Course Quality Improvement in Design Education

Abstract

Teaching design in technology and engineering education is one of the key Standards for Technological and Engineering Literacy (International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, 2021). Still, it can be challenging to provide a high-quality educational experience aligned with the standards required in introductory technology and engineering courses. Even after thorough preparation and delivering valuable content to students, students may feel the course was of low quality because it was required or not interesting. Our study investigated how improving the design thinking in technology courses based on the Expectancy Value Theory of motivation can impact students' perceived course quality, as evidenced by course and instructor ratings. This study included nearly 1000 students in 25 sections. Quantitative analysis was completed using a t-test to measure differences in end-of-course evaluation scores for each section, and qualitative analysis of student evaluation responses was done through thematic analysis method. Our study showed that after making changes to a course based on Expectancy Value Theory, students' ratings of both the course and instructor increased significantly. Expectancy Value Theory focuses the instructors' course improvement efforts on three aspects which were manageable and resulted in significant improvement.

Online course quality evaluation from the perspective of knowledge management: analysis of online reviews

“…First, this research comprehensively and systematically defines evaluation dimensions and quality indicators for online courses. Scholars agree that most of the evaluation items in the existing literature are too general (Mentzer et al. , 2022).…”

“…First, this research comprehensively and systematically defines evaluation dimensions and quality indicators for online courses. Scholars agree that most of the evaluation items in the existing literature are too general (Mentzer et al, 2022). Most of them are not specific to online courses and cannot cover all the aspects of online courses (Abbas, 2020), leaving a gap between practice and research (Tondeur et al, 2021).…”

Interdisciplina y Design Thinking en la formación del diseño gráfico: métodos para favorecer la generación de ideas

“…El Design Thinking se ha promovido mediante tácticas para ofrecer soluciones y alternativas considerando dos aspectos: pensar en el consumidor durante el proceso de diseño y atender las consecuencias realistas para el medio donde se presentan las propuestas, poniendo en práctica la empatía, la definición, ideación, prototipado y valoración del proyecto (Steinbeck, 2011;Urroz, 2017), además de producir múltiples ideas desarrollando la fluidez de pensamiento, estructura fundamental en la búsqueda de soluciones innovadoras, aquellas que demanda el mercado y que marcan la diferencia entre el diseñador creativo y aquel que se desenvuelve como verdadero agente de cambio. Poner en práctica el Design Thinking en la enseñanza potencializa el desarrollo de las habilidades de pensamiento, así como su capacidad para innovar y crear o responder a problemas reales de la sociedad mediante la motivación y las capacidades propias del estudiante (Razzouk & Schutz, 2012;Mentzer et al, 2015). Proceso donde el docente actúa como un mediador para impulsar estas habilidades, ya sea desde el taller, o desde asignaturas digitales que enfaticen en el método.…”