Janelle Irwin Taylor
A professor of mechanical engineering at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct innovative research that could redefine the way educators teach engineering design.
The grant, landed by Assistant Professor Elisabeth Kames, will enable her to study how students cognitively engage with engineering design challenges. The research will use neurocognitive tools, such as electroencephalography (EEG), and traditional self-assessment tools to learn more about student problem-solving and learning behavior.
The results will help professors better understand how students engage with open-ended problems and improve teaching strategies within the field.
“The goal is to inform instructional practices within Florida Poly, strengthen our design sequence, and also apply the findings nationwide to better prepare students for the complex challenges they’re going to face in industry,” Kames said. “This will add a new dimension to how we understand and teach engineering design.”
Currently, the traditional curriculum is structured so that students find a correct solution to a problem. But the engineering design curriculum is different because it does not have a predetermined correct answer. Instead, students must work through open-ended challenges to reach their own solutions.
“Examining different approaches to get students to understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and be more cognizant of the steps they’re taking while they’re navigating this process, is a reason why we’re pursuing this research,” Kames said.
The study will include more than 200 engineering students who will wear specialized caps with electrodes placed at precise positions. The caps will measure electrical activity in students’ brains as they work to solve multiple engineering design problems.
“We will have data from a student’s entire session, and we can correlate specific brain patterns with student engagement during different stages of the design process, examining varying types of design problem representation,” Kames said.
Kames won’t be conducting the research alone; she’ll have help from a graduate student and two undergraduate students who will assist in analyzing brain activity data during different tasks and determining which part of the brain is active, along with the functions it controls. The student researchers will also review students’ reflective self-assessment.
“I’m very passionate about this work, so having the resources available to conduct it and disseminate my results is very exciting,” Kames said. “I’m thankful to the National Science Foundation, its Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation, and Engineering Design and Systems Engineering program for their generous support of my research.”
