Design knowledge coordination: Enhancing novice aerospace engineers' design skills through coordinated decision-making

Abstract

This research contributes to both the aerospace engineering design community and the aerospace engineering education community by defining key indicators of design knowledge coordination as well as outlining indicators to identify and enhance designers’ coordinated decision-making within the aerospace engineering conceptual design process. A framework of structuring design knowledge and design knowledge coordination was characterized from a systematic analysis of literature review, which investigated processes that encompass coordination. This framework was then applied to an authoritative example of coordination within the aerospace engineering design process. Then, a multiple case study was used to analyze observations of student teams in a capstone design course and capture indicators of coordination. Finally, learning goals and design activities were identified to better support students’ design knowledge coordination. Suggested evaluation criteria connect the findings from all three research questions to the design knowledge coordination framework. Results of this research will address the noted gap between aerospace engineering education and the needs of industry for engineering graduates to use effective approaches to engineering design, integration, and synthesis.