The influence of design problem complexity on the attainment of design skills and student perceptions

One of the current educational challenges is how do we educate engineers to systematically solve open-ended real-world design problems? The capstone design course often plays a critical role in this, but there are numerous questions on how best to teach design and what are the characteristics of realistic design problems which provide excellent learning opportunities. This paper reports on a controlled evaluation of the effects of design problem complexity on students´ ability to functionally abstract a design problem and its effect on their perceived value for variety of design methods. It is important for students to learn a systematic approach to the design process and to perceive its effectiveness. Students´ perceptions and functional modeling skill are measured. Results, while preliminary due to limited sample size, indicate the complexity of the design problem is a critical factor in teaching design methods. There is a statistical interaction between the complexity of the design problem and opinion of functional modeling on their ability. Results also indicate that students who work on more complex design problems are more likely to expect to use functional modeling in the future. More complex design problems lead to a more positive student opinion. Further development of the functional modeling quiz is needed as is a larger sample size. Overall, results indicate that more complex design problem demonstrate to the students the effectiveness of the methods.