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Faculty at Rice University are creating instructional resources to support teaching first-year engineering design using a flipped classroom model. This implementation of flipped pedagogy is unusual because content-driven, lecture courses are usually targeted for flipping, not project-based design courses that already incorporate an abundance of active learning. However, during the first five semesters in which first-year engineering design was offered at Rice, almost 30% of class time conformed to the traditional lecture model. In fall 2014 a partially flipped model that placed greater emphasis on higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy during class time was introduced to facilitate student development in design topics. To achieve this goal, lecture time was replaced with in-class exercises that require students to analyze and evaluate design situations or problems, many of which were carefully crafted to expose common pitfalls that occur during the design process. To date, the team has produced flipped classroom resources for ten modules of the engineering design process and professional skills: design criteria, user-defined scales, pairwise comparison charts, brainstorming, decomposition, morphological charts, Pugh screening matrix, Pugh scoring matrix, Gantt charts, and presenting a design proposal. Each module includes three components: topical videos, summative quizzes, and in-class exercises. Work is ongoing to examine the impact of using a flipped classroom model in this first-year engineering design course. Two assessment methods have been deployed, and a third one is underway. One assessment method uses a pre- and post-course assignment to measure students' application of the design process. A second method focuses on student exam scores. A direct comparison of student learning in the partially flipped model versus the lecture model shows no statistically significant differences, which is consistent with some implementations reported in the literature.

Objective: We explore the relationships between objective communication patterns displayed during virtual team meetings and established, qualitative measures of team member effectiveness. Background: A key component of teamwork is communication. Automated measures of objective communication patterns are becoming more feasible and offer the ability to measure and monitor communication in a scalable, consistent and continuous manner. However, their validity in reflecting meaningful measures of teamwork processes are not well established, especially in real-world settings. Method: We studied real-world virtual student teams working on semester-long projects. We captured virtual team meetings using the Zoom video conferencing platform throughout the semester and periodic surveys comprising peer ratings of team member effectiveness. Leveraging audio transcripts, we examined relationships between objective measures of speaking time, silence gap duration and vocal turn-taking and peer ratings of team member effectiveness. Results: Speaking time, speaking turn count, degree centrality and (marginally) speaking turn duration, but not silence gap duration, were positively related to individual-level team member effectiveness. Time in dyadic interactions and interaction count, but not interaction length, were positively related to dyad-level team member effectiveness. Conclusion: Our study highlights the relevance of objective measures of speaking time and vocal turn-taking to team member effectiveness in virtual project-based teams, supporting the validity of these objective measures and their use in future research. Application: Our approach offers a scalable, easy-to-use method for measuring communication patterns and team member effectiveness in virtual teams and opens the opportunity to study these patterns in a more continuous and dynamic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of flipping an engineering course on student learning outcomes remains an open question because the literature presents a perplexing array of results. In this multi-year study, we evaluate the impact of flipping a first-year project-based engineering design course. We pose two questions: (1) Does a flipped project-based engineering design course produce different levels of mastery of engineering design process knowledge compared to the lecture version of the course? (2) Do students in the lecture class and flipped class achieve the same levels of design process knowledge when given tasks that range in difficulty? Three strands of data were used to assess design process knowledge: first drafts of team technical memos, pre- and post-critiques of a Gantt chart of a proposed design process, and an exam. Teams in the flipped classroom performed significantly better on the technical memos that evaluated solution ideas and established a testing plan, both of which required high-level cognitive capacities. However, no differences were found between lecture and flipped models for the exam or technical memo that established design criteria, which required low-level cognitive activities. The Gantt chart assessment produced mixed results. This study concludes that flipping a project-based design course can significantly improve student learning on more difficult tasks. We urge researchers and educators to consider the tasks and assignments given to students when drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of flipped pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balancing coverage of design process, teaming, and prototyping is a challenge for instructors in their pursuit of creating the perfect engineering design course. Previous studies have demonstrated that teaming and process-based skills can be acquired iii a short period of time by applying a training model. Prototyping skills can also be taught but there is a quandary regarding which tools and machines are critical to student success. In this study we evaluated prototypes produced in a first-year team-based engineering design course. Pre- and post-course surveys on prototyping skill and evaluations of end-of-semester prototypes were used to explore which prototyping tools meaningfully contribute to producing/unctional final prototypes. Several fascinating results have been uncovered through this exploration of student prototyping, including student skills growth and overreporting skill growth, as well as prototyping progress as a critical factor determining design functionality. Our study shows that when considering which prototyping skills to teach in a first-year design course the question is not how many prototyping skills to teach, but how few an instructor can get away with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of flipping an engineering course on student learning outcomes remains an open question because the literature presents a perplexing array of results. In this multi-year study, we evaluate the impact of flipping a first-year project-based engineering design course. We pose two questions: (1) Does a flipped project-based engineering design course produce diifcrent levels of mastery of engineering design process knowledge compared to the lecture version of the course? (2) Do students in the lecture class and flipped class achieve the same levels of design process knowledge when given tasks that range in difficulty? Three strands of data were used to assess design process knowledge: first drafts of team technical memos, pre and post-critiques of a Gantt chart of a proposed design process, and an exam. Teams in the flipped classroom performed significantly better on the technical memos that evaluated solution ideas and established a testing plan, both of which required high-level cognitive capacities. However, no differences were found between lecture and flipped models for the exam or technical memo that established design criteria, which required low-level cognitive activities. The Gantt chart assessment produced mixed results. This study concludes that flipping a project-based design course can significantly improve student learning on more difficult tasks. We urge researchers and educators to consider the tasks and assignments given to students when drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of flipped pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]