S.M. Persaud
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1
The traditional approach of teaching engineering at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering using direct instructions and problem-based learning was ineffective, as students failed to apply the engineering knowledge in their capstone design projects. Therefore, in the first-year engineering course Understanding Product Engineering (UPE), the Productive Failure (PF) method is used to teach mechanics of materials. Amongst other subjects, UPE includes modules on manufacturing techniques for plastics and metals, typically taught by theory alone. To address the challenge of practicing this knowledge and enhance their learning even more, a simple, safe, and cost-effective machine was introduced simulating thermoforming, injection moulding, and metal bending. This machine encourages experiential learning, which positively impacts knowledge retention and decision-making regarding material-manufacturing techniques.
To validate the student’s enhancement in learning, an A/B test is executed which compares the PF approach using the experiential machine with traditional direct instruction (DI). Group A (nine students) used the machine and struggled before receiving instructional materials, while Group B (nine students) received direct instruction first. The students were interviewed on their experiences after the workshop and tested online on the content.
Results showed significant differences in student perceptions and experiences. Group A, using the experiential machines, felt more confident, enthusiastic, intrigued, and engaged compared to Group B. However, test scores of the exam a week later showed little differences between the two approaches.
...
To validate the student’s enhancement in learning, an A/B test is executed which compares the PF approach using the experiential machine with traditional direct instruction (DI). Group A (nine students) used the machine and struggled before receiving instructional materials, while Group B (nine students) received direct instruction first. The students were interviewed on their experiences after the workshop and tested online on the content.
Results showed significant differences in student perceptions and experiences. Group A, using the experiential machines, felt more confident, enthusiastic, intrigued, and engaged compared to Group B. However, test scores of the exam a week later showed little differences between the two approaches.
...
The traditional approach of teaching engineering at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering using direct instructions and problem-based learning was ineffective, as students failed to apply the engineering knowledge in their capstone design projects. Therefore, in the first-year engineering course Understanding Product Engineering (UPE), the Productive Failure (PF) method is used to teach mechanics of materials. Amongst other subjects, UPE includes modules on manufacturing techniques for plastics and metals, typically taught by theory alone. To address the challenge of practicing this knowledge and enhance their learning even more, a simple, safe, and cost-effective machine was introduced simulating thermoforming, injection moulding, and metal bending. This machine encourages experiential learning, which positively impacts knowledge retention and decision-making regarding material-manufacturing techniques.
To validate the student’s enhancement in learning, an A/B test is executed which compares the PF approach using the experiential machine with traditional direct instruction (DI). Group A (nine students) used the machine and struggled before receiving instructional materials, while Group B (nine students) received direct instruction first. The students were interviewed on their experiences after the workshop and tested online on the content.
Results showed significant differences in student perceptions and experiences. Group A, using the experiential machines, felt more confident, enthusiastic, intrigued, and engaged compared to Group B. However, test scores of the exam a week later showed little differences between the two approaches.
To validate the student’s enhancement in learning, an A/B test is executed which compares the PF approach using the experiential machine with traditional direct instruction (DI). Group A (nine students) used the machine and struggled before receiving instructional materials, while Group B (nine students) received direct instruction first. The students were interviewed on their experiences after the workshop and tested online on the content.
Results showed significant differences in student perceptions and experiences. Group A, using the experiential machines, felt more confident, enthusiastic, intrigued, and engaged compared to Group B. However, test scores of the exam a week later showed little differences between the two approaches.
Design for the Circular Economy often emphasizes business models and future visions, with less focus on practical application. Sustainability courses are generally seen as complex, attendance is often dropping, and the knowledge is minimally integrated into design projects.
In 2022, a new course on Repair was introduced. This course aligns with repair and with other R strategies like refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling. To engage students, the productive failure pedagogy was implemented in 8 weekly workshops. This method starts with an unsolvable exploratory problem, motivating students to learn the necessary knowledge. Workshops cover product architecture, disassembly documentation, part prioritization, legislation, directives, and human factors in repair design. The course, a master elective, has seen 25 to 50 students per run, working on client-based products to demonstrate improved circular economy fit.
This is the second IDE curriculum course using productive failure. Student evaluations (20 respondents) rated the course highly, with an overall grade of 8.5 out of 10 and a teaching, coaching, and feedback score of 4.68 out of 5. Students were highly engaged in making the circular economy actionable.
The paper will present the course, student outcomes, and qualitative learning experiences, focusing on the experiential learning aspect and the effects of productive failure on engineering courses. ...
In 2022, a new course on Repair was introduced. This course aligns with repair and with other R strategies like refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling. To engage students, the productive failure pedagogy was implemented in 8 weekly workshops. This method starts with an unsolvable exploratory problem, motivating students to learn the necessary knowledge. Workshops cover product architecture, disassembly documentation, part prioritization, legislation, directives, and human factors in repair design. The course, a master elective, has seen 25 to 50 students per run, working on client-based products to demonstrate improved circular economy fit.
This is the second IDE curriculum course using productive failure. Student evaluations (20 respondents) rated the course highly, with an overall grade of 8.5 out of 10 and a teaching, coaching, and feedback score of 4.68 out of 5. Students were highly engaged in making the circular economy actionable.
The paper will present the course, student outcomes, and qualitative learning experiences, focusing on the experiential learning aspect and the effects of productive failure on engineering courses. ...
Design for the Circular Economy often emphasizes business models and future visions, with less focus on practical application. Sustainability courses are generally seen as complex, attendance is often dropping, and the knowledge is minimally integrated into design projects.
In 2022, a new course on Repair was introduced. This course aligns with repair and with other R strategies like refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling. To engage students, the productive failure pedagogy was implemented in 8 weekly workshops. This method starts with an unsolvable exploratory problem, motivating students to learn the necessary knowledge. Workshops cover product architecture, disassembly documentation, part prioritization, legislation, directives, and human factors in repair design. The course, a master elective, has seen 25 to 50 students per run, working on client-based products to demonstrate improved circular economy fit.
This is the second IDE curriculum course using productive failure. Student evaluations (20 respondents) rated the course highly, with an overall grade of 8.5 out of 10 and a teaching, coaching, and feedback score of 4.68 out of 5. Students were highly engaged in making the circular economy actionable.
The paper will present the course, student outcomes, and qualitative learning experiences, focusing on the experiential learning aspect and the effects of productive failure on engineering courses.
In 2022, a new course on Repair was introduced. This course aligns with repair and with other R strategies like refurbishing, remanufacturing, and recycling. To engage students, the productive failure pedagogy was implemented in 8 weekly workshops. This method starts with an unsolvable exploratory problem, motivating students to learn the necessary knowledge. Workshops cover product architecture, disassembly documentation, part prioritization, legislation, directives, and human factors in repair design. The course, a master elective, has seen 25 to 50 students per run, working on client-based products to demonstrate improved circular economy fit.
This is the second IDE curriculum course using productive failure. Student evaluations (20 respondents) rated the course highly, with an overall grade of 8.5 out of 10 and a teaching, coaching, and feedback score of 4.68 out of 5. Students were highly engaged in making the circular economy actionable.
The paper will present the course, student outcomes, and qualitative learning experiences, focusing on the experiential learning aspect and the effects of productive failure on engineering courses.
Introduction In the bachelor program of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, three courses on sustainability are offered. Sustainable Impact focuses on the basics of sustainability like ecodesign and LCA, Design for the Circular Economy focuses on circular business models and future design visions, and the Sustainable Transitions minor focuses on sustainable systems interventions. Although these courses score “more than satisfactory” on student evaluations (EvaSys), attendance is low and decreasing over the course. Besides, coordinators of the parallel running design projects notice that students struggle with the integration of sustainability into the design solutions. To make sustainability more applicable, we developed a new master elective related to design for repair, named Repair! (ID5422, 3EC over 8 weeks). In this course we explicitly implemented the theory of productive failure by Kapur & Bielaczyc (2012) and followed the course-design model for productive failure described in Persaud & Flipsen (2023). Contrary to traditional teaching, productive failure flips the process and starts with an explorative problem which students cannot solve without the right knowledge. This is followed by an instruction explaining the missing concept and filling the knowledge gap, after which students apply their learnings on their own project. This approach engages students in active problem-solving, with the goal to increase retention of the theoretical concepts and facilitate deep learning. In the Repair course respectively 24 and 36 students participated over the past two years. Students work on client-based products, focusing on a demonstration model to show the improved fit of the product within a circular economy. In this paper, we will present the course and its content, one of the workshops explaining the productive failure approach, and finalize with an analysis of the student’s learning experiences.
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Introduction In the bachelor program of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, three courses on sustainability are offered. Sustainable Impact focuses on the basics of sustainability like ecodesign and LCA, Design for the Circular Economy focuses on circular business models and future design visions, and the Sustainable Transitions minor focuses on sustainable systems interventions. Although these courses score “more than satisfactory” on student evaluations (EvaSys), attendance is low and decreasing over the course. Besides, coordinators of the parallel running design projects notice that students struggle with the integration of sustainability into the design solutions. To make sustainability more applicable, we developed a new master elective related to design for repair, named Repair! (ID5422, 3EC over 8 weeks). In this course we explicitly implemented the theory of productive failure by Kapur & Bielaczyc (2012) and followed the course-design model for productive failure described in Persaud & Flipsen (2023). Contrary to traditional teaching, productive failure flips the process and starts with an explorative problem which students cannot solve without the right knowledge. This is followed by an instruction explaining the missing concept and filling the knowledge gap, after which students apply their learnings on their own project. This approach engages students in active problem-solving, with the goal to increase retention of the theoretical concepts and facilitate deep learning. In the Repair course respectively 24 and 36 students participated over the past two years. Students work on client-based products, focusing on a demonstration model to show the improved fit of the product within a circular economy. In this paper, we will present the course and its content, one of the workshops explaining the productive failure approach, and finalize with an analysis of the student’s learning experiences.
With the introduction of the new IDE bachelor in 2021 all courses underwent a revision to promote, amongst other, an autonomous learning attitude. The conventional approach of teaching engineering relied on direct instructions and problem-based learning and proved to be inadequate, as students struggled to apply their engineering knowledge in capstone design projects. Based on our research none of the student’s applied mechanics and materials and only a handful referenced to materials and manufacturing processes in their capstone project. To align with the new approach and to increase the application of engineering in capstone design projects, “productive failure” was introduced as a new didactical approach within our first-year course, Understanding Product Engineering (UPE, IOB1-2). Productive failure flips the traditional learning process and starts with an explorative problem which students cannot solve without the right knowledge. This is followed by an instruction explaining the missing concept. The approach engages students in active problem-solving, with the goal to increase the retention time of the theoretical concepts. We have developed our education around this using our in-house developed framework which includes lectures, workshops, and instruction videos facilitating the seamless integration of this approach into our own courses but also to disseminate it among our academic peers. Based on literature productive failure seems to increase the retention time but is not tested in the context of engineering design. To evaluate the retention time of productive failure and to compare it with the conventional approach of direct instructions, we developed a test to measure students’ retention of the taught knowledge. During the second-year follow-up course of Product Engineering (PE, IOB3-5) we started with an in-class formative entrance-test. An online multiple-choice test was created using questions mirroring those from the first-year final exam. We asked students to do this test with the uttermost care and fill it in seriously without gambling an answer. Students always had the opportunity to tick off the “I don’t know” box without consequences. Of the 282 students performing this test, 16% were repeaters, and 14% were students which transitioned from the previous bachelor program, having never taken the first-year UPE course. This paper will present the outcomes of this test and our findings into the possible retention time of our approach. This study will be repeated annually, serving as longitudinal study of our engineering education to continuously assess and improve our didactical approach.
...
With the introduction of the new IDE bachelor in 2021 all courses underwent a revision to promote, amongst other, an autonomous learning attitude. The conventional approach of teaching engineering relied on direct instructions and problem-based learning and proved to be inadequate, as students struggled to apply their engineering knowledge in capstone design projects. Based on our research none of the student’s applied mechanics and materials and only a handful referenced to materials and manufacturing processes in their capstone project. To align with the new approach and to increase the application of engineering in capstone design projects, “productive failure” was introduced as a new didactical approach within our first-year course, Understanding Product Engineering (UPE, IOB1-2). Productive failure flips the traditional learning process and starts with an explorative problem which students cannot solve without the right knowledge. This is followed by an instruction explaining the missing concept. The approach engages students in active problem-solving, with the goal to increase the retention time of the theoretical concepts. We have developed our education around this using our in-house developed framework which includes lectures, workshops, and instruction videos facilitating the seamless integration of this approach into our own courses but also to disseminate it among our academic peers. Based on literature productive failure seems to increase the retention time but is not tested in the context of engineering design. To evaluate the retention time of productive failure and to compare it with the conventional approach of direct instructions, we developed a test to measure students’ retention of the taught knowledge. During the second-year follow-up course of Product Engineering (PE, IOB3-5) we started with an in-class formative entrance-test. An online multiple-choice test was created using questions mirroring those from the first-year final exam. We asked students to do this test with the uttermost care and fill it in seriously without gambling an answer. Students always had the opportunity to tick off the “I don’t know” box without consequences. Of the 282 students performing this test, 16% were repeaters, and 14% were students which transitioned from the previous bachelor program, having never taken the first-year UPE course. This paper will present the outcomes of this test and our findings into the possible retention time of our approach. This study will be repeated annually, serving as longitudinal study of our engineering education to continuously assess and improve our didactical approach.
Is coaching student design teams a secret? Not really. But it is complicated and the best way to learn it is to dive in and be open. Experienced coaches put this cheerfully illustrated book together to help you recognise many coaching situations and the way to respond to them. The book provides tools as well as more than ten practical examples of team workshops. Moreover, it provides a system to efficiently manage extended coaching projects with more teams. Feel supported and get coaching.
...
Is coaching student design teams a secret? Not really. But it is complicated and the best way to learn it is to dive in and be open. Experienced coaches put this cheerfully illustrated book together to help you recognise many coaching situations and the way to respond to them. The book provides tools as well as more than ten practical examples of team workshops. Moreover, it provides a system to efficiently manage extended coaching projects with more teams. Feel supported and get coaching.
In September 2021, the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) introduced a revamped bachelor's programme that emphasizes design for higher complexity, teacher as a coach, and autonomous learning. The programme includes Understanding Product Engineering (UPE), which teaches first-year design students about product embodiment, manufacturing, and mechanics of materials. However, the traditional approach of teaching engineering using direct instructions and problem-based learning was ineffective, as students failed to apply the engineering knowledge in their capstone design projects. To address this issue and promote autonomous learning, the Productive Failure (PF) pedagogical framework was introduced as the main pedagogical framework in UPE. However, the general approach of the PF pedagogy as described by Kapur, lacked a translation into an effective design of the workshops. To address this, this paper proposes a hands-on model based on constructive alignment, where learning objectives, activities, and assessment are designed side-by-side. This paper presents our didactical model, which was developed in an agile way during the second run of UPE. The hands-on model proposed aids in applying the PF pedagogy in engineering courses and consists of a method to develop workshop assignments and a didactical approach to guide and coach students through the workshop process.
...
In September 2021, the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) introduced a revamped bachelor's programme that emphasizes design for higher complexity, teacher as a coach, and autonomous learning. The programme includes Understanding Product Engineering (UPE), which teaches first-year design students about product embodiment, manufacturing, and mechanics of materials. However, the traditional approach of teaching engineering using direct instructions and problem-based learning was ineffective, as students failed to apply the engineering knowledge in their capstone design projects. To address this issue and promote autonomous learning, the Productive Failure (PF) pedagogical framework was introduced as the main pedagogical framework in UPE. However, the general approach of the PF pedagogy as described by Kapur, lacked a translation into an effective design of the workshops. To address this, this paper proposes a hands-on model based on constructive alignment, where learning objectives, activities, and assessment are designed side-by-side. This paper presents our didactical model, which was developed in an agile way during the second run of UPE. The hands-on model proposed aids in applying the PF pedagogy in engineering courses and consists of a method to develop workshop assignments and a didactical approach to guide and coach students through the workshop process.
Nowadays, designers deal with increasingly complex and meaningful challenges. Because of that, design schools are required to deliver professional designers capable of handling what future decades might bring. Therefore, resilience, generally described as the process of adapting well in the presence of adversity, makes it a valuable quality future generations of designers could develop. As resilience is still an abstract concept within the education domain, this MSc graduation project aimed to explore how it could be built and enhanced in such context. The approach chosen to tackle that question was initially to analyse the literature regarding resilience. Then, to perform an in-depth autoethnographic study in a moment resilience was systematically present in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering: the COVID19 lockdowns. Finally, the learnings from that period and previous literature research were synthesized into a theoretical framework that aims to assist educators in conceptualizing interventions to foster resilience in learning systems. This framework was implemented to design and evaluate My Rubric, a co-creative guide for adaptive assessment, which aims to offer a constructive and resilient alternative to the current rubric.
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Nowadays, designers deal with increasingly complex and meaningful challenges. Because of that, design schools are required to deliver professional designers capable of handling what future decades might bring. Therefore, resilience, generally described as the process of adapting well in the presence of adversity, makes it a valuable quality future generations of designers could develop. As resilience is still an abstract concept within the education domain, this MSc graduation project aimed to explore how it could be built and enhanced in such context. The approach chosen to tackle that question was initially to analyse the literature regarding resilience. Then, to perform an in-depth autoethnographic study in a moment resilience was systematically present in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering: the COVID19 lockdowns. Finally, the learnings from that period and previous literature research were synthesized into a theoretical framework that aims to assist educators in conceptualizing interventions to foster resilience in learning systems. This framework was implemented to design and evaluate My Rubric, a co-creative guide for adaptive assessment, which aims to offer a constructive and resilient alternative to the current rubric.
In September 2021 the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering has implemented a completely revised bachelor. Important differences between the old and the new bachelor are its focus on design for higher complexity, the teacher as a coach, and the need for students to learn in an autonomous way. Within the bachelor, first year engineering students are introduced to the world of physical embodiment of products. This includes materials and design, manufacturing techniques, functional analysis, product architecture and mechanics modelling. In the past years we used a classical approach in teaching mechanics of materials using direct instructions and problem-based learning as the learning approach. Unfortunately, many design coaches observed that the acquired engineering knowledge was applied superficially or even left out of scope in students' design projects. The complete overhaul of the bachelor and the seemingly short retention of topics related to product engineering, made us change our learning approach from Direct Instruction to Productive Failure (PF). Making mistakes is an important condition for learning, and Productive Failure incorporates this while promoting autonomous learning. In essence, Productive Failure is a method that fosters effective learning and fits very well with a general design approach of iterative and explorative learning. During the development of UPE, we designed several workshops in a PF kind of fashion and applied it in the 2021 course. During the run we came across several hurdles in teaching, related to workshop design, and the impact of changing learning culture, and the teachers' role. This paper will discuss our findings when applying Productive Failure in our own class which is used to improve the course and line up the educational team in becoming productive-failure teachers.
...
In September 2021 the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering has implemented a completely revised bachelor. Important differences between the old and the new bachelor are its focus on design for higher complexity, the teacher as a coach, and the need for students to learn in an autonomous way. Within the bachelor, first year engineering students are introduced to the world of physical embodiment of products. This includes materials and design, manufacturing techniques, functional analysis, product architecture and mechanics modelling. In the past years we used a classical approach in teaching mechanics of materials using direct instructions and problem-based learning as the learning approach. Unfortunately, many design coaches observed that the acquired engineering knowledge was applied superficially or even left out of scope in students' design projects. The complete overhaul of the bachelor and the seemingly short retention of topics related to product engineering, made us change our learning approach from Direct Instruction to Productive Failure (PF). Making mistakes is an important condition for learning, and Productive Failure incorporates this while promoting autonomous learning. In essence, Productive Failure is a method that fosters effective learning and fits very well with a general design approach of iterative and explorative learning. During the development of UPE, we designed several workshops in a PF kind of fashion and applied it in the 2021 course. During the run we came across several hurdles in teaching, related to workshop design, and the impact of changing learning culture, and the teachers' role. This paper will discuss our findings when applying Productive Failure in our own class which is used to improve the course and line up the educational team in becoming productive-failure teachers.
In our Integrated Product Design master at the Delft faculty of Industrial Design Engineering we see a growing diversity in our student population. Besides a growing number of different nationalities there are also significant differences in prior education, competences, and socioemotional aspects. Within the Advanced Embodiment Design (AED) course, students work in teams on a client-based design project for one full semester. In 2018-2019, 22 student-teams started out their endeavour, coached by eight coaches. Within the course an important learning objective we want to offer students is the opportunity to experience and perform in a successful team, acknowledge all students' input, and experience a successful result. During the process of embodiment design, the project teams come across several hurdles which challenges team performance and their project progress, and thereby influences the project results. To maximise the performance of student design-teams we have conducted two studies researching the challenges these teams come across over the course of the semester. One study was based on the coaches' experiences during the project (Flipsen & Persaud, 2016), and the other one on the students' individual reflections on the project (Flipsen, Persaud & Magyari, 2021). The challenges our students come across are analysed and relate to becoming a team, doing the project right, and finalising the project successfully. The results of both studies are used to develop a framework supporting coaches in maximising the performance of multi-diverse design teams. The framework is built around the Theory U (Scharmer 2016), a model describing how teams work with each other, following the right path to success (presencing) or off-tracking by muddling through, or by absencing. To track the different team's performances, we use a project-group tracking-system existing of seven Key Performance Indicators combined with a coach journal. The combination of KPI's help the team of coaches to pinpoint lower performing teams and intervene when needed. In this paper we will present the framework, consisting of (i) preparatory activities to initiate trust, teambuilding, and a successful student cooperation, (ii) a system to track the student-teams' health and performance and pinpoint troublesome groups, and (iii) responsive activities related to the hurdles teams might come across and how to reverse them. To assist the individual coach, we have developed several responsive activities the coach can use to intervene, slowing down the process of dysfunctionality and revert the process towards highly performing teams. The activities are tested in the two cohorts following our initial studies in 2018-2019.
...
In our Integrated Product Design master at the Delft faculty of Industrial Design Engineering we see a growing diversity in our student population. Besides a growing number of different nationalities there are also significant differences in prior education, competences, and socioemotional aspects. Within the Advanced Embodiment Design (AED) course, students work in teams on a client-based design project for one full semester. In 2018-2019, 22 student-teams started out their endeavour, coached by eight coaches. Within the course an important learning objective we want to offer students is the opportunity to experience and perform in a successful team, acknowledge all students' input, and experience a successful result. During the process of embodiment design, the project teams come across several hurdles which challenges team performance and their project progress, and thereby influences the project results. To maximise the performance of student design-teams we have conducted two studies researching the challenges these teams come across over the course of the semester. One study was based on the coaches' experiences during the project (Flipsen & Persaud, 2016), and the other one on the students' individual reflections on the project (Flipsen, Persaud & Magyari, 2021). The challenges our students come across are analysed and relate to becoming a team, doing the project right, and finalising the project successfully. The results of both studies are used to develop a framework supporting coaches in maximising the performance of multi-diverse design teams. The framework is built around the Theory U (Scharmer 2016), a model describing how teams work with each other, following the right path to success (presencing) or off-tracking by muddling through, or by absencing. To track the different team's performances, we use a project-group tracking-system existing of seven Key Performance Indicators combined with a coach journal. The combination of KPI's help the team of coaches to pinpoint lower performing teams and intervene when needed. In this paper we will present the framework, consisting of (i) preparatory activities to initiate trust, teambuilding, and a successful student cooperation, (ii) a system to track the student-teams' health and performance and pinpoint troublesome groups, and (iii) responsive activities related to the hurdles teams might come across and how to reverse them. To assist the individual coach, we have developed several responsive activities the coach can use to intervene, slowing down the process of dysfunctionality and revert the process towards highly performing teams. The activities are tested in the two cohorts following our initial studies in 2018-2019.
In the IPD Master’s in Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) we see a growing diversity of students. We see the international student population growing, but also see significant differences in prior education, socio-emotional aspects, and competences. Within the Advanced Embodiment Design (AED) course, students work in teams on a client-based design project for a full semester. In 2018-2019, 22 student-teams started out their endeavour, coached by eight coaches. On a weekly basis the coaches tracked the teams' performances by means of six key performance indicators. The weekly logs are aggregated, converted, and visualized in a performance dashboard which was used to lead the discussion on troublesome teams and solutions to get them back-on-track. In this cohort four fields were found: (i) cultural differences; (ii) differences in design approaches; (iii) emotional differences; and (iv) differences in student competences. These typical problems were the result of our own coaches' perspective, and not so much from a student's perspective. To really get a grip on team dynamics and issues involved, we wanted to know what students come across when functioning in a multi-diverse team. In this paper we present our exploration from students' perspective by evaluating the end-of-course reflections. The goal of this research is to learn about the most occurring issues within multi-diverse teams and come to applicable solutions to help teams during the project. We started out with a word cloud to find the most common terms and use those as labels for clustering. 308 unique students’ quotations were labelled and clustered into three main clusters based on project management, emotional interaction and interdisciplinary, and 11 subclusters. The clustered data revealed interesting results in terms of (sub)clusters as well as their relationships to each other. Visualizing the associations between the subclusters show for example that lack of clear consensus on leadership causes challenges from various aspects leading to difficulties in role agreements, task concerns and design approaches, as well as managing individual behaviours. Despite initial assumptions, Cultural Differences led to the smallest number of challenges but scored high in terms of relations with other clusters. In this paper we will present our findings on the issues clustered and the prioritization of importance. We will discuss the relationships between the clustered student challenges, and review solutions which can help them out in becoming highly performing teams.
...
In the IPD Master’s in Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) we see a growing diversity of students. We see the international student population growing, but also see significant differences in prior education, socio-emotional aspects, and competences. Within the Advanced Embodiment Design (AED) course, students work in teams on a client-based design project for a full semester. In 2018-2019, 22 student-teams started out their endeavour, coached by eight coaches. On a weekly basis the coaches tracked the teams' performances by means of six key performance indicators. The weekly logs are aggregated, converted, and visualized in a performance dashboard which was used to lead the discussion on troublesome teams and solutions to get them back-on-track. In this cohort four fields were found: (i) cultural differences; (ii) differences in design approaches; (iii) emotional differences; and (iv) differences in student competences. These typical problems were the result of our own coaches' perspective, and not so much from a student's perspective. To really get a grip on team dynamics and issues involved, we wanted to know what students come across when functioning in a multi-diverse team. In this paper we present our exploration from students' perspective by evaluating the end-of-course reflections. The goal of this research is to learn about the most occurring issues within multi-diverse teams and come to applicable solutions to help teams during the project. We started out with a word cloud to find the most common terms and use those as labels for clustering. 308 unique students’ quotations were labelled and clustered into three main clusters based on project management, emotional interaction and interdisciplinary, and 11 subclusters. The clustered data revealed interesting results in terms of (sub)clusters as well as their relationships to each other. Visualizing the associations between the subclusters show for example that lack of clear consensus on leadership causes challenges from various aspects leading to difficulties in role agreements, task concerns and design approaches, as well as managing individual behaviours. Despite initial assumptions, Cultural Differences led to the smallest number of challenges but scored high in terms of relations with other clusters. In this paper we will present our findings on the issues clustered and the prioritization of importance. We will discuss the relationships between the clustered student challenges, and review solutions which can help them out in becoming highly performing teams.
Dialogue for design teams
A case study of generative conversations for dealing with diversity
In the Integrated Product Design master’s at Industrial Design Engineering, there is a growing diversity in students. In recent years we increasingly noticed that diversity could lead to complications within the various student teams. Examples are miscommunication, frustration, and interpersonal conflicts. This growing diversity between the team members strongly appeals to their ability to deal with these complications in a constructive way. Via a KPI tracking system we kept track of team performance and we identified four aspects affecting the team dynamics within the Advanced Embodiment Design project team [1]. This paper presents the case study of one of the student design-teams which was highly dysfunctional in design approach and conflicting cultural differences. It made this group perform at a lower level. Theory U [2] and dialogue techniques [3] were an unfamiliar approach for student design teams. Interventions using generative conversations stimulated connectedness between the team members and improved the team dynamics. The use of culture mapping [10] proofed to be a valuable tool to bridge the culture gap. Although this case study only describes one student design team, the drastic improvements resulted in the team winning the iF Design Talent Award 2020. The findings are promising, and further research is needed to investigate the generalizability of these approaches for Industrial Design Engineering education.
...
In the Integrated Product Design master’s at Industrial Design Engineering, there is a growing diversity in students. In recent years we increasingly noticed that diversity could lead to complications within the various student teams. Examples are miscommunication, frustration, and interpersonal conflicts. This growing diversity between the team members strongly appeals to their ability to deal with these complications in a constructive way. Via a KPI tracking system we kept track of team performance and we identified four aspects affecting the team dynamics within the Advanced Embodiment Design project team [1]. This paper presents the case study of one of the student design-teams which was highly dysfunctional in design approach and conflicting cultural differences. It made this group perform at a lower level. Theory U [2] and dialogue techniques [3] were an unfamiliar approach for student design teams. Interventions using generative conversations stimulated connectedness between the team members and improved the team dynamics. The use of culture mapping [10] proofed to be a valuable tool to bridge the culture gap. Although this case study only describes one student design team, the drastic improvements resulted in the team winning the iF Design Talent Award 2020. The findings are promising, and further research is needed to investigate the generalizability of these approaches for Industrial Design Engineering education.
Conference paper
(2021)
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Asja Mucha, Jan Henk Dubbink, Stefan Persaud, Adithyan Senthil Athiban, Jan Carel Diehl
95% of the medical devices available in LMICs are second hand, refurbished devices donated by Western countries, out of which 70% terminate obsolete within a year, due to lack of maintenance staff, appropriate spare parts and consumables, and financial constraints. Unavailable consumables hinder Masanga Hospital's surgical suction pump performance, posing risks to the patients, the medical staff, and the surrounding environment. This project aims to improve the access and performance of the existing suction pump and prolong its operability by leveraging locally available resources, without the need to redesign the device completely. Research on surgical suction, the context of use, and the users helped define the envisioned pump performance and identify contextual implications on the current use, limitations, and opportunities to improve the suction pump. Key insights were translated into safety and embodiment requirements, leading to a design solution for local 3D printing of reusable, watertight medical tubing connectors. The project will be continued for further development of a method for 3D printing of medical consumables and additional testing is planned in Masanga.
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95% of the medical devices available in LMICs are second hand, refurbished devices donated by Western countries, out of which 70% terminate obsolete within a year, due to lack of maintenance staff, appropriate spare parts and consumables, and financial constraints. Unavailable consumables hinder Masanga Hospital's surgical suction pump performance, posing risks to the patients, the medical staff, and the surrounding environment. This project aims to improve the access and performance of the existing suction pump and prolong its operability by leveraging locally available resources, without the need to redesign the device completely. Research on surgical suction, the context of use, and the users helped define the envisioned pump performance and identify contextual implications on the current use, limitations, and opportunities to improve the suction pump. Key insights were translated into safety and embodiment requirements, leading to a design solution for local 3D printing of reusable, watertight medical tubing connectors. The project will be continued for further development of a method for 3D printing of medical consumables and additional testing is planned in Masanga.
Handle with care
Coaching multi-diverse project groups to become healthy desing teams
In the IPD master at Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) we see a growing diversity in students. In recent years, the number of international students has grown to more than 1/3rd. Besides nationalities we also see differences in prior education, socio-emotional aspects and competences. In one of the master courses Advanced Embodiment Design (AED), students work in teams on a client-based design project for one semester (21European Credits). The student teams are supervised by coaches on a weekly basis. In recent years we increasingly noticed that the differences in background can lead to complications within the various teams. Examples are communication confusion, frustration and sometimes interpersonal collisions. There is a growing gap between the team members on cognitive and socio-emotional aspects and their ability to deal with this constructively. Within our team of coaches we therefore focus mainly on keeping teams functioning in a healthy way and to a lesser extinct on content and project results. With the course we want to offer students the opportunity to experience and perform in a successful team, acknowledge every students input and experience a successful result. To implement this vision and support our student teams, we started out with a project-group tracking-system using key performance indicators. The KPI’s gave the group of coaches insight in the performance of their own student groups relative to that of other groups. With this tracking system we quickly could pinpoint troublesome groups and individuals, which were used to lead our discussions during weekly coach meetings. During our weekly meeting we only discussed troublesome groups and tried to come to applicable solutions which could be implemented immediately. The solutions were found in literature, experiences within our own coach team, and making use of external experts. This paper presents our findings on improving multi-diverse team-performance by close tracking their performance. We will focus on three major aspects of our findings: measuring student projects’ performance during the course, our experience and dealings with diversity in student teams, and on how the collaborating coach-team helped in maximizing student-team performance.
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In the IPD master at Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) we see a growing diversity in students. In recent years, the number of international students has grown to more than 1/3rd. Besides nationalities we also see differences in prior education, socio-emotional aspects and competences. In one of the master courses Advanced Embodiment Design (AED), students work in teams on a client-based design project for one semester (21European Credits). The student teams are supervised by coaches on a weekly basis. In recent years we increasingly noticed that the differences in background can lead to complications within the various teams. Examples are communication confusion, frustration and sometimes interpersonal collisions. There is a growing gap between the team members on cognitive and socio-emotional aspects and their ability to deal with this constructively. Within our team of coaches we therefore focus mainly on keeping teams functioning in a healthy way and to a lesser extinct on content and project results. With the course we want to offer students the opportunity to experience and perform in a successful team, acknowledge every students input and experience a successful result. To implement this vision and support our student teams, we started out with a project-group tracking-system using key performance indicators. The KPI’s gave the group of coaches insight in the performance of their own student groups relative to that of other groups. With this tracking system we quickly could pinpoint troublesome groups and individuals, which were used to lead our discussions during weekly coach meetings. During our weekly meeting we only discussed troublesome groups and tried to come to applicable solutions which could be implemented immediately. The solutions were found in literature, experiences within our own coach team, and making use of external experts. This paper presents our findings on improving multi-diverse team-performance by close tracking their performance. We will focus on three major aspects of our findings: measuring student projects’ performance during the course, our experience and dealings with diversity in student teams, and on how the collaborating coach-team helped in maximizing student-team performance.
Handle with care
Coaching multi-diverse project groups to become healthy design teams
In the IPD masters in Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) we see a growing diversity in students. In recent years, the number of international students has grown to more than a third. Besides nationalities we also see differences in prior education, socio-emotional aspects and competences. In one of the masters courses Advanced Embodiment Design (AED), students work in teams on a client-based design project for one semester (21 European Credits). The student teams are supervised by coaches on a weekly basis. In recent years we increasingly noticed that the differences in background can lead to complications within the various teams. Examples are communication confusion, frustration and sometimes interpersonal collisions. There is a growing gap between the team members on cognitive and socio-emotional aspects and their ability to deal with this constructively. Within our team of coaches, we therefore focus mainly on keeping teams functioning in a healthy way and to a lesser extent on content and project results. With this course we want to offer students the opportunity to experience and perform in a successful team, acknowledge every student input and experience a successful result. To implement this vision and support our student teams, we started out with a project-group tracking-system using key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs gave the group of coachs insights in the performance of their own student groups relative to that of other groups. With this tracking system we could quickly pinpoint troublesome groups and individuals, which were used to lead our discussions during weekly coach meetings. During our weekly meeting we only discussed troublesome groups and tried to come to applicable solutions which could be implemented immediately. The solutions were found in literature, experiences within our own coach team, and making use of external experts. This paper presents our findings on improving multi-diverse team-performance by close tracking of their performance. We will focus on three major aspects of our findings: measuring student projects performance during the course, our experience and dealings with diversity in student teams, and on how the collaborating coach-Team helped in maximizing student-Team performance.
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In the IPD masters in Industrial Design Engineering (TU Delft) we see a growing diversity in students. In recent years, the number of international students has grown to more than a third. Besides nationalities we also see differences in prior education, socio-emotional aspects and competences. In one of the masters courses Advanced Embodiment Design (AED), students work in teams on a client-based design project for one semester (21 European Credits). The student teams are supervised by coaches on a weekly basis. In recent years we increasingly noticed that the differences in background can lead to complications within the various teams. Examples are communication confusion, frustration and sometimes interpersonal collisions. There is a growing gap between the team members on cognitive and socio-emotional aspects and their ability to deal with this constructively. Within our team of coaches, we therefore focus mainly on keeping teams functioning in a healthy way and to a lesser extent on content and project results. With this course we want to offer students the opportunity to experience and perform in a successful team, acknowledge every student input and experience a successful result. To implement this vision and support our student teams, we started out with a project-group tracking-system using key performance indicators (KPIs). The KPIs gave the group of coachs insights in the performance of their own student groups relative to that of other groups. With this tracking system we could quickly pinpoint troublesome groups and individuals, which were used to lead our discussions during weekly coach meetings. During our weekly meeting we only discussed troublesome groups and tried to come to applicable solutions which could be implemented immediately. The solutions were found in literature, experiences within our own coach team, and making use of external experts. This paper presents our findings on improving multi-diverse team-performance by close tracking of their performance. We will focus on three major aspects of our findings: measuring student projects performance during the course, our experience and dealings with diversity in student teams, and on how the collaborating coach-Team helped in maximizing student-Team performance.