Designing Innovations Research Stream – A Design Research Program for First-Year Students

Abstract

Understanding how teams solve design problems can influence students' perspectives on designing innovative products and systems. Furthermore, education needs to be tailored to engage first-year students in undergraduate research opportunities which increases student retention and graduation rate among STEM majors. A new initiative at the University of Maryland, the First-Year Innovation & Research Experience Program (FIRE), provides authentic research experience to first-year students. This paper introduces a new program, the Designing Innovations Research Stream, that engages first-year students in design research. The goal is that students will learn about design by investigating how teams solve complex design problems and then apply this knowledge to a real-world situation. The Designing Innovations Research Stream consisted of two semesters and a 10-week summer research fellowship. In the first semester of Designing Innovations, students learned about the design process and the standard design tools used to solve design problems. In the second semester, they designed an experiment to observe and analyze design team activities. The success of the program is evaluated by (i) surveying the students who completed the program, and (ii) the published papers from students who work in the program. The survey assesses students' understanding after completing the program via four major categories: design process, research, communication, as well as teamwork. The results of 51 students over three years show that 84% of responses either strongly agree or agree that their comprehension of the four categories has improved. The results also indicate that the most important subject learned, according to the students, was research methods, design research, teamwork, and communication. Finally, three peer-reviewed papers primarily written by students presented at international conferences demonstrate the program was successful in producing publishable results.