Formalizing the Role of Product Dissection on Creativity and Learning in Engineering Education
Open Access
- Author:
- Starkey, Elizabeth Marie
- Graduate Program:
- Industrial Engineering
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 04, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Scarlett Rae Miller, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Scarlett Rae Miller, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Timothy William Simpson, Committee Member
Conrad S Tucker, Committee Member
Samuel Todd Hunter, Outside Member - Keywords:
- product dissection
creativity
learning
engineering education
design fixation
fixation
eye tracking - Abstract:
- Product dissection, or the systematic disassembly of products, has been integrated into engineering education due to its ability to aid students in product benchmarking, product redesign, and reverse engineering. However its widespread adoption in engineering education has been hindered by the associated costs including the costs of materials and space requirements. Because of this, researchers have turned their attention to virtual product dissection which not only reduces the costs associated with dissection, but it also increases the types of products that can be dissected in a classroom environment (e.g. wind turbine blade). However, little is known about how the widely varying approaches to product dissection deployed in engineering education, including the modality of the dissection activity and the product chosen for dissection, impact student learning and creativity. Universal application without systematic assessment of dissection variants is problematic because we do not know which forms of product dissection promote or inhibit creative idea generation and learning in engineering education. The objective of this dissertation was to develop a theoretical understanding of the factors of product dissection that impact student learning and creativity. This was accomplished through a series of three papers developed to: (1) understand how the complexity of the product dissected or the modality of dissection (virtual or physical) impacted student learning and how the underlying construct of cognitive load drove this ability to learn in these different conditions, (2) understand how variations in the dissection activity (modality of dissection and the complexity and analogical distance of the product dissected) impacted student creativity during idea generation and the relationship between creativity and self-efficacy, and (3) investigate how eye fixations and component reuse during dissection impacts creative idea generation. The results of these papers revealed that virtual product dissection is just as effective as physical dissection for promoting student creativity and learning. In addition, the results showed a negative relationship between student creativity and engineering self-efficacy; as a student became more confident in their engineering abilities (Engineering Self-Efficacy), the creativity of their ideas decreased. Lastly, the results showed that what students focus on during their dissection activity can also impact the creativity of the ideas they develop. These results contribute to the development of a framework that guides the use of product dissection for encouraging both engineering student learning and creativity.