Engineering Design Innovation through C-K Theory Based Templates

Undergraduate engineering education must train students to not only solve design challenges that transcend disciplinary boundaries, but also communicate, transfer knowledge, and collaborate across technical and non-technical boundaries. One approach to achieving this goal is teaching bio-inspired design (BID) in an engineering curriculum. In teaching bio-inspired design, the Concept-Knowledge (C-K) theory is a well-established approach for integrating multiple domains of information and facilitating innovation through connection building. For the purposes of evaluating the benefits of using C-K theory and their application to design innovation, students in sophomore engineering are assigned a design project using C-K theory template. This paper discusses the adoption of Concept-Knowledge (C-K) theory template for student's use in sophomore design course at both the University of Georgia, Athens (UGA) and the James Madison University (JMU) for design innovation in undergraduate engineering curriculum. Statistical analysis of student's work based on the C-K theory template was carried out to investigate the relationship to design innovation. The results obtained are presented and discussed. Results from the analysis suggest that the C-K theory based approach improved students abilities to design and develop innovative solutions.