Self-assessment rubrics as metacognitive scaffolds to improve design thinking

Abstract

An important goal of engineering education is to develop design thinking competency among students. These competencies include: structuring open problem, information gathering, divergent and convergent thinking, and multiple representations. We have developed Engineering Design Interactive Visualizations (EDIVs), a technology- enhanced learning environment for students’ self-learning of engineering design competency. The EDIVs contain activities to promote decision-making, concept integration and overall synthesis, which are necessary cognitive mechanisms to attain design competencies. However, in addition to cognitive strategies, students require metacognitive scaffolds to help them reflectively and mindfully apply these strategies to new contexts. Hence, we included self- assessment rubrics in EDIVs to act as metacognitive scaffolds for the process of design. In this paper, we describe the role and structure of self-assessment rubrics for the engineering design competency of Structure Open Problem, and report results of an experiment where students worked with EDIVs in two conditions – with and without rubrics. We find that the rubrics prompt students to perform formative assessment of their own performance, and correct themselves if necessary, thus leading to improved performance in a new design problem.