluating each potential solution, engineers select the best design to move forward with. This may involve combining different elements of different designs or modifying a design to better meet the requirements of the problem.
• Implement and test the solution : Once a design has been selected, engineers implement and test the solution. This may involve building a prototype, performing additional simulations or experiments, or conducting user testing to ensure that the solution meets the needs of the user or customer.
• Iterate and improve : The engineering design process is iterative, meaning that engineers often repeat some or all of these steps several times to refine their solution. This may involve making changes to the design based on user feedback or additional testing, or identifying new problems that need to be addressed.

Engineering Design Assumptions

Design Methodologies

Risk Mitigation through Design

Design Perspicuity

Engineering design – example projects.

Concurrent Design

FMEA - Failure Modes and Effects Analysis

Engineering design - example projects.

Automated Hydrogen Generator

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Ll educate: introduction to engineering concepts, exploring the engineering process.

Engineering is an iterative process where you can reevaluate as you generate new results and gather more observations from your prototyping and testing. Effective engineering starts by considering the intended audience or customer’s needs. This “why” helps you define the “how” as you generate the goals of your research or product development.  

For example, a person goes to the local hardware store and asks for a drill for their home improvement project. What the customer actually needs is a hole. The drill is the tool to fulfill that need. 

Steps 1 & 2. Defining the Problem and Identifying Your Resources

Part of defining the problem you’re going to solve is identifying the trade-offs present in the problem. This often means balancing your resources, such as time and cost. These parameters narrow the scope of what you can address in your solution and ask you to make decisions about your project’s development path going forward. The parameters can change over time and these decisions can be reevaluated as your project continues. Still, considering your available resources will help you to narrow your options to the most feasible ones for your current set-up. 

Once you have a sense of the problem and of what resources you have available, you can more effectively frame the question you want to address.

Step 3. Research Existing Solutions

The world of engineering is a global one. Often there are existing solutions for problems we face if we just consider how to adapt them to our specific situations. Therefore, it’s good practice to conduct background research on your chosen problem and gather data from existing studies or experiments. 

With this information, you can evaluate the trade-space your question falls under. You can see what has already been explored and where there are gaps for you to contribute new ideas. 

Some questions to consider are: 

• Who else has also had this problem? 
• What developments or progress was made in past efforts to address this problem? 
• Where are there still unknowns?

Step 4. Selecting an Approach and Developing an Experiment Plan

Test out your ideas on paper or a whiteboard, particularly with others. While schools usually assign individual work, engineering usually involves teams and these steps work well with groups since you can bounce ideas off of your teammates. Take some time to see which of your initial concepts are a practical fit to solve your problem and answer your question. If the idea fits and the trade-offs are acceptable, then you have the beginning of a prototype to work off of. 

Step 5. Develop Your Prototype

As you can see, a big part of engineering is the lead-up to actually experimenting. These first steps allow you to be a more effective and targeted engineer/researcher and ensure that what you’re developing is going to be both useful and novel. The forethought and brainstorming that you’ve spent time on here will also save you time later in the process. Now that you have a solid idea and plan, you can delve into the technical, using the most appropriate medium (potentially programming) to develop your prototype. Depending on your desired end project this prototype can be virtual (e.g., code), physical (e.g., lab work), or a mesh of the two (e.g., embedded systems, radars, etc.).

Step 6. Document Your Prototype

Once you’ve developed your prototype, make sure to create documentation. Even though this is often presented as a less exciting part of the process, it’s very helpful for you, your co-developers, and others who might want to use it. The knowledge might be fresh in your mind now, but it won’t always be. Say you turn your attention to another project and come back to your prototype a year later. What might have seemed obvious then probably isn’t at the forefront of your mind anymore. That’s where documentation can be helpful. Good documentation is clear, comprehensive, states assumptions, and can be used to both introduce people and to refresh their memory of your prototype.

As we mentioned before, research and engineering can be iterative. Your first prototype often isn’t your last one. For industry this cyclical development cycle is quite normal. Think of how phone manufacturers like Apple or Samsung release a new phone generation every year. This is possible because the developers and researchers of those companies continue to iterate on the products they have, adapting and improving them further. 

Let’s say that you’ve gone through the engineering research process and created your prototype. Now what? Since you frame your initial question around a target audience or customer, you may want to put this prototype into production. This includes both rolling out your product and the longer-term actions of educating and working with clients on product operation and maintenance. Your work will be deployed by users. For academia, like research done at universities, this may mean publishing your findings at a conference or in a journal. 

In recent years it has become easier to run experiments, thanks to the introduction of online tutorials, plug-and-play kits with boards, and public facilities like Maker spaces where people can use the supplied machinery and materials instead of setting up a personal lab.

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• Published: 08 January 2021

Effects of infusing the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ engineering design thinking

• Kuen-Yi Lin   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6250-0540 1 ,
• Ying-Tien Wu 2 ,
• Yi-Ting Hsu 3 &
• P. John Williams 4  

International Journal of STEM Education volume  8 , Article number:  1 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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This study focuses on probing preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structures and how they construct engineering design in technology-learning activities and explores the effects of infusing an engineering design process into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structures for engineering design thinking.

The study employed a quasi-experimental design, and twenty-eight preservice technology teachers participated in the teaching experiment. The flow-map method and metalistening technique were utilized to enable preservice technology teachers to create flow maps of engineering design, and a chi-square test was employed to analyze the data. The results suggest that (1) applying the engineering design process to STEM project-based learning is beneficial for developing preservice technology teachers’ schema of design thinking, especially with respect to clarifying the problem, generating ideas, modeling, and feasibility analysis, and (2) it is important to encourage teachers to further explore the systematic concepts of engineering design thinking and expand their abilities by merging the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning.

Conclusions

The findings of this study provide initial evidence on the effects of infusing the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ engineering design thinking. However, further work should focus on exploring how to overcome the weaknesses of preservice technology teachers’ engineering design thinking by adding a few elements of engineering design thinking pedagogy, e.g., designing learning activities that are relevant to real life.

Introduction

An increasing number of position papers and empirical studies have focused on exploring the issues of engineering design thinking (Brand, 2020 ; English & King, 2015 ). With regard to the cognitive structure of technology teachers in engineering design, Atman et al. ( 2007 ) studied the differences between expert practitioners and students during the engineering design process. They proposed that students should pay more attention to problem scoping, information gathering, and decision-making as they develop their cognitive structures and schematic processes in engineering design. Furthermore, when Hynes ( 2012 ) investigated how middle school teachers understood and taught the process of engineering design, he found that technology teachers frequently exhibit sophisticated thinking during two particular steps of engineering design: constructing a prototype and redesigning. In a study about the performance of high school students in engineering design subjects, Fan, Yu, and Lou ( 2018 ) noted that students’ abilities in predictive analysis and testing/revising are key factors in determining their thinking in engineering design. Sung and Kelley ( 2018 ) performed a sequential analysis study on the design thinking of fourth-grade elementary students and found that idea generation plays an important role throughout their design thinking process. These studies suggest that students and teachers at different levels focus on different parts of the design process: idea generation is the most important part of the process for elementary school students; predictive analysis and testing/revising are more important for high school students; and technology teachers tend to focus on prototype construction and redesign. Therefore, the differences between engineering experts and beginners in the engineering design process do not necessarily correspond to what technology teachers emphasize in their engineering design teaching. Furthermore, there is a lack of research on the cognitive structures and engineering design foci of preservice technology teachers, which is an important issue that needs to be addressed.

In addition to engineering design thinking, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has also received considerable attention in recent years. The notion of STEM itself and how its disciplines should be integrated are open to debate (English & King, 2019 ), and attracting appropriately qualified people to study and work in STEM areas is an urgent need (Holmes, Gore, Smith, & Lloyd, 2017 ). Various definitions of STEM education have ranged from disciplinary to transdisciplinary approaches, but from a broad perspective, it can be defined as follows: “STEM education is used to identify activities involving any of the four areas, a STEM-related course, or an interconnected or integrated program of study” (English, 2017 ). Strimel and Grubbs ( 2016 ) noted that technology and engineering are often neglected in secondary-school STEM education, and this neglect perpetuates the educational system’s shortcomings in nurturing technology and engineering talent. In view of this problem, Song et al. ( 2016 ) and Brophy, Klein, Portsmore, and Rogers ( 2008 ) agreed that STEM education implementation can be improved by planning technology-learning activities (such as hands-on activities) that incorporate engineering design so that students can obtain comprehensive cross-disciplinary experience. That is, students will have more chances to apply STEM knowledge and competency in solving problems or meeting needs instead of focusing on learning specific subject matter and neglecting the application of that knowledge (Lin, Hsiao, Williams, & Chen, 2020 ). In addition, many studies have found that technology-learning activities based on engineering design enhance learning in STEM. For example, English and King ( 2019 ) reported students’ responses to designing and constructing a paper bridge that could withstand an optimal load. Their results showed that students’ sketches indicated an awareness of the problem constraints, an understanding of basic engineering principles, and the application of mathematics and science knowledge.

Based on this line of reasoning, technology-learning activities that incorporate engineering design should be useful for implementing STEM education. However, the implementation of teaching activities oriented toward engineering design requires teachers who have a strong conceptual understanding of engineering design. Therefore, investigations of this aspect are important from an academic and practical perspective. For example, in studies about engineering design, some common concerns are the cognitive structures of expert practitioners in engineering design (Atman et al., 2007 ) and the characterization of the engineering design process (Hannah, Joshi, & Summers, 2012 ); the findings of these studies are usually applied in different educational settings (Capobianco & Rupp, 2014 ; Fan, Yu, & Lin, 2020 ). Therefore, if technology teachers are to implement STEM education using the processes of technology-learning activities based upon engineering design, the teachers’ own cognitive structure of engineering design is of great significance. A cognitive structure is a hypothetical construct showing the extent of concepts and their relationships in a learner’s long-term memory (Shavelson, 1974 ). Through probing technology teachers’ cognitive structures, technology teacher educators can understand what knowledge technology teachers have already acquired. In addition, it is a fundamental step toward acquiring evidence of technology teachers’ cognitive structure in order to explore how technology teachers construct engineering design in technology-learning activities (Wu & Tsai, 2005 ).

One of the primary objectives of the Taiwan Technology Curriculum in 12-year compulsory education is to ensure that secondary school students possess basic competencies in engineering design thinking before they enter university-level engineering institutes (Ministry of Education, 2018 ). This sounds like a prevocational approach, as engineering design thinking is relevant only to students who progress to engineering education. If the Technology Curriculum is a general curriculum for all students, then the rationale should be that engineering design thinking is good for all students. The aforementioned studies suggest that the cognitive structures of technology teachers in engineering design will affect their use of technological pedagogical approaches oriented toward engineering design and thus determine the quality of STEM education implementation. To address this gap in the literature, this study focuses on the cognitive structure of preservice technology teachers in engineering design to probe their understanding of engineering design thinking. We will describe the current status and issues related to the way preservice technology teachers apply cognitive structure to engineering design. The findings of this study will help preservice technology teachers incorporate engineering design processes into their technology teaching activities. This, in turn, could foster engineering design capabilities in secondary school students and their interest in engineering-related areas. More specifically, the primary research questions of this study are as follows: (1) How does the incorporation of engineering design processes into STEM project-based learning benefit the training of preservice technology teachers in terms of their cognitive structure in engineering design thinking? (2) What are the weaknesses in the cognitive structure of preservice technology teachers in engineering design thinking?

Theoretical framework

To explore the gap in engineering design thinking in the literature, the following literature review focuses on exploring engineering design thinking and related studies. Furthermore, to develop the theoretical basis for STEM project-based learning combined with the engineering design process, the following literature review also focuses on analyzing the related studies and proposing the key elements in developing a STEM project learning curriculum.

• Engineering design thinking

Many scholars in the field of technology and engineering education believe that engineering design thinking is a basic competency in engineering and that this mode of thinking should be given priority in secondary and tertiary education (Atman et al., 2007 ; Dym, Agogino, Eris, Frey, & Leifer, 2005 ). According to Dym et al. ( 2005 ), “Engineering design is a systematic, intelligent process in which designers generate, evaluate, and specify concepts for devices, systems, or processes whose form and function achieve clients’ objectives or users’ needs while satisfying a specified set of constraints.” The cultivation of engineering design thinking can encourage students to develop an inquisitive mindset, approach problems from multiple perspectives, and question existing norms.

Recent studies on engineering design thinking have generally focused on either the processes of this form of thinking or the difference between engineering design experts and university-level engineering students in terms of engineering design thinking. A variety of design thinking processes have been proposed by researchers in this area. Atman et al. ( 2007 ) proposed that the engineering design process proceeds as follows: (1) problem definition, (2) information gathering, (3) idea generation, (4) modeling, (5) feasibility analysis, (6) evaluation, (7) decision, (8) communication, (9) implementation, and (10) design revision. Similarly, Hynes ( 2012 ) proposed a slightly different engineering design process: (1) identify need or problem, (2) research need or problem, (3) develop possible solutions, (4) select best possible solution, (5) construct a prototype, (6) test and evaluate solution, (7) communicate the solution, and (8) redesign. The main differences between the engineering design thinking process and the problem-solving process are a greater emphasis on modeling and feasibility analysis in the former. In other words, in the problem-solving process, students may not as thoroughly evaluate the viability of each idea when choosing the optimal solution. However, the appropriate use of modeling and feasibility analyses can improve students’ capacity to evaluate ideas, and this is one of the most important features of the engineering design thinking process.

The engineering design thinking processes proposed by Atman, Cardella, Turns, and Adams ( 2005 ) and Hynes ( 2012 ) include a communication step after the decision step. Even after modeling and feasibility analyses have been conducted and an optimal solution has been selected, it is still necessary to communicate with a client to confirm the final solution and make further adjustments to the solution to address any questions or problems. The purpose of this step is to confirm that a client’s needs are met and to ensure that all team members understand the final solution. The above analysis also shows that there are certain differences between design thinking processes and problem-solving processes.

Research on engineering design thinking

Interested in cultivating engineering design thinking in university and secondary school students (Wind, Alemdar, Lingle, Moore, & Asilkalkan, 2019 ), many researchers have examined the differences in design thinking processes between expert and novice engineers when faced with an engineering problem. For example, Atman et al. ( 2005 ), Atman et al. ( 2007 ), and Lammi and Becker ( 2013 ) used engineering problems such as the design of a playground for a fictitious neighborhood and the construction of a ping-pong-ball launcher to investigate the engineering design thinking of engineering experts and students. The most important findings of these studies are as follows: (1) expert engineers ask many more questions than students do during the problem-definition step, and some of these questions (15%) are highly specific and based on close scrutiny; (2) during the information-gathering step, expert engineers collect vast amounts of differentiated data, whereas beginners gather only small amounts of localized data and spend a relatively small amount of time on this step; and (3) during the decision step, expert engineers use mathematical calculations and theoretical methods to support their decisions, whereas beginners tend to rely more on intuition.

In a study on the engineering design processes of expert engineers, high school freshmen, and high school seniors, Atman et al. ( 2007 ) found that experts spend significantly more time on the information gathering, feasibility analysis, evaluation, and decision-making steps than high school students do. They also found that high school seniors spend more time on idea generation, feasibility analysis, and decision-making than high school freshmen do. Thus, this study revealed differences between experts and high school students in engineering design processes. Although the study focused mainly on analyzing the amount of time spent on each step of the engineering task, it quantified some of the differences between experts and high school students in engineering design processes. In studies about technology and engineering teachers, Hynes ( 2012 ) examined the understanding and teaching of the engineering design process by middle school teachers. The most significant finding of this study was that technology teachers often display sophisticated thinking during two particular steps of the engineering design process—constructing a prototype and redesigning.

Overall, expert engineers usually spend more time on each step of the design process than students do; technology teachers generally apply complex thinking while creating prototypes during redesign; and experts ask more questions, perform more research, and conduct more testing than students. The implication is that experience leads to a more mature engineering design thought process. It is important to pay attention to these findings when nurturing future engineering design talent. Despite these related studies, it is not enough for research on engineering design thinking to explore the engineering design process of expert or novice engineers. If we wish to empower teachers to feel more confident in developing and delivering robust engineering-related curricula, we must first explore teachers’ existing cognitive structures. Therefore, the definitions, system concepts, examples, and advanced system-concept explanations of the engineering design process are explored in this study.

STEM project-based learning combined with engineering design

Many engineering design studies have considered how research findings can be converted into tools for engineering pedagogy to provide an education that nurtures the cognitive skills of students and their ability to fuse theory and practice (Borgford-Parnell, Deibel, & Atman, 2010 ). For the purpose of this study, STEM project-based learning combined with the engineering design process (EDP-STEM-PBL) may be described as a mode of pedagogy that purposefully situates scientific and mathematical knowledge within the context of technological design to create a problem-solving learning environment in which students envision solutions to design challenges, gather information, and solve real problems through the use of the engineering design process (Sanders, 2009 ; Wahono, Lin, & Chang, 2020 ). This approach is expected to improve student competitiveness in the burgeoning knowledge economy. STEM education has already been emphasized in education systems in the USA. Bybee ( 2013 ) stressed that integrative STEM education should pay attention to globally important issues (e.g., climate change, energy sources) and develop design capabilities through practical technology and engineering activities, paying special attention to theory-based design. The aim of this cross-disciplinary approach is to simultaneously teach rigorous academic concepts and provide experiential, real-world learning opportunities. Therefore, EDP-STEM-PBL can be used to systematically cultivate the scientific, technological, mathematical, and engineering knowledge of students through the engineering design thinking process, thus expanding students’ perspectives and mitigating the lack of practicality in conventional pedagogy, which tends to overemphasize theoretical learning. EDP-STEM-PBL repurposes engineering design studies into pedagogical tools for teaching engineering design.

In conventional pedagogy, intuition is often used to solve problems. However, applying analytical strategies and explicit step-by-step processes to ordinary problems often results in better solutions (Baumann & Kuhl, 2002 ). Therefore, EDP-STEM-PBL calls for the formation of learning groups that take full responsibility for their learning, and learning goals are achieved through cooperation and sharing among team members (Milentijevic, Ciric, & Vojinovic, 2008 ). In this study, the engineering design process proposed by Atman et al. ( 2007 ) was used to develop STEM project-based learning activities, with an emphasis on the steps of prototype construction and redesign, as suggested by Hynes ( 2012 ). In this way, we hope to cultivate the engineering design skills needed by preservice technology teachers and to facilitate sophisticated thinking skills in preservice teachers.

Research methods

Research design.

To investigate the effects of EDP-STEM-PBL on the engineering design thinking of preservice technology teachers, we used a pretest-posttest nonequivalent groups design (see Table 1 ). The STEM project used in this study was the mousetrap car. All preservice technology teachers received 12 periods (50 min/period) of mousetrap car activity training courses over 6 weeks. The courses were intended to improve the preservice teachers’ understanding of STEM knowledge about mousetrap cars, e.g., friction, Newton’s first law of motion, material processing, engineering graphics, the definition and process of engineering design, and the Pythagorean theorem. They were then asked to design and construct a mousetrap car that could travel more than 10 m on a 1-m-wide track. During the activity, the experimental group was taught using an EDP-STEM-PBL curriculum, and the control group was taught using a STEM-PBL curriculum based on the technological problem-solving process (PS-STEM-PBL). The differences between the two curricula are described below.

Since this study focused mainly on the cognitive structure used by preservice technology teachers in engineering design thinking, this study followed Tsai and Huang’s ( 2002 ) suggestion in using the flow-map method to explore preservice technology teachers’ cognitive structure and avoid the limitations of free word association, controlled work association, tree construction, and concept mapping. The research subjects (preservice technology teachers) were interviewed before and after the experimental teaching course; that is, for the pretest, the preservice teachers were interviewed before the 12 periods of mousetrap car activity training courses, and for the posttest, they were interviewed after the training courses. The flow-map method was then used to analyze their cognitive structures in engineering design thinking, enabling us to identify how the preservice technology teachers developed and changed their cognitive approaches to engineering design thinking through the experimental curriculum. Finally, the learning performance of the preservice technology teachers in the experimental and control groups was examined by employing the flow-map method to analyze the engineering design thinking of the research subjects from each group. In this way, our study provided insight into how different curricula affected the actual performance of preservice technology teachers in a STEM-PBL environment. We used these findings to develop recommendations for EDP-STEM-PBL pedagogy that can serve as a reference for teaching science and technology in the future.

There were similarities and differences between the “engineering design process” and “problem-solving process” curricula as taught to the experimental and control groups.

The researcher was responsible for designing and teaching the EDP group and PS group curriculum. This curriculum is one of the major units of “Introduction to Industrial Technology Education,” but the students’ performances do not influence their final grades. The researcher introduced the background of this study and the definition and application of the engineering design process to both groups to enable them to understand the importance of applying the EDP in activity. The experimental group’s engineering design process curriculum (EDP-STEM-PBL) included such engineering design processes as modeling, feasibility analysis, and group communication; the curriculum began with information gathering according to the problem definition, followed by feasibility analyses based on the problem constraints and then the selection of a solution and construction of a prototype. In contrast, the control group’s technological problem-solving process included problem definition, data collection, feasible idea development, best idea selection, best idea implementation, results evaluation, and design idea revision. The process began with the development of knowledge and problem-solving skills that created a link between the problem and the students’ cognitive structures; this was followed by experimental analysis to verify the students’ hypotheses.

Problem framework

In the experimental group (EDP-STEM-PBL), the problem features were described in a qualitative and highly detailed manner to encourage a search for the most feasible solution. Additionally, this curriculum provided an integrated, cross-disciplinary learning experience (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) to help the subjects develop high-level cognitive abilities (e.g., design, innovation, and critical thinking) in STEM areas. In the control group (PS-STEM-PBL), the problems were addressed using existing experience, concepts, and techniques in conjunction with a variety of ideas, leading the subjects to find and implement solutions appropriate to the current problem.

Research subjects

The subjects of this study were 28 freshmen/preservice technology teachers who were being trained at the National Taiwan Normal University to specialize in technology education. They had similar engineering-related experience in their pre-engineering technology education courses at the senior high school level due to the national technology curriculum guidelines. All preservice technology teachers must take a required course named “Introduction to Industrial Technology Education.” To ensure that they understood the importance of hands-on learning, a mousetrap car activity was arranged in this course as a key technology-learning activity (see Fig. 1 ). Fifteen preservice technology teachers were randomly assigned to the experimental group and taught using an EDP-STEM-PBL curriculum, and the thirteen remaining teachers were randomly assigned to the control group and taught using a PS-STEM-PBL curriculum. The National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) was selected as the site of this study because it was mainly a secondary school technology teacher training university before it diversified its teacher development programs. The NTNU has a long history of teacher education, and it is presently the main source of secondary school technology teachers in Taiwan. Hence, conducting our study at this university could directly improve teacher education curricula and help equip preservice teachers with engineering design thinking capabilities.

Example of a mousetrap car

Research tools

In representing individual cognitive structure, the flow-map method may be the most useful method for representing the cognitive structure (Tsai & Huang, 2002 ). Anderson and Demetrius ( 1993 ) argued that the flow-map method requires minimal intervention by the interviewer and little inference in its construction (Wu & Tsai, 2005 ). In this study, we conducted in-depth, semistructured interviews to enable us to use the flow-map method to characterize the cognitive structures of preservice teachers in terms of engineering design thinking. After the audio-recorded interview, a “metalistening” technique was followed for the purpose of exploring the preservice technology teachers’ additional conceptual knowledge. The researchers could immediately replay the interview recordings to provide an opportunity for the preservice technology teachers to recall additional concepts of engineering design that they had not previously disclosed. The preservice technology teachers’ responses to the metalistening technique were also audio recorded by a second recorder. Thus, the interviews could be transcribed verbatim to produce a flow map representing the cognitive structures of the preservice technology teachers in this study (Wu & Tsai, 2005 ). The interview questions in this study were largely based on the questions designed by Tsai and Huang ( 2002 ) for in-depth, semistructured interviews. We used the following questions to probe the subjects’ cognitive structures about engineering design thinking: (1) Could you tell me whether you have used the engineering design thinking process to solve an engineering problem? (2) Please tell me more about the concepts you have just mentioned. (3) Could you explain how the concepts you mentioned are connected to each other? (4) Do you have anything to add to that explanation? To ensure that this research tool was effective, we drafted the interview questions according to the research tools of other, related studies; invited experts on the flow-map method to check our questions; and revised our questions accordingly.

Data analysis

Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses were performed in this study. First, we drafted a flow map based on the interview recordings, and then, after discussion and analysis of the flow map through consensus evaluation, we conducted a quantitative analysis of the flow map to identify gaps and weaknesses in the cognitive structures of preservice technology teachers in engineering design thinking. The data analysis steps of the flow maps were as follows: (1) we interviewed the preservice technology teachers and produced the interview recordings, coupled with the metalistening technique; (2) the interviews were transcribed verbatim into flow maps based on the process proposed by Wu and Tsai ( 2005 ); and (3) two researchers adopted the consensus evaluation method in analyzing the flow maps and producing the quantitative data of the preservice technology teachers’ performance in engineering design thinking, which included the following criteria: (1) defining engineering design thinking: a correct definition is assigned a value of 1, and an incorrect or no definition is assigned a value of 0; (2) overall system concepts in engineering design thinking: two researchers discussed the flow maps, decided which steps had been mentioned, and calculated the total number of steps; (3) individual system concepts in engineering design thinking; the two researchers discussed the flow maps and decided which steps had been mentioned. Steps that were mentioned are assigned a value of 1; otherwise, the value is 0; (4) providing examples of engineering design thinking: providing correct examples is assigned a value of 1, and incorrect or no examples are assigned a value of 0; (5) explanations of advanced system concepts (overall): the two researchers discussed the flow maps, decided which steps had further explanations and calculated the total number of steps; (6) explaining system concepts (individual): the two researchers discussed the flow maps and decided which steps had further explanations. Steps that were mentioned are assigned a value of 1; otherwise, the value is 0. By applying the consensus evaluation, the two researchers could come to an exact agreement on the preservice technology teachers’ performance in engineering design thinking and share a common interpretation of the construct (Stemler, 2004 ).

In summary, the interviews were transcribed verbatim, and a flow map (see Figs. 2 , 3 , and 4 ) was drafted using this verbatim transcript (Tsai & Huang, 2002 ). To analyze the flow maps, the two researchers involved in this work conducted a consensus evaluation on the flow maps and discussed the verbatim transcripts of the preservice technology teachers’ interviews in their flow maps to assess the subjects’ performance in relation to definitions, system concepts, examples, and advanced system-concept explanations of engineering design thinking and generate quantitative data. “Definitions” refers to the ability of a preservice technology teacher (PTT) to clearly explain the meaning of the engineering design process. “System concepts” refers to a PTT’s procedural knowledge (i.e., ability to explain each step of the engineering design process). “Examples” refers to the ability of a PTT to provide examples of each step in the engineering design process and the application of these steps. “Advanced system-concept explanations” refers to the ability of a PTT to use correct conceptual knowledge to explain how the engineering design process is used to solve a problem. In addition, to analyze the differences between the experimental and control groups, we conducted a chi-square test to compare their cognitive structures and suppress differences before the experiment.

ED9 flow map: pretest interview

PS6’s flow map: pretest interview

PS6 flow map: posttest interview

In the following sections, we describe the results of this study in terms of the definitions, system concepts, examples, and advanced system-concept explanations of the preservice technology teachers as they relate to the engineering design thinking process.

Preservice technology teachers’ performance: defining engineering design thinking

As shown in Table 2 , the number of preservice technology teachers in the engineering design group (experimental group) who were able to define engineering design thinking increased from two in the pre-experiment test to eight in the post-experiment test. However, the number of preservice technology teachers in the problem-solving group (control group) who were able to provide a definition of engineering design thinking increased only from four in the pretest to eight in the posttest.

Preservice technology teachers’ performance: system concepts in engineering design thinking

Overall system concept.

An analysis of the performance of the preservice technology teachers in terms of their overall system concepts of engineering design thinking is shown in Table 3 . A chi-square test indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the engineering design group (experimental group) and problem-solving group (control group) in this regard.

Individual system concepts

An analysis of the performance of the preservice technology teachers in each system concept of engineering design thinking is shown in Table 4 . According to the chi-square test, there were statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups in four system concepts: problem definition, idea generation, modeling, and feasibility analysis.

Preservice technology teachers’ performance: providing examples of engineering design thinking

As shown in Table 5 , the number of preservice technology teachers in the experimental and control groups who were able to provide examples of engineering design thinking increased from 5 and 3 in the pre-experiment test to 15 and 10 in the post-experiment test, respectively. The chi-square test indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups.

Preservice technology teachers’ performance: explanations of advanced system concepts

Ability to provide explanations for advanced system concepts.

An analysis of the abilities of the preservice technology teachers to provide explanations for advanced system concepts is shown in Table 6 . According to the chi-square test, there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in this aspect.

Ability to provide advanced explanations for each system concept

Table 7 shows an analysis of the preservice technology teachers’ ability to provide advanced explanations for each system concept. The chi-square test showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of their ability to provide advanced explanations for idea generation.

This section discusses a few important topics in further depth in light of the above results. The topics include the findings of Hynes ( 2012 ), who found that technology teachers tend to focus on prototype construction and redesign when they teach engineering design, and whether EDP-STEM-PBL helps to improve the thinking capabilities of preservice teachers in these steps. In addition, we discuss whether preservice teachers are able to exhibit sophisticated thinking during the engineering design thinking process.

Does EDP-STEM-PBL improve preservice technology teachers’ performance during modeling?

In the engineering design process proposed by Hynes ( 2012 ), the most important step of the process for preservice teachers is prototype construction. Hynes ( 2012 ) further noted that preservice teachers should be able to construct ideas and perform calculations. Idea construction refers to the ability of a preservice teacher to evaluate the feasibility of a model and deeply understand the scope of effects brought about by a modification to the model after the idea generation step in EDP-STEM-PBL. The ability to perform calculations refers to the ability of a PTT to come to terms with the complex or custom dimensions of the prototype constructed according to the idea generation, including the ability to understand the characteristics and measurements of the prototype. In the following sections, we will describe how the preservice teachers in this study reflected on their learning after they were taught the EDP-STEM-PBL curriculum.

The prototype construction step was described by Hynes ( 2012 ) as the construction of a working model of an original idea. During this step, an idea may be further developed according to the features of the prototype, and the feasibility of some desired change to the prototype’s specifications may also be assessed. The performance of the preservice technology teachers during the prototype construction step (as per the definition above) is shown in Table 4 . When we performed an analysis on the individual system concepts that are key for project-based learning, we found statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups. This indicated that the preservice teachers in the experimental group were able to clearly and correctly explain procedural knowledge of prototype construction. It also showed that these teachers tended to think that the problems that occur while generating ideas and performing calculations affect the quality of the final implementation. In other words, most of the preservice technology teachers in the experimental group tried to improve their designs after evaluating the prototype they constructed according to the objectives and standards, having gained insights that enabled them to refine the final implementation. In contrast, the performance of the control group in terms of implementation quality was directly affected by the problem-definition and information-gathering steps. The control group was unable to attain the same high level of performance as those using the engineering design process (experimental group) during prototype construction.

Does EDP-STEM-PBL improve preservice technology teachers’ performance during redesign?

In Hynes’s ( 2012 ) definition of the engineering design process, redesign refers to the learners’ ability to understand the goals of a project and to realize that the project implementation does not have to be perfect after the first iteration; it is also a measure of the learners’ ability to learn from mistakes and validate their designs. Explanations of redesign may be categorized as in situ explanations, review explanations, and advanced explanations. In situ explanations refer to explanations of redesign provided by a teacher while the student is learning how to build a project (e.g., modifications and suggestions). Review explanations refer to guidance provided by teachers to students after the students have already finished most of the redesign. Advanced explanations refer to advanced interpretations of the redesign, such as designers retracing their work to the problem-definition step (e.g., to identify newly recognized needs or problems) or returning to the modeling step (e.g., to improve their models for a new version of the design). The redesign step can be thought of as preservice technology teachers fundamentally rethinking the engineering design process and overhauling their designs.

As shown in Table 4 , the performance of the preservice technology teachers in the experimental group ( N = 4, 27%) was better than that of the preservice technology teachers in the control group ( N = 1, 8%). This implies that the preservice technology teachers who were taught using the EDP-STEM-PBL curriculum were better than those in the control group at implementing their projects using the engineering design process in an orderly manner. Based on the results of the interviews, teachers should use in situ and review explanations to help students understand redesign and thus expound on the contents of and knowledge within the curriculum. Furthermore, teachers should highlight the actions that must be taken by the students and prevent them from taking ineffective actions. With the teachers’ guidance, the students should think of the engineering design process as a whole instead of rushing to complete the project. Furthermore, students should be guided through advanced explanations to return to the problem-definition or modeling step during redesign to think about why it may be necessary to revise or improve their original design. The overall results suggested that pedagogy based on the engineering design process can significantly improve the redesign capabilities of preservice technology teachers in STEM-PBL.

Does EDP-STEM-PBL improve preservice technology teachers’ ability to use sophisticated thinking?

The cultivation of sophisticated thinking in the engineering design process can be discussed from two perspectives: the ability to provide examples (Table 5 ) and advanced system concept explanations (Table 6 ) about the engineering design process. Our analyses showed that the experimental group was superior to the control group in providing examples of engineering design thinking. This suggests that EDP-STEM-PBL helps cultivate the ability of preservice technology teachers to think divergently or convergently. Atman et al. ( 2007 ) noted that expert engineers are skilled at making decisions about engineering-related concepts because they have absorbed a broad and diverse range of engineering concepts. Based on their working experience in various jobs, professional engineers are able to easily and accurately evaluate components of the engineering design process (e.g., problem descriptions, prototypes, work plans, independent completion time). They are highly adept at applying their metacognitive skills and understanding engineering design thinking concepts.

The aforementioned qualitative analyses also showed that the experimental and control groups were both unable to provide advanced system concept explanations during project implementation. This is somewhat inconsistent with the findings of previous studies. For example, in a study in which freshmen and senior engineering students were asked to perform an engineering task, Atman et al. ( 2005 ) found that the seniors had a higher number of transitions, greater progression to later stages, and longer design times than the freshmen (problem-solving time is an important factor, as it encompasses the cognitive structures of advanced system concepts in engineering design thinking). West, Fensham, and Garrard ( 1985 ) noted that “cognitive structures” generally consist of two important components: the knowledge stored within the conceptual structure and the organization of this knowledge. It is possible that the preservice technology teachers in this study were not able to fully express their advanced system-concept explanations during the STEM-PBL curricula, thus resulting in a deviation from the findings of previous studies. In our opinion, the preservice technology teachers in the experimental and control groups may have spent too much time on problem definition and were slow to transition to developing alternative solutions and project implementation. Atman et al. ( 2005 ), who used similar teaching materials, found that freshmen and senior engineering students both spent large amounts of time on the problem-definition step, which includes the time spent reading and describing the problem. Therefore, we believe that the preservice technology teachers who were taught using EDP-STEM-PBL were highly proficient in presenting basic descriptions and definitions of engineering design thinking. However, they were far less proficient in the use of high-level deductive reasoning and dialectical thinking, as they generally preferred to use basic definitions, descriptions, and conceptual explanations rather than exhibiting higher-level skills. It is possible that the preservice technology teachers who were taught with the EDP-STEM-PBL curriculum will gradually transition to higher-level skills as they become more familiar with engineering design process pedagogy.

Research limitations

This study focuses on the cognitive structure of preservice technology teachers in engineering design to probe their understanding of engineering design thinking. However, a self-criticism of this study reveals that it was subject to the following limitations. The utilization of the flow-map method with the metalistening technique is very time consuming, making it difficult to increase the number of research subjects. That is, the external validity (generalizability) of this study is the major limitation.

Another limitation is the statistical approach to exploring the effect of applying the engineering design process to STEM project-based learning in developing preservice technology teachers’ schema of design thinking. If the number of research subjects had exceeded 30 preservice technology teachers in each group, we could have utilized analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) in this study. However, there were only 28 preservice technology teachers in this study; thus, we could utilize only the chi-square test to compare their cognitive structures and suppress differences before the experiment.

Finally, we arranged 1 h of interview time for each preservice technology teacher for the purpose of controlling the interview time. That is, the subjects had to express what they wanted to say within 30 min and then listen what they had said and explain what they had forgotten to say for the remaining 30 min. In the pretest interview, this amount of time was sufficient. However, for the posttest interview, this amount of time was sometimes insufficient. Very few preservice technology teachers were anxious to extend the interview, even when we asked them to feel free to finish what they wanted to say.

The main focus of this study was the effectiveness of EDP-STEM-PBL in cultivating the cognitive structures of preservice technology teachers with respect to engineering design thinking. Based on the experiment, we analyzed the effects of EDP-STEM-PBL and compared the results of the experimental and control groups. The results of the experimental teaching activity are as follows:

EDP-STEM-PBL improved problem definition, idea generation, and engineering design thinking

First, preservice technology teachers who were taught using the engineering design thinking process (the experimental group) performed better than the control group in problem definition, idea generation, modeling, and feasibility analysis. In this study, 28 preservice technology teachers were taught from a STEM-PBL curriculum based on the mousetrap car project. The number of preservice technology teachers who were able to describe the problem increased from two (13.3%) to eight (53.3%) in the experimental group and from four (30.8%) to five (38.5%) in the control group. Hence, the ability of the experimental group to define the basic problem (i.e., the ability to clarify the scope and context of the problem) improved significantly after EDP-STEM-PBL. This is consistent with the findings of Atman et al. ( 2007 ), whose subjects were asked to design a playground: expert engineers generally read a problem several times and ask for the specifics to be repeated, which helps them identify the constraints of the problem, reconstruct the problem, and summarize effective ideas. In other words, the experimental group was better able to define how the problems of the project activity were linked to the goals of the project after they were taught the EDP-STEM-PBL curriculum.

Atman et al. ( 2007 ) noted that expert engineers spend large amounts of time on the engineering design thinking process. However, during the teaching experiment in this study, we found that the subjects either used their intuition or convergent/logical thinking to solve the problem after the steps of problem definition, decision-making, and objective confirmation; this is likely to be a crucial factor in determining the results of the experiment. Furthermore, by analyzing the performance of the experimental group in further detail, we found that the experimental group was better at estimating the influence of each factor during the modeling process and thus produced the best solutions; members of the experimental group were subsequently able to confirm whether a solution met the criteria set by the problem definition and review the general applicability of their solutions. This result is consistent with the findings of Atman et al. ( 2007 ), who found that the experimental group was able to determine the relevant causal relationships of a problem and discover the most important factors for solving the problem; on this basis, they identified the focal points of the problem, performed feasibility analyses, reviewed the constraints, and determination criteria of the problem, and provided simple explanations of the results that could be produced by further analysis. Therefore, it is our opinion that teaching goals should be cross-evaluated and explained in advance; additionally, more time should be dedicated to problem scoping and the development of alternative solutions. Furthermore, more effort should be dedicated to feasibility analysis to shorten the time needed by preservice technology teachers to solve engineering problems. On this basis, we expect the incorporation of engineering design process pedagogy to strongly improve teaching effectiveness.

Prioritize procedural learning in modeling and redesign for preservice technology teachers in STEM project-based learning

This approach can improve preservice technology teachers’ capacity for sophisticated thinking. Hynes ( 2012 ) noted that the prototype construction and redesign steps of the engineering design process affect the development of sophisticated thinking. Our results showed that the preservice technology teachers who received engineering design process pedagogy outperformed the control group in the prototype construction and redesign steps. Wu and Tsai ( 2005 ) proposed that constructivist science activities could provide opportunities for “cognitive apprenticeship,” as these activities allow for the application of metacognition and high-level information-processing strategies to the organization of cognitive structures. Furthermore, during these learning activities, students are provided with opportunities for expression, communication, and consultation, which improve their cognitive structures in engineering design thinking. Therefore, we suggest that the engineering design process be incorporated through engineering-related, project-based learning activities. This will help preservice technology teachers formulate improved designs using their engineering design knowledge and improve their cognitive structures in engineering design thinking.

In this study, the flow-map method was used to acquire and analyze the cognitive structures of preservice technology teachers; quantitative and qualitative analyses were also performed on the collected data. We found that the preservice technology teachers who were taught the engineering design process significantly improved their performance in prototype construction and redesign. Similarly, Atman et al. ( 2007 ) found that expert engineers are skilled at making decisions about engineering-related concepts because they understand a broad range of engineering concepts, and their experience enables them to easily and accurately evaluate various aspects of the engineering design process (e.g., problem descriptions, prototypes, work plans, independent completion time). Successful professional engineers are highly adept at applying their metacognitive skills and understanding of engineering design thinking concepts. We believe that incorporating the engineering design process into the training of preservice technology teachers is beneficial for refining their cognitive structure in engineering design thinking. However, the design of these teaching courses should be based on the progress of preservice technology teachers in engineering-related courses to improve their capacity for sophisticated thinking.

Suggestions for future research

One of the main advantages of engineering design process pedagogy is that it cultivates sophisticated thinking. However, there are many difficulties in implementing this mode of pedagogy (Linder, 1999 ). Many teachers feel that the obstacles to its implementation are too severe, and the issue most frequently cited is insufficient time. If the weaknesses of preservice technology teachers can be discovered through preclass investigation, and a few elements of engineering design thinking pedagogy can be added to address these weaknesses, this approach will undoubtedly enhance teaching effectiveness without wasting too much time on trial and error. Furthermore, as EDP-STEM-PBL involves several skills that are generally applicable to other tasks (Atman et al., 2005 ), improving the problem scoping and development capabilities of preservice technology teachers will also improve their ability to devise alternative solutions. Engineering design activities prepare preservice technology teachers for realistic problems, provide opportunities for practice, and improve their abilities in various areas, including their ability to integrate knowledge. Therefore, designing learning activities that are relevant to real-life will cultivate practical knowledge and problem-solving capabilities in preservice technology teachers and improve their ability to address real-life subjects.

Availability of data and materials

The quantitative data and materials are in Chinese. If you need the data and materials, please contact the corresponding author.

Abbreviations

STEM project-based learning combined with the engineering design process

National Taiwan Normal University

STEM-PBL curriculum based on the technological problem-solving process

• Preservice technology teacher

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

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Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to the teachers and students who participated in this study.

This research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China under Contract numbers MOST 105-2628-S-003-001-MY3, MOST 108-2511-H-003-058-MY4 and the “Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences” of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) from The Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan. The findings and recommendations contained in this article of those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Science and Technology.

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Ying-Tien Wu

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Science and Mathematics Education Centre, Curtin University, Perth, Australia

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Kuen-Yi Lin is the leader of this research, he is in charge of the research design, conducting teaching experiment, data analysis, and writing the manuscript. Ying-Tien Wu is responsible for analyzing the flow map and qualitative data with Dr. Lin. They spent more than 3 months to discuss and analyze the data. Besides, they also discuss the possible reasons in explaining the research results. Yi-Ting Hsu is responsible for collecting and analyzing the related literature, drawing the flow map according the qualitative data of in-depth interview and metalistening. P. John Williams is responsible for providing comments to this research, and he is also responsible for revising the manuscript due to his first language is English. The author(s) read and approved the final manuscript.

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Lin, KY., Wu, YT., Hsu, YT. et al. Effects of infusing the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers’ engineering design thinking. IJ STEM Ed 8 , 1 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-020-00258-9

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-020-00258-9

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What is the design of experiments (doe), importance of doe in various fields, examples of design of experiments (doe), types of design of experiments, phases of design experiments, benefits of implementing doe, future trends and innovations in doe, design of experiments (doe): a guide to data-driven decisions.

When faced with a dilemma at work, it might be challenging to decide which course of action to take. Following your instincts may give you greater confidence in your decisions, but will they be the best ones for your team? When you use facts to inform your decisions , you can feel more at rest, knowing that they are supported by data and intended to maximize the impact on your organization. 

Gaining a basic understanding of experimental design can help you improve the quality of your output or get more statistically optimal findings from your products, regardless of whether you work in R&D, engineering, or production.

The Design of Experiment (DoE) approach is a useful tool for solving problems in general and for enhancing or streamlining production and product design procedures. It is an effective method for gathering and analyzing data that may be applied in various experimental scenarios.

DoE Design of Experiments is a revolutionary approach to transforming several work environments; it is more than just a methodology. It is used to methodically organize, carry out, evaluate, and interpret experiments to produce accurate and dependable results. It makes it possible for experts to quickly investigate and pinpoint the key elements affecting the effectiveness of a procedure or result. 

For designers to consistently improve their products and the user experience as a whole, experimentation in the design field helps supply knowledge for stronger decision-making . Investigators can quickly extract useful information with the help of DoE software, which helps them refine goods and procedures. Here are several reasons for its significance: 

• Understanding the cause-and-effect relationship between several elements is beneficial. It allows you to enter several manipulable factors to assess their reaction.
• It helps identify a significant reaction that is only visible when several factors are applied simultaneously, as you can look at the effects of each component separately and in combination.
• You can run experiments with or just some of the factors.
• Since DoE assists in identifying the important elements and quantities, you can conduct trials for the entire range of investigations by setting the best possible settings for each factor.
• DoE is a useful tool for determining the statistical significance of your responses and experiments.

A design of experiments example is found in interior design. When designing the interior of a new home, many variables come into play, including the color of the walls, the lighting, the flooring, where different objects are placed around the space, the sizes and forms of the objects, and much more. All these elements will affect how interior design turns out in the end. While variations in just one of these elements alone can have an impact, variations in multiple factors acting simultaneously can also impact the outcome. 

In Six Sigma 

Six Sigma approaches, which aim to achieve process excellence and lower variance, include DoE as a fundamental component. Organizations can improve overall quality by minimizing defects and variances, implementing strategies to achieve optimal levels, and identifying essential process parameters through DoE.  

In Manufacturing

DoE assists in discovering the underlying reasons for differences and flaws in a manufacturing process. Quality engineers can identify the causes of problems and create plans to lessen or eliminate them by conducting experiments and evaluating the outcomes. It can be used to minimize process variability, which is a quality measure, find the source of a quality issue, or optimize the manufacturing process of a part. 

In Food Industry

DOE is used in the food industry to enhance the flavor and texture of various food items. Businesses can create more consumer-pleasing items by understanding the various aspects that impact food's taste and texture. Sales may rise, and the brand's reputation may improve.

In Agriculture

DOE is employed in agriculture to increase crop yields and decrease the usage of fertilizers and pesticides. It can be used to optimize plant development conditions in controlled environments, find the optimal fertilizer and irrigation rate combination to maximize crop yields, and much more. 

In Marketing

DOE can test and optimize advertisement elements, including graphic design , headline, wording, and call-to-action. It can also compare various pricing methods and their effects on consumer behavior, buy intent, and profitability.

You can choose from some designs at any point throughout your DoE campaign based on your objectives, assumptions, run available numbers, and other factors.

However, nothing is worse than having too many options when you're new to DoE. The various types of DoE are: 

Response Surface Methodology (RSM) Designs

Response Surface Methodology (RSM) is used to investigate numerous components, although just two are often examined. Using a sequence of full factorial DoEs, RSM maps out the response and develops equations describing the factors' effects on the response. After an experiment like the Plackett-Burman has established a crucial main effect, processes are refined using RSM designs. The parameters of the factors can then be adjusted to produce the appropriate answer. 

Factorial Designs

In full factorials, you can examine every treatment combination related to the components and their levels. This examines all of the interactions between the major factors and their influence on the measured responses. If numerous components at various levels are examined, full factorial experiments can require numerous experimental runs. 

In order to use a fractional factorial, it is necessary to make the important assumption that higher-order interactions—those involving three or more factors—are not significant.

Full factorial matrices are the source of fractional factorial designs created by adding new factors and higher-order interactions. While fractional factorials do not exclude the major factor effects, they result in trade-offs when examining interaction effects.

Space Filling Designs

This method provides sequences that are reasonably uniformly distributed when terminated at any point, or it offers the most uniform filling of the design space for a specific number of samples. Space-filling DoE's uniformity in the design space is one of its key characteristics. 

If you want to look into your system in more detail, have little prior understanding, or want to find a place to start when it comes to pre-screening optimization , space-filling designs can be helpful. Space-filling designs look into various aspects without assuming anything about the sort of model or the structure of the space. It also suggests that certain statistical features of traditional DoE designs, including factorials, and some of their efficiency are lost. 

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The Design of Experiments (DoE) comprises five distinct phases: 

You can steer clear of any obstacles by paying close attention to detail and organizing your plans carefully. This involves setting the goal, picking the variables to be examined, and figuring out the parameters, or levels, for every variable. You also identify the reaction of interest at this stage. Your available resources would often restrict your ability to conduct experiments. The goal would be to do the fewest number of runs necessary to achieve the greatest outcomes. 

You also need to figure out how many repeat samples each experiment will need at this step. If there are a lot of factors to be studied, mostly more than five, the first step would be to run screening experiments to narrow the list. The number of runs is mostly dependent on the number of elements to be examined. Usually, the screening process involves the following designs: Fractional Factorial Design, The Plackett-Burman Model and Definitive Screening Designs. 

In order to achieve the desired result, you would optimize the process conditions after determining the important elements and modeling the relationship between factors and response. This stage involves figuring out the ideal ratio of variables and intensities to yield the best results. In addition to the statistical data produced by the program utilized for the experiment, you can make use of the graphs and charts. 

Verification is carried out following the achievement of the optimal condition. It involves carrying out a follow-up experiment in the anticipated ideal circumstances to validate the optimization outcomes. With the aid of verification, you can verify whether the optimized condition was truly optimal. If not, you would adjust the experimental design appropriately. You can also verify the outcomes by estimating which setting will work best for each aspect and then attempting this setting one or more times. 

DoE has been utilized in every industry during the past few years. The following are the benefits of design of experiments implementation: 

• Saves Time: By helping to concentrate on the most important variables and the levels rather than relying solely on instinct or a hunch, DoE saves a substantial amount of time.  Organizations can speed up product development cycles and accelerate time to market by decreasing the duration of experimentation and process development.
• Effective Resource Deployment: By pinpointing the most important variables, DoE enables firms to deploy their resources most effectively. By concentrating on these elements, businesses can streamline their operations and attain notable enhancements in quality without needless spending. 
• Cost-Effective: DoE assists in the identification of cost-effective solutions by methodically investigating process variables and their interconnections. Rework, scrap, and material consumption costs can be reduced for companies through defect reduction, waste elimination, and process parameter optimization.
• Better decision-making: A focused approach, a systematic process, and thorough analysis facilitate effective and well-informed operational and financial decision-making. The organized approach to testing that DoE offers produces trustworthy and statistically valid data. This makes it possible to make well-informed decisions that are devoid of hunches or speculation and grounded in facts. 
• Improved understanding of complex frameworks: By methodically dividing up each important component, evaluating its reaction, merging several components, and evaluating the combined effect, DoE helps to dismantle any complicated system. This makes it easier to examine a complicated system's constituent parts clearly. 

DoE provides the modern solutions needed for today's concerns. These days, it's common practice to investigate several factors at once and how they interact, which enables producers to comprehend a system comprehensively. Numerous noteworthy trends define the use of AI in DoE. 

The Design of Experiments (DoE) method is undergoing a significant transformation as a result of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital manufacturing. AI is also making predictive modeling in DoE easier. Manufacturers can now simulate experiments and forecast results before physically carrying them out, which saves time and money. 

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1. What are the prerequisites for conducting a successful DoE? 

Identifying the problem is the first step in creating a DOE. Engineers and experts in quality control choose the goal, be it enhancing a procedure or a product. They then choose the study's parameters and determine the kind and scope of data to be gathered. 

2. How can I choose the right experimental design for my study? 

Selecting a design that calls for a few fewer runs than the budget allows is a smart idea. The study topic, independent and dependent variables, sample size and selection, treatment and control groups, data collecting and analysis techniques, and practical and ethical considerations should all be taken into account. 

3. What role does statistical analysis play in DoE? 

The statistical analysis breathes life into a set of lifeless data by providing meaning to otherwise meaningless figures. They help in eliminating known sources of bias or systematic error, guarding against unknown sources of bias,ensuring that the experiment provides precise information about the responses of interest, and guaranteeing that excessive experimental resources are not needlessly wasted through the use of an uneconomical design.

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