Identifying misconceptions held about the engineering design process

The primary goal of the research presented in this work-in-progress paper is to identify misconceptions held about the engineering design process. Identification is the first step in the development of a concept inventory, an instrument for assessing misconceptions. While there are several methods for assessing misconceptions, concept inventories are an excellent method for assessing a group of students. The distractor questions identify misconceptions and possible causes for them. Misconceptions coded from student responses to incomplete scenarios of the engineering design process include the idea that engineering is solution driven instead of problem/client need driven and that engineering is merely fabrication. Future work will develop, test, and validate a concept inventory for engineering design with questions based on identifying these misconceptions as well as misconceptions identified through follow-up work.