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Background The ability to engage in a creative process to solve a problem or to design a novel artifact is essential to engineering as a profession. Research indicates a need for curricula that enhance students' creative skills in engineering. Purpose Our purpose was to document current practices in engineering pedagogy with regard to opportunities for students' creative growth by examining learning goals, instructional methods, and assessments focused on cognitive creative skills. Design/Method We conducted a critical case study of engineering pedagogy at a single university with seven engineering courses where instructors stated the goal of fostering creativity. Data included instructor and student interviews, student surveys, and course materials. For qualitative analysis, we used frameworks by Treffinger, Young, Selby, and Shepardson and by Wiggins and McTighe. Results One aspect of creativity, convergent thinking (including analysis and evaluation), was well represented in the engineering courses in our case study. However, instruction on generating ideas and openness to exploring ideas was less often evident. For many of the creative skills, especially those related to divergent thinking and idea exploration, assessments were lacking. Conclusions An analysis of pedagogy focused on goals, instruction, and assessments in the engineering curriculum revealed opportunities for growth in students' creative skill development. Designing assessments that motivate students to improve their creative skills and to become more aware of their own creative process is a key need in engineering pedagogy.

Background Design is essential to the engineering profession and plays a crucial role in preparation for future practice. Research investigating variations of how professional designers experience, give meaning to, and approach design can inform the ways we characterize, assess, and facilitate design learning. This may also have significant implications for preparing future engineering professionals to collaborate within and across disciplines. Purpose (Hypothesis) The goal of the study was to reveal and investigate critical differences in how designers from within and outside of engineering disciplines understand what it means to design, and how those understandings are evident in their approaches to and progression through design work. Design/Method A qualitative research approach called phenomenography was used to investigate critical variations in how individuals experience and understand design. Twenty practicing designers were interviewed regarding their design experiences, how they approach design, and the ways they understand design. Conclusions Six qualitatively distinct lenses on how individuals across disciplines experience and come to understand design emerged, comprising a phenomenographic “outcome space.” These include design as (1) evidencebased decision‐making, (2) organized translation, (3) personal synthesis, (4) intentional progression, (5) directed creative exploration, and (6) freedom. Theoretical implications include an understanding of how design skills and knowledge come together to form a design approach, while practical implications emphasize structuring variation‐based reflection, which can facilitate common ground as a result of recognizing differ “design lenses.”

Background Ample research provides evidence about the influence of effective teaching practices on student success. Yet the adoption of such practices has been slow at many institutions. Efforts to bridge the gap between research and practice are needed.Purpose We describe an institutional change plan we developed to bridge this research-topractice gap. Our plan is grounded in research and theories about faculty motivation and organizational change, and we designed it using local evidence from the University of Michigan College of Engineering.Design/Method We collected local data from three sources to provide context for our institutional change plan. First, faculty focus groups allowed us to determine factors that influence faculty adoption of effective teaching practices. Second, classroom observations allowed us to ascertain current teaching practices. Third, a student survey allowed us to identify teaching practices perceived by students to enhance their success. We used this local evidence with a "who/what/how" decision-making process to design our change plan. ResultsOur institutional change plan for accelerating the adoption of effective teaching practices comprises a faculty action plan and an administrative change plan. Although still evolving, there is evidence of the success of both parts.Conclusions Local evidence is critical in our change plan. Change agents wishing to bridge the research-to-practice gap at their own institutions can design a plan that adapts our process and integrates relevant research and theory with their own local data.

Background Limited research exists on the experiences of engineering returners -those with undergraduate degrees who work for at least five years and return to academia for graduate degrees. Returners bring a different perspective to their graduate studies and postgraduate work than direct-pathway students but face additional challenges.Purpose Our aim was to understand practitioners' decisions to return to graduate school and complete graduate degrees. Guided by expectancy value theory, we investigated their beliefs about their ability to succeed; the interest, attainment, and utility values returners placed on graduate school; the costs they experienced in returning; and the personal, programmatic, and cultural factors that mitigated these costs. Design/MethodWe employed a qualitative interpretivist approach to investigate the returning experience through semi-structured interviews with 10 returners. We analyzed the results deductively, using expectancy value theory to understand participants' expectations of success and the values of those experiences, and inductively, to understand the types of costs that influenced the decision to return and complete graduate school.Results Utility value drove participants' decisions to return and complete graduate programs, and participants had a high expectancy of success in earning their graduate degrees. Four types of costs emerged from analysis of the interviews: intellectual, balance, cultural and environmental, and financial. Participants employed various strategies to mitigate these costs. ConclusionsWith the results of our study, potential returners can more effectively plan for success in the graduate environment, and universities can develop initiatives to better recruit returners and support their success.

This paper present three lenses for interpreting design thinking: a framework on learning to become professionals, and two interpretations of this framework that speak broadly to aspects of "design thinking". The first lens draws on a framework for "an embodied understanding of professional practice" and provides a way to describe how professionals form and organize their knowledge and skills into a particular "professional-way-of-being". The second and third lenses provide examples of using this framework to interpret existing results from phenomenographic studies on ways of experiencing design and ways of experiencing cross-disciplinary practice. We conclude with a discussion of how these three lenses contribute to a working synthesis of design thinking and learning.

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Prototypes are essential tools in product design processes, but are often underutilized by novice designers. To help novice designers use prototypes more effectively, we must first determine how they currently use prototypes. In this paper, we describe how novice designers conceptualized prototypes and reported using them throughout a design project, and compare reported prototyping use to prototyping best practices. We found that some of the reported prototyping practices by novice designers, such as using inexpensive prototypes early and using prototypes to define user requirements, occurred infrequently and lacked intentionality. Participants’ initial descriptions of prototypes were less sophisticated than how they later described using them and only upon prompted reflection did participants recognize more specific benefits of using prototypes.