ENE Research Seminar: The Relationships Between Novice Designers’ Knowledge and Design Behaviors, and Supporting Design Practice with Generative AI Tools
ENE Research Seminar: The Relationships Between Novice Designers’ Knowledge and Design Behaviors, and Supporting Design Practice with Generative AI Tools
| Event Date: | September 18, 2025 |
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| Speaker: | Chris Rennick, PhD |
| Speaker Affiliation: | Pearl Sullivan Engineering Ideas Clinic, University of Waterloo
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| Type: | Research Seminar |
| Time: | 3:30-4:20 p.m. |
| Location: | WANG 3501 |
| Open To: | Graduate and undergraduate students, staff, and faculty with an interest in educating engineers |
| Priority: | No |
| School or Program: | Engineering Education |
| College Calendar: | Show |
For the high-flex option, register in advance. You will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Title:
The relationships between novice designers’ knowledge and design behaviors, and supporting design practice with generative AI tools
Abstract:
Engineering design problems are ill-structured, context-dependent, complex, dynamic, and situated in specific knowledge domains. In solving these challenging types of problems, a designer’s quantity and quality of knowledge plays a significant role throughout the design process. This talk will present the results of a qualitative investigation that explored how novice designers leveraged their relevant knowledge and how that connects to the informed design behaviors they exhibited while solving design problems in a think-aloud protocol experiment. The implications of these findings for training novice designers led to the creation of a workshop incorporating generative AI tools in various stages of the engineering design process. This talk will include a shortened version of this workshop where participants will practice using genAI tools while solving a design problem.
Bio:
Chris Rennick, PhD P Eng, is a Fellow of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG) and was the recipient of the CEEA-ACEG Graduate Student Award in 2019 for his contributions to engineering education research. Chris manages the Pearl Sullivan Engineering Ideas Clinic at the University of Waterloo where he designs and implements innovative pedagogies in engineering design for students of all disciplines. The Ideas Clinic, now in its 10th year, has reached more than 55,000 students including more than 12,000 through its signature 2-day long, curricular hackathon activities, called “Engineering Design Days”. Chris’ research focusses on design expertise acquisition in novice designers, and on the development of student motivation and self-efficacy through targeted teaching and learning activities.
Citation:
C. Rennick, G. Litster, C. C. W. Hulls and A. Hurst, "Curricular Hackathons for Engineering Design Learning: The Case of Engineering Design Days," in IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 66, no. 6, pp. 654-664, Dec. 2023, doi: 10.1109/TE.2023.3295754.