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Coherence and correspondence in engineering design evaluations

Coherence and correspondence in engineering design evaluations
Coherence and correspondence in engineering design evaluations

Much of the formal education in engineering design focuses on the teaching of analytical methods. Analysis allows one to make coherent statements about the performance of designs. There are situations in design and design education, however, where it is appropriate to use intuition: A focus on intuition sometimes allows one to make statements that correspond well with the real performance of designs. Here we studied such a situation. Students in a design course competition were asked to make quick evaluations of the performance of other students' designs. The surveys also contained either analysis-inducing questions or intuition-inducing questions. We found that the students put in the intuitive, correspondence-based mode, evaluated design performance more accurately. While, given this finding, the correspondence mode is more appropriate in this situation, we found a lack of consensus among design instructors and practitioners about which mode would be more effective. In sum, our results indicate that the engineering curriculum should include methods of correspondence-based, intuitive decision-making and that instructors should be sufficiently aware of these methods to help students identify situations where they should be employed.

American Society for Engineering Education
Evans, Jonathan
555d8947-0f16-4b99-ae7a-1f4853898f17
Katsikopoulos, Konstantinos
b97c23d9-8b24-4225-8da4-be7ac2a14fba
Foster, Chad
0e5150cf-55dd-46f6-813e-f2293fca984b
Evans, Jonathan
555d8947-0f16-4b99-ae7a-1f4853898f17
Katsikopoulos, Konstantinos
b97c23d9-8b24-4225-8da4-be7ac2a14fba
Foster, Chad
0e5150cf-55dd-46f6-813e-f2293fca984b

Evans, Jonathan, Katsikopoulos, Konstantinos and Foster, Chad (2009) Coherence and correspondence in engineering design evaluations. In 2009 Annual Conference and Exposition. American Society for Engineering Education..

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Much of the formal education in engineering design focuses on the teaching of analytical methods. Analysis allows one to make coherent statements about the performance of designs. There are situations in design and design education, however, where it is appropriate to use intuition: A focus on intuition sometimes allows one to make statements that correspond well with the real performance of designs. Here we studied such a situation. Students in a design course competition were asked to make quick evaluations of the performance of other students' designs. The surveys also contained either analysis-inducing questions or intuition-inducing questions. We found that the students put in the intuitive, correspondence-based mode, evaluated design performance more accurately. While, given this finding, the correspondence mode is more appropriate in this situation, we found a lack of consensus among design instructors and practitioners about which mode would be more effective. In sum, our results indicate that the engineering curriculum should include methods of correspondence-based, intuitive decision-making and that instructors should be sufficiently aware of these methods to help students identify situations where they should be employed.

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More information

Published date: 1 January 2009
Venue - Dates: 2009 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, , Austin, TX, United States, 2009-06-14 - 2009-06-17

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 439271
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/439271
PURE UUID: a9aab7d8-10dc-49fe-91e0-e7b19fa8341a
ORCID for Konstantinos Katsikopoulos: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9572-1980

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Date deposited: 07 Apr 2020 16:31
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:44

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Contributors

Author: Jonathan Evans
Author: Chad Foster

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