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Scaffolding Structured Reflective Practices in Engineering Design Problem

Solving

Conference Paper · August 2019

DOI: 10.1109/ICALT.2019.00090

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Aastha Patel Chandan Dasgupta

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 2019 IEEE 19th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT)
Scaffolding structured reflective practices in engineering design problem solving
Aastha Patel
IDP-Educational Technology
IIT Bombay Mumbai, India
aasthapatel@iitb.ac.in
Abstract​—One of the primary goals of research in engineering
design education is to help students develop design thinking
skills and adopt expert design practices in order to improve
their design process. Research shows reflection as an effective
cognitive strategy to help the progression of novice designers
towards expertise. However, facilitating reflection on one’s
actions while performing a collaborative action has not been a
prominent scholarly area of research in engineering education.
In this paper, we identify various elements in the learning
environment that most likely trigger reflection during the
design process. Based on these triggers, we present guidelines
for designing scaffolds to support such reflection. We also
propose a technology-enhanced prototype as an example of
realizing these guidelines and promoting computer-supported
structured reflective practices during the design process.
Keywords- Design Thinking; Reflection-in-action; Triggers;
Scaffolding
I. INTRODUCTION
Reflection plays an important role in aiding the
designers to gain expertise in designing. Novice designers
practice very little self-reflection and do little monitoring of
their own or other actions, while expert designers tend to
work collaboratively and practice reflection systematically
by reviewing their processes and product as they design [1].
The broad goal of this research is to help novice designers
develop expertise by getting into the practice of structured
reflection-in-action [2] i.e. reflecting on one’s actions while
performing a collaborative design task. Structured reflection
is a type of reflection that is performed on a regular basis
and that is performed in a systematic way, it helps designers
take balanced design decisions which results in increased
efficiency and effectiveness of design process [3].
In this paper we attempt to understand the elements in
the collaborative learning environment that can trigger
reflection, this will enable us to suggest guidelines for
designing scaffolds for supporting structured
reflection-in-action. The following research question guides
this research:
Chandan Dasgupta
IDP-Educational Technology
IIT Bombay Mumbai, India
cdasgupta@iitb.ac.in
What are the various triggering elements in the collaborative
learning environment that facilitate structured
reflection-in-action in engineering design problem-solving?
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Researchers have highlighted the importance of
encouraging students to reflect as it is critical for effective
knowledge integration and is instrumental in learning [4]
[5]. Reflection is defined as an introspective contemplation
on a designer’s perception of the design situation and on the
remembered design activities [3]. Schon defines
reflection-in-action as reflecting on what you are doing, as
you are doing it, while reflection-on-action as reflecting
after an event [2]. Reflective journals have been used as
scaffolds to systematically facilitate reflection-on-action [7]
There is very little research on facilitating
reflection-in-action in the context of designing.
There has been research on how to support learners with
planning, monitoring and sense making through reflection
and articulation [8] and how various types of prompts
promote reflection [5]. However, there are limited empirical
studies on factors that trigger reflection-in-action. Factors
which can induce reflection are called triggers of reflection
[9]. This paper attempts to understand how to facilitate
reflection-in-action in a collaborative design process by
identifying reflection triggering elements and utilizing them
to suggest design guidelines.
III. METHOD
A. Study Description
In this pilot case study, we conducted a robotics design
workshop for seventh-grade students. Four students (two
girls and two boys) participated in the study, two teams of 1
girl and 1 boy each. Each team was provided with a
LEGO​® Mindstorms EV3​® kit. ​Teams were given 2 hours
to work on the design challenge. The teams had to design a
bridge using the lego kit such that a robot carrying weights
could move over it such that it can carry the maximum
weight and cost the least.

B. Analysis
Qualitative analysis of the video and audio data was
carried out. First, the transcripts of collaborative interaction
were prepared from the video recordings. The verbal
conversations, the gestures, interaction with objects, gaze
were also recorded in the transcription. Next, we started
analyzing the transcripts. First, we identified various
instances of reflection during the design process. The
following were considered as the hints for reflective
practices in the transcript: “I think...”, “What if...”,
“Remember...”, “We should..” , “..because”. These markers
were informed by the literature as well as our specific
dataset. Conversations with these markers were noted on the
transcript and ​coded with labels of their potential triggering
element​s and the c​odes with conceptual similarities were
grouped into subcategories​. Multiple rounds of coding
resulted in reducing the categories into 6 triggering
elements, described in the next session.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Across the two teams, for the 2-hour long study, we
found 55 instances of reflection. Each of these was triggered
by one of the six triggering elements..
C. Triggers of Reflection
1. Elements of the design problem
Specific tasks and constraints of the design problem such as
cost calculation, robot crossing, weight, and time formed an
important platform for reflection. Participants were seen to
revisit these constraints, reflect on their progress and
restructure their actions based on their reflection. These
reflection episodes helped them come up with the final
design that satisfied all the constraints and in-turn facilitated
reflection in order to direct their design process.
Example: “​G​: ​I think 1000 for the track is perfect, we have
4500​”
2. Testing
The iterative nature of the engineering design process
provides opportunities for reflection and improvement in
every iteration. After every testing run, the students are
continuously reflecting and posing questions like “What
went wrong?” ; “Why is it not working”; “What is
happening?” etc. Following every design trials, teams
consciously assessed their trials and the results, in this way
transforming their design.
Example: “G: ​Maybe we should keep the weight here​”
3. Inter-group collaboration
Designed artifact of the opponent team influenced
participants’ reflection. Students were found to immediately
reflect on their own designs when they looked at the other
team’s design. They quickly re-visited their assumptions,
design decisions and spontaneously planned their next
actions. They learned from the other group’s design and
incorporate ideas into their design.
Example: “Team 1: G: ​I think ours is better”, “Team 2: G: I
think we should modify ours a lot, make our track wider like
theirs​”
4. Information related to design context
Any information relevant to the design context forms a
knowledge base for reflection to develop their design. In our
case, a video explaining the history, development, and types
of bridges such as arches etc. This provided a knowledge
base for the participants to reflect while designing.
Participants were seen to revisit the content of this video
right from the brainstorming step, they involved arches in
their sketches and designs.
Example: “B: ​Ummm..maybe we should make an arch, it is
strong”​
5. Resources provided
Resources provided for constructing their design played a
major role in reflecting on how will they construct. The
sight of the available resources triggered them to reflect
what can be used to construct. Purposefully introducing
surprise resources will make them reflect more about its
usability in terms of the design.
Example: “G: ​We need an arch, or maybe we could use
those long beams?” “B: How can we use this new thing?”
6. Externally prompted questions
Externally posed prompts and questions steer the direction
of the design trajectory, as students have to reflect in order
to answer them. Participants were observed to perform an
advanced level of reflection as they tried to answer the
reflective questions about the design progress. “How will
you do that?” ; “What must be changed?” are a few
examples of the reflective questions.
Example(​Answer to question); “B: We have to make it more
stable and consistent!”
D. Guidelines for designing scaffolds
These triggers play an important role to understand
reflection-in-action. It is important to utilize these triggers to
design scaffolds to promote structured reflection-in-action,
In Table 1 we suggest guidelines to design scaffolds based
on the triggers. As an extension of this, we have described a
computer-supported prototype system (Figure 1.1) which
makes use of these guidelines to scaffold structured
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reflection-in-action in a design process. All features of the understand how technological affordances can be leveraged
system are mapped according to the suggested guidelines. to facilitate reflection. Further research should concentrate
on understanding the effectiveness of the triggers of
TABLE I. reflection in terms of the level of reflection that each trigger
Trigger Guideline and work on the broader goal of developing concrete
Elements of the 1a. Maintain a design diary guidelines for design facilitators to scaffold structured
Provide a
design problem
platform to reflection and use technology to facilitate reflection.
revisit 1b. Display pictures of design
Testing iterations REFERENCES
1b. Video snippets of testing runs
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