Resumen de Design thinking and service-learning for first-year engineering students
Matthew T. Siniawski, Sandra G. Luca, Jose A. Saez, Jeremy S. Pal
Developing empathy and understanding the unique needs of stakeholders are highly important skills that engineeringstudents should learn. Since such skills are closely tied to the success of service-learning engineering projects, teachingdesign thinking to students seems to be a natural fit. As such, a simple design thinking process was recently incorporatedinto service-learning first-year introductory engineering courses at a liberal arts private undergraduate institution. Using amixed methods approach, this paper examines the impacts of design thinking on first-year engineering students andinvestigates students’ confidence in technical and professional engineering design thinking skills and if students perceivethat design thinking enhances their learning of engineering and design. Our findings indicate that students who participatein a service-learning, design thinking course felt more confident with technical engineering skills and felt they learned moreabout the iterative nature of the design process and prototype testing. This is especially true for women, who show thehighest gains in self-reported confidence with constructing design prototypes.
