Design thinking has an important role in STEM education. However, there has been limited research on how students engage in various modalities throughout the design process in hands-on design tasks. To promote middle school students’ engineering literacy, it is necessary to examine the use of design modalities during design. Using a case study approach, we examine middle school students’ design stages and modalities during design activities. We also identify the patterns of design processes in the teams with different design outcomes. Drawing on theories in design thinking and embodied interaction, we proposed a framework and devised a video analysis protocol to examine students’ design stages and modalities. Middle school students attending a design workshop engaged in two design activities in teams of 3–4 people. The design sessions were video recorded and analyzed using the video analysis protocol. The teams engaged in the stages of planning, building, and testing, while employing the verbal, the visual, and the physical modalities. The teams that varied in design outcomes exhibited different patterns in the use of multiple modalities during the design stages. This study contributes to research on design thinking by proposing a framework for analyzing middle school students’ multimodal design processes and presenting data visualization methods to identify patterns in design stages and modalities. The findings suggest the necessity to examine students’ use of design modalities in the context of design stages and imply the potential benefits of using multiple modalities during design. The implications for future research and education practices are also discussed.

The societal demand for inspiring and engaging science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students and preparing our workforce for the emerging creative economy has necessitated developing students’ self-efficacy and understanding of engineering design processes from as early as elementary school levels. Hands-on engineering design activities have shown the potential to promote middle school students’ self-efficacy and understanding of engineering design processes. However, traditional classrooms often lack hands-on engineering design experiences, leaving students unprepared to solve real-world design problems. In this study, we introduce the framework of a toy design workshop and investigate the influence of the workshop activities on students’ understanding of and self-efficacy beliefs in engineering design. Using a mixed method approach, we conducted quantitative analyses to show changes in students’ engineering design self-efficacy and qualitative analyses to identify students’ understanding of the engineering design processes. Findings show that among the 24 participants, there is a significant increase in students’ self-efficacy beliefs after attending the workshop. We also identified major themes such as design goals and prototyping in students’ understanding of engineering design processes. This research provides insights into the key elements of middle school students’ engineering design learning and the benefits of engaging middle school students in hands-on toy design workshops.